Process LXII

Received some wonderful news this week; I am a recipient of the Leonard Trawick Scholarship! Earlier this year I applied, including the first ten pages of my unproduced script No One Wants To Work Anymore.

The Leonard Trawick Scholarship was established to assist Cleveland State University students in creative writing and/or English and to honor Dr. Leonard Trawick for his dedication to the Poetry Center.

This is the first time I have ever received a merit-based, academic scholarship, and I am dead chuffed.

This week I have also been ill. It’s just a nasty, springtime cold. Every Covid test has proved negative, but it’s kept me out of public. I was able to use the day on Monday to finally break through and produce the first fifteen pages of the second act of my new work for the playwrights workshop.

We read these pages that night, and I was heartened by the fact that certain members of the class were even more unsettled by the second act than the first. That took some doing. And now the scenes are flowing freely. Maybe too freely.

Every scene feels more dangerous than the last. The complete, in-class reading is scheduled for two weeks from Monday. For my last two scripts I have had friends read it before the class gets to it. A fire pit may be in order. God, I love the Spring!

Process XLVI

The weather turns. The week has been exhausting and stressful. Illness among the team and I found myself playing Macbeth in Kent, as I have in days of old. But now I’m old and it is wearying. Enjoyable, but wearying.

But it feels as though we are barreling toward the end of the semester, and the holidays. And I’m excited about that, and that makes me cautious. Because looking forward to anything feels ridiculous. Anticipation? In this economy?

Speaking of the economy, this week we read Fulfillment Center by Abe Koogler. Having read several contemporary works (or tried to write one) about folks trying to make sense of life in this new millennium, this was the first to conclude on a note of what might be called hope. 

This week I turned in my final first draft of No One Wants To Work Anymore for the playwriting workshop. At the beginning of the semester, I had no idea what I would write. I cast about for inspiration, drafted ideas day by day, single page by single page. And then I wrote something -- a mystery, with structure, character, plot, humor and social significance. I can be proud of that.

Teaching at Kent Roosevelt High School

I have been casting about (occasionally) for online writing prompts without much success. Most are too specific, they are meant to inspire conflict and leave no room for flexible imagining. For example, one might read, “You’re at a buffet, and you and an attractive stranger reach for the same slice of pie at the same time. Go!”

Recently I came across the prompts at 826LA which are meant for children and young people and those have unlocked a few doors already. Yesterday I read this one:

Have you ever had a fight with your friend? How did it make you feel? How do you think it made them feel? What did you and your friend do or say to make up after?

I wrote a short story once, inspired by just such a thought, but when rewriting it as dialogue it carried me into a much different place. I resolved some time ago to cease typing up and posting short plays, but I might like to finish and share this one. It may even be a ten-minute work.