All Eyes on Me

A scene that I think would take place between Hawking parts 6 and 7. Something I want Mary to be dealing with is how she’s going to run her own life now that it’s hers to run, and I think for a while at least she decides she is completely DONE with superheroics. She’s going to be a NORMAL person with a NORMAL life, because she doesn’t want to end up a bitter and angry like Mrs. Hawking who lashes out at the people around her. But she will come to realize she misses that meaningful work, and ask herself if there’s a way to do it without repeating her old mistress’s mistakes. I thought a good way to set that in motion would be if she reencounters an old familiar face— Madam Malaika Shah. After all, Madam Malaika was the person who in part V: Mrs. Frost posed to her the current big question of her life— “You would be Mary Stone. And who is that?”



Malaika also predicted that she wouldn’t be able to stay with Mrs. Hawking without being destroyed, but by the end of the play in which she made that prediction, Malaika herself had resolved to try and be a little less cynical and reach out to others in hopes that she could make positive, non-ruinous connections. I think if she reencountered Mary in New York, where Mary and Arthur moved to after their wedding in December of 1889, it could be powerful to see Malaika dealing with the grim reality that she was right about Mrs. Hawking and Mary, and we can see her fears for what that means for her own attempts to reach out. And Mary, in asserting the value of her experiences even if they had to end badly, can start wondering if there’s a way to bring back the positive parts of her old life without the negative parts.

This is banged out too quickly and probably feels rushed. But I really like the idea.

( Day #15 - No Regrets )

October Review Challenge, #9 - "What was a moment in your work that was difficult to write?"

I’d love to talk about something that was, like, emotionally difficult for me, like I was writing something that was deeply challenging or personal that made it hard to get out. But honestly the thing that I struggled to get on paper the most was purely a functional challenge. Hands down, the most torturous process to generate in recent memory is the back half of scene 2.1 of Mrs. Hawking part V: Mrs. Frost, where the four women finally work together to solve the problem with the titular villain.



I AGONIZED over this. It involved one of the challenges of doing complicated capers and schemes, where you need complicated problems and very clever solutions, devised by people who are probably supposed to be smarter than you, the writer. Pacing and drama must be taken into account, so things must unfold at a good clip with the appropriate sense of escalation. That is REALLY hard. And in this case, I had to distribute the development of their plan over two scenes, beginning in 1.8 where the women first attempt to come together but find their personality conflicts getting in the way. Figuring out where each piece of information, idea, and brainwave should be was brutally difficult, particularly when I was invested in every character in the scene— Mrs. Hawking, Mary, Madam Malaika, and Clara —each making equally meaningful contributions in their own way, based on their own skillset. Bernie and I got into some pretty serious conflicts over what was revealing too much too soon, and how to best solve those issues.

I avoided finishing 2.1 for DAYS, and it was the last scene of all of them to be drafted. When it got to the point where I just had to get something on paper, it was banged out practically weeping and wailing as I rolled around under a table at a classroom at Lesley. That’s not an exaggeration, I was literally flopping on the ground under the table because I was feeling so avoidant. But I dragged it out to complete the thing.

And, as often is the case, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. It needed some cleaning up, and there was a bit at the very end that over-explained way, way too much— I remember that bit survived three revisions, but when I finally cut it the whole thing felt much sleeker. But it ultimately worked. I’ve actually had a couple people tell me that these “ladies working together” scenes are their favorite part of the play. Not something I would have imagined rolling around under that table.

The moral is— GET IT OUT ON PAPER. It will at least be fixable, even if it isn’t perfect. And it’s definitely better than when it doesn’t exist!

So work on the next Mrs. Hawking play, our SIXTH installment, is well and truly underway.

How's it going? Uh... hard to say.

Every time, it feels like these get harder to write. The story, having gone on for five years now, has gotten very complicated. We have a lot of characters, a lot of journeys to develop and explore. And since they're capers, the plots require a lot of careful construction in order to make sense and be engaging. And since we've consistently heard we've gotten better every year, the bar gets higher and higher.

So at least every first draft FEELS like it's harder to write. I know I have said that literally every year since part three. I've also said that every installment's first draft feels like it comes out WORSE than the first draft of the previous installment. Bernie seems to think it's a case of you can never really remember what pain felt like before, so the current pain seems like the worst pain ever. Especially since I do think every script has, by the final draft, ended up better than the last.

Could that even be possible? That the first version of every script is worse than the last's first version, and the final version of every script is better than the last's final version? Or is that I feel that way a sign of how much the process makes me lose perspective?

I don't know. I just know I need to keep going.

Frankly it feels like a mess. It doesn't even have a real title yet. And I like to completely outline a script or any other writing project before I write it— I need to know where I'm going, what I'm shooting for, before I try to execute it, particularly if the plot is complex or important. But while I wanted to have the outline settled by the end of June, there were a few things that Bernie and I STILL haven't quite ironed out in our very challenging caper. So, in order to not get too far behind, I've started drafting parts we have settled on. That's risky, as these things can be a house of cards and once we figure out the one or two remaining gaps it may wreck things we thought were established. But I need to feel like I'm making progress.

The drafting also feels bad. REALLY bad. Worse than it did for the initial pass of Mrs. Frost— which seemed pretty frickin' lousy itself. And I clawed together one scene for that while literally crying to myself under a table in a classroom at Lesley. I imagine there will be more than one similar occasion for part 6.

The one thing that's keeping me from getting too upset over it is that I've recently begun editing my novel in a serious way as well, and I'm actually making progress. The first draft of the novel was BAD. Seriously, embarrassingly bad, at least in some places. Like the beginning. But I polished up the prologue and the first three chapters so I could send them to my gracious mentor Mark, and I was no longer ashamed for another human being to see them. I was really nervous about my ability to improve that work, since I don't have a backlog of prose projects that turned out after editing. But if I could actually dig something meaningful out of that hot mess... well, I can probably trust my ability to handle a process I've completed to increasing success literally five times before.

Just have to trust the process. When you're going through hell— KEEP GOING.

New post on Mrshawking.com!

"Mrs. Hawking part V: Mrs. Frost drafted!"

I am pleased to announce that I have a complete draft of the next installment of the Mrs. Hawking series, part V: Mrs. Frost. I finished it just before the beginning of September, and with the very first reading scheduled for the 2nd, I spent the week leading up to it cleaning up the first version into something I wouldn’t be embarrassed to show people. I very much rely on the “garbage drafting” method, where you give yourself permission to write whatever you need to, no matter how awkward or bad, in order to just make sure you have a complete beginning, middle, and end. I go on to edit from there, and because I find it most effective to fix something imperfect that exists than try to do it the way I want it on the first try.



Read the rest of the entry on Mrshawking.com!

I have a policy of not reposting later drafts of scenes originally generated for a previous 31P31D. I have posted other sections of Mrs. Frost's interrogation of Nathaniel before, so even though they are vastly, vastly different at this point in the piece's development, they still violate that rule. This piece, however, is not the direct descendant of any previous piece, so I'm going to use it.

This feeds into at least the current version of 2017's Day #8 - "From the Queen's Archive." Bleh. Caught up now. Just one more to go.

( Day #30 - Psyop )

This scene seems really bland divorced from context. But it's the only way to not make it totally a spoiler. Whatever. Just punishing to finish.

Clara works her magic.

Day #28 - “Troubled”
From Mrs. Frost
By Phoebe Roberts

CLARA HAWKING, a society lady, mid thirties
TERRENCE ENFIELD, an alienist, early forties

London, England, 1886
~~~( Day #28 - Troubled )

This is only half a scene. I didn't want to be posting a lot of this Mrs. Frost stuff, but since I'm behind on posting, I'm not going to have a lot of time to write additional scenes. So I cut this at a shifting point, before the really high drama kicks in and they hash things out, because I don't want to spoil it.

( Day #26 - Leviathan )

Blargh. Didn't want to post this. But need to post something, and I'm behind, and I have to finish the goddamn draft.

( Day #24 - How Long )

This is a very important scene from Mrs. Frost. When the new team is struggling to work together, Malaika takes note of Mary's struggle and offers her a warning based on her experience. In turn, Mary asks her if Malaika really has no choice but to walk the path alone. It was very tough to write, and I think it's going to need a lot of editing to get exactly right. It's also a moment that helped me make the decision that, when I wrote the full pilot for the television version I'd like to have produced some day, to write Mary as an ethnically Indian girl. I feel like this moment would work even more strongly as an elder female superhero of color speaking to an up-and-coming young female superhero of color.

( Day #21 - The Force of Her )

Garbage. Awkward, unspecific garbage that I've been banging at for like three days and I still hate it. It follows immediately after Day #16 - "Disguise", and it suffers from the same issue I had with that one of not knowing how to convey the important backstory the audience needs to know, without drowning them in details or making the characters say things they'd never naturalistically say. Thinking now, I have struggled with the scene where "the current state of things" is articulated in parts III and IV as well— that ended up being a slog to write that I left until almost last both previous times as well.

( Day #19 - Time and Strife )