All Eyes on Me

Forever Captain:
“Bearded”
By Phoebe Roberts
~~~

Summary: “Peggy comes home after several weeks away on a mission to find Steve has neglected to shave in that time. Fetching as she finds the beard, she learns there’s a reason why he’s never grown it out before.”

~~~

( “Bearded” )

~~~

The End

I am quite late with this, but as I have been absolutely slammed for the last two months, it’s been something of a theme for the whole challenge. Still, I wanted to make sure I do as I always do, and give an assessment of what I made over the course of the month’s writing.

This year’s challenge was easy in some ways and hard in others. I’ve consistently found the process most useful and productive when I had a project to work on, and so I used much of it for drafting pieces for Mrs. Hawking part 8, which Bernie and I have recently dug into. I made a fair bit of progress, though we still have enough questions about how it’s going to work that I expect the scenes I generated to need a ton of editing. Still, I’m happy for the forward movement on the project. I also returned to Dream Machine, which I haven’t touched in a while, and did a few more new Little Monsters and Texts from Avengers Towers bits, so there was a noticeable focus on comedy. Didn’t write as much other fanfic as I expected, or more than one or two bits of anything else.

I am disappointed to report, however, that for the first time in thirteen years, I failed to finish all thirty-one pieces before the end of the month. I’ve been dealing with some focus issues for a while now, but the real problem is the last handful of months have been totally slammed. Between work, chores, and family obligations involving travel, I lost a ton of time that led to me falling behind. I know it doesn’t really matter— this is a challenge I’ve arbitrarily set for myself, with rules that only I care about, and I ended up doing the same amount of writing in the end that I always do. But I feel kind of bad that my perfect streak of all that time is a little tarnished.

As I was drafting it, I felt like my quality varied a lot. I remember being very frustrated with some pieces, while others came very easily. Looking back through what I wrote with a few weeks’ distance, however, I’m actually pretty pleased with the general level of these pieces. The character voices seem on point, the jokes are strong where there are jokes, and I managed to give some meaningful character motion in the vast majority of the scenes. That’s actually not half bad, even though I know everything will need a lot of editing, both stylistic and functional. I really do strongly believe that you need to just get SOMETHING on the page, no matter how bad, as the first step to making something good.

The breakdown of projects I wrote for:

Hawking part 8 - 14
Texts from Avengers Tower - 3
Dream Machine - 4
Little Monsters - 6
Gentlemen Never Tell 2 - 1
Forever Captain - 1
Witchy - 1

And the breakdown of characters I wrote for:

1. Nathaniel Hawking - 9
2. Beatrice Hawking - 8
3. Clara Hawking - 7
4. Victoria Hawking - 6
5. Mary Stone - 6
6. Leah Lucchesi - 4
7. Twyla Boogieman - 3
8. Draculaura - 3
9. Venus McFlytrap - 3
10. Frankie Stein - 3
11. Ghoulia Yelps - 3
12. Heath Burns - 2
13. Josie Carraway - 2
14. Meryl Dresden - 2
15. Derek Kaplan - 2
16. Joanna Kerrigan - 2
17. Spectra Vondergeist - 2
18. Clawdeen Wolf - 2
19. Bucky Barnes - 1
20. Meredith Barry - 1
21. Clint Barton - 1
22. Lagoona Blue - 1
23. Abbey Bominable - 1
24. Peggy Carter - 1
25. Devon Chambers - 1
26. Zach Barry - 1
27. Cleo de Nile - 1
28. Ryan Dresden - 1
29. Gwen Galway - 1
30. Justin Hawking - 1
31. Reggie Hawking - 1
32. Logan - 1
33. Megan May - 1
34. Catty Noir - 1
35. Nate Reyes - 1
36. Barbie Roberts - 1
37. Steve Rogers - 1
38. Thor - 1
39. Toralei Stripe - 1
40. Arthur Swann - 1
41. Sam Wilson - 1
42. Wade Wilson - 1

Forty-two characters is a fairly large number, even for me. Last year I only wrote for thirty-six, thirty-seven the year before, and thirty-four the year before that. I averaged about three characters a scene, though most of them only had two while the largest maxed out at seven. I’ve always found it tougher to manage larger-cast scenes, so I’m surprised at how many there were this year to skew the average.

Favorite scenes? I thought I did pretty well this year, so I liked a lot. I enjoyed writing for Beatrice Hawking, with her enthusiasm for learning undercover work and managing her privileged background, such as in #23 - Just Powder and #25 - Tweenies.

#23 - Culture Not Costumes is a really funny Little Monsters bit, as is #19 - Relatable. I was also glad I was able to work out #14 - Special Ability, since I was chipping at that joke for most of the month. I’m fond of #26 - Two Sets of Tentacles if only because it’s a serious contender for weirdest thing I’ve ever written.

I also ended up really liking #31 - Derek in Hell, since it’s one of those scenes that I didn’t know where it was going to go until I wrote it. In fact, the only scene I don’t really like is #30 - In Murder’s Path, which doesn’t add anything to its larger piece and was the first of the two scenes I had to write past the end of the month.

Favorite lines? Lagoona’s weird, weird mini-monologue in #26 - Two Sets of Tentacles. Beatrice’s too-enthusiastic recitation of her melodramatic invented backstory in #25 - Tweenies. Nathaniel’s titular line in #24 - Got the Morbs. There’s some cute back and forth between Justin and Reggie in #17 - Let Me Tell You.

So, yeah, a lot of good came out of the exercise this month. Even if I was a little late getting it all done.

Well, for the first time ever, I didn’t manage to finish all thirty-one plays in the allotted month. That’s pretty disappointing, but the past two weeks were just brutal. I’m going to finish anyway, just to complete my list.

I also don’t really like this scene. It continues directly from #28 - Mr. Parkhill, but again it doesn’t really tell us anything new, and Clara’s presence doesn’t really capture the nuance I want her character arc to have. But maybe I can salvage something from it.

Damn, I’m mad at myself for not finishing in time. :-/


Photo by Mark Edwards

( Day #30 - “In Murder’s Path” )

Hmm, not sure about this one. It’s from Hawking 8, taking place after #25 - “Tweenies” and #27 - “Lord Love a Duck”, but while it may have some character and structural benefits, it doesn’t establish anything we don’t already know at this point in the story. So I don’t know if it will end up in the final draft. But at this point, I just really need to draft to finish the damn challenge. I’ve only got a few more days to catch up.


Photo by Mark Edwards

( Day #28 - Mr. Parkhill )

Ugh, I am so tired. I am so behind. This is so stupid. But at least it’s catching me up.



( Day #26 - Two Sets of Tentacles )

Argh, I've fallen behind again. Bernie and I went home this past weekend to help my dad around the house, packing up stuff, moving furniture, since he's planning on eventually downsizing. We ended up moving the beautiful library shelves and books up to our place yesterday, which while welcome, was not initially part of the plan! I'm happy since I wanted them for ages, but it meant I didn't have time to write my daily scenes.

So here's my effort to catch back up. This scene immediately follows #22 - "Just Powder" and is an effort to include the idea that since Mrs. Hawking accepted the physical end of her detective career in In the Bones, she's fallen into a bit of a depression. She's not been doing much work, and spends a lot of time hiding feeling sorry for herself. The events of this play will make her confront that and decide how she wants to move forward. I may need to change the specifics of the previous part of the scene to make that totally compatible with this, but I really like exploring this direction.

Also, I get to use the fabulous Victorian phrase "got the morbs".


Photo by Mark Edwards

( Day #24 - “Got the Morbs” )

Okay, this turned out kind of cute. Another bit from Mrs. Hawking part 8 that still needs work, but has a decent idea at the core of it. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it when I forced myself to dig into it today— late in a valiant struggle to get caught up —but bits of it kind of came together. I think I will have to adjust some of the details for logic reasons, but the dynamics are pretty good. Just goes to show, sometimes when you make yourself just write something, you can surprise yourself with what comes out of you. 😆

I noticed I haven’t written much with Hawking herself yet for this challenge. Her scenes are taking more time to come together, I guess.


Photo by Mark Edwards

( Day #22 - Just Powder )

It's late in the day, but it's still the 20th, so I'm technically still caught up!

This is another little bit of a Captain America fan fiction scene that I wrote as a drama, but could definitely use as the first draft of a prose fic. That technique often helps me get started. It's just a silly little moment, coming out of my personal preference for clean shaven Cap as opposed to bearded, which influences why I write him that way in my by-now pretty extensive post-Endgame series Forever Captain. I guess it's an attempt to find an in-character justification for it. There isn't a lot to this, but it could make for a cute little one shot that I could stick in the continuity of their early married years.

I guess there's also a tiny nod to that awful look Chris sported when he was performing Lobby Hero too.



( Day #20 - Bearded )

Blargh, I'm a little behind. But I should be able to catch up today. Anyway, this is an early scene of Mrs. Hawking 8, where Clara approaches Mary upon her return to London, asking her to take on a case for a family she knows. I'm also trying to use the early part of the scene to subtly establish some things on Clara's mind early on, but no so obviously that it tips my hand as to where her story is going. Right now I'm not sure if I achieved that, so this scene is a little weak. Not to mention the fact that we still need to figure out a lot of the details of the case, which is always one of the hardest parts of writing a Hawking play.

This also kind of runs into the problem of Tory being about fives years old at this point. Wrangling a child onstage, particularly one so small, is no small order. But maybe this scene could work because we could make a little lump in the bed to believably represent a little girl.


Photo by Mazz Mazzacano

( Day #18 - One Mother to Another )

So this could turn into something fun, but right now it doesn’t have enough direction. It would be fun to do another Justin Hawking story in the vein of Gentlemen Never Tell, but right now I only have bits and pieces of ideas. I like the idea that each time we tell a Justin story, it comes in the form of a semi-tall tale Justin is recounting to a loved one, so today’s scene is noodling around with a frame for such a story. In this case, I chose Reggie, Nathaniel and Clara’s son and Justin’s nephew, who like his sister Beatrice is finally old enough to be depicted onstage. This scene doesn’t really know what it’s doing yet— what the story is about, what it’s trying to say, what the set up is— but I like the idea of Justin as Fun But Maybe a Bad Influence Uncle in Reggie’s life.



( Day #17 - Let Me Tell You )