Playwright

With an e-mail, I found today that while my friend Chris' play got selected for Surfacing One Act Festival, and an as-of-yet unwritten play also got slected (commissioned by the artistic director, to be written by a guy I know will do a good job and all, but still...), my one act was not selected. I could gripe about this but...

I wrote it very quickly. I wrote it for the deadline, not for the play. It's rough. It's got some major flaws. It's better than "In 500 Words Or Less..." was, but it's not yet as good as "500 Words..." could have been if I had crafted it better. Nevermind that they're both about students who are using almost superhuman powers of slack to not write papers. This is something I am good at. See, I wrote for the deadline.

Unfortunately, if I want to be serious, and be taken seriously, I can't submit shit like that. People expect a crafted product. I'm handing them a work in progress. It might be bold, awesome and impressive as a work in progress, but they assume I've done all the work I could on it, or that if it took me a long time to get it where it is it's probably not worth the hassle, and so forth, so they pass. I'm a master of the awesome first draft I've decided, and for years I had teachers who were willing to accept an awesome first draft as a finished product. I've never been happy with that, but it worked so I let it work. Angela tried to help me with that. No, scratch that; Angela did help me with that. I am sure my writing instructors at Webster will be equally as helpful. I just need to help myself.

And so it comes to this; I have turned in a play with potential, but have failed to unlock it enough for the reading committee to accept the challenge of unlocking it more. I obviously need to do more work on it. The e-mail said they won't give criticism on the works that were not selected due to the sheer volume of work submitted, which could give me false hope (and it has given me a small amount of this) that mine would have been good enough if not for one or two slightly stronger candidates. But I have to be pessimistic, which goes against my earlier New Year's resolutions. But, I have to be a better writer, which means I have to believe I can always do better than I have done.

I have to start writing another play now. This one for class. And I was without an idea, until I idly clicked on Memory Machine's blog over in my links (Urban Exploration). I figured it out. My uncle Dennis is in town. I could e-mail this guy. I don't want to go Urban Exploring, I just want to know what it's like. What is it like to go to one of these places? What kind of thing could happen there? The amunition plant interests me; my father once worked there. What could I do with that?

A lot.

Music to Blog By:
The Thermals - A Pillar of Salt

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Urban Exploration

Check out the last link over on my links section. I just found this site about Urban Exploration of abandoned buildings, while I was looking for information about the River Roads Mall in Jennings, MO. Also, check out the host site, because it's got more blogs about urban exploration.

I think this is something I would like to know more about. I'm not sure I'm cut out for actually being an explorer myself, not just because I'm a weenie little lanky girly man, but also because I don't really have time. However, it's an interesting idea, and something that I find fascinating. I can remember my uncle Dennis telling me of his college-days Urban Exploration, not only in Lawrence, KS where he went to school, but also in Kansas City and here in St. Louis; particularly the Continental Life Insurance Building in Grand Center. This building is, of course, now a set of very upscale condos, so any exploration I wanted to do there would hinge on me knowing somebody that lives there. Oh well. Perhaps we'll see a story involving this sort of thing...perhaps not, I'm going to do more research on it.

So, no blogitty for weeks and weeks and all of a sudden, THREE blogs in two days.

I guess there's got to be a break in the monotony, but Jesus when it rains how it pours.

Music to Blog By: OK Go - Here It Goes Again

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