All Eyes on Me

I have completed the challenge for the eighth year in a row, and yet once again, as is becoming custom, I am pleased at having done it while having been annoyed at having to do it in the moment.

I no longer have need of a system to get me just generating work, particularly since my last several summers have necessarily been occupied with drafting that year's new Mrs. Hawking play. I find myself not wanting to spoil important moments of the new piece and ending up having to write more extra scenes to fill out the challenge. While it's good to have made more work— I often use those extra pieces, or they serve as inspiration for other things —it's not always welcome to have it as a responsibility. And the fact of the matter is I'm good enough at motivating myself to write the things I need to write that the challenge isn't a particularly useful thing at any point.

I've said that for years now. Still, I get an inordinate amount of satisfaction of seeing people check out what I've posted, looking at my lists, looking at my statistics. So I keep doing it, and I keep bitching about it.

As has been my wont of the last few years, I have been mostly posting Hawking-related pieces as I have used the challenge/put up with the challenge to complete the year's new Hawking play. This year was part 6, and because I have a habit of noodling at the ideas for future plays in advance, it turned out there have been cumulatively more scenes posted for this one than any previous.

( The counts for what pieces I wrote scenes for. )

( The counts for what characters I wrote scenes for. )

Mrs. Hawking always gets a lot of scenes as my lead, and Nathaniel really pulled ahead in the count with this one. His scenes were a touch less spoilery than a lot of Mary's, who had many that were initially drafted in earlier years, and I have a policy of not reposting scenes between years even if they are substantially edited. I wish I'd gotten it together to draft more of my Jeeves and Wooster black comedy TV adaptation idea, but I didn't quite have the energy, particularly with how funny I wanted them to be. I also notice I didn't do many "Hawking past timeline" scenes, which I did a ton of in the last couple years. Maybe I've already done most of the interesting ones.

I don't know. I guess I don't really have a lot of interesting or new observations about this process, particularly those that are distinct from just the drafting of Mrs. Hawking part 6. I will probably keep doing this absurd tradition, even frustrating as I find it— it just makes me happy to have done it, after I've gotten through the slog. Like so many things in my life.

Finally something that's not Hawking! As with last year, one of my few recent non-Hawking pieces for 31 Plays in 31 Days was for an idea I had for a new, slightly darker-humored version of Jeeves and Wooster. The key to it is that Jeeves's omnicompetence comes from having been a top black ops agent in WWI and ends up working for Wooster as a way of starting a new, non-violent life for himself.

This scene would probably occur at the very top of the pilot, definitely before the only other I scene I have drafted for it, from 31 Plays 31 Days 2018's Day #5 - "Hangover Cure."



( Day #24 - Once More Into the Breach )