Last night I found an excellent resource for identifying theater companies around the country that support new work either through productions, readings, contests, or fellowships. What’s funny to me is that even though I was writing plays before I ever finished a screenplay, I am decidedly behind-the-curve now when it comes to the process of putting work out into the theater world. Even back when I produced the Hotel Chicago reading I didn’t really have any road map for what I would DO with that play if it worked. After Bradley staged those 10-minute plays a couple of years ago I made a run at submitting them to a publishing house, but they were rejected.
Since trying to get my prose published involved a very similar process, this feels more familiar now, and if (when – say WHEN damn it!) I finish this full-length piece, I don’t want to be caught napping if I try a reading of it and find out I’ve actually created something pretty good. Not to mention, as long as I’m working up to the magic number of scripts to produce that 10-minute play showcase, nothing’s stopping me from getting the already-finished ones out there.
Since I was still semi-cold-whacked last night and couldn’t focus much on writing, sniffing out targets was a satisfying use of my time. It ended with me in a terrific muddle, though, because I have a lot of different goals for my writing time right now, all of them require finishing large projects in different forms and then a LOT of dedicated non-writing time for stuff like editing and submissions.
Seriously – do I edit my existing short stories and do a bigger, better-informed batch of lit mag submissions using what I’ve learned on Duotrope? Do I finish the two novelette-length prose pieces I’m well-into and start prepping the self-published story collection I’ve been thinking about since last year? No reason I couldn’t pursue both those goals relatively-simultaneously, but the picture gets more complicated when you throw in this full-length play. And the 10-minute plays (I’m 3 pages into #6 out of the 8 I need). And oh, right…screenwriting.
The short film has everything it needs – I just have to get my ass to the restaurant I want to book and charm the owner. So no writing needs to happen there. I have a good enough number of finished un-circulated scripts right now that arguably there’s more advantage in trying to circulate them and get more people interested in my work than in just writing another spec that nobody’s reading.
But then I think things like – you know it’s kind of ridiculous that you haven’t written a horror movie yet. The appetite for horror is inexhaustible out here, and I do have a premise that’s already gotten a chuckle out of a highly-successful horror filmmaker I know. So really, why not just throw that in there? It wouldn’t take long, right?
No, idiot, it would take months. Months in which not much else would be advanced.
I think I need to take a long walk with myself and find a little clarity about just what I want to get done writing-wise in the next few months. After all, I’ve got to squeeze all this in around work – AND play rehearsals.
Man, I’m lucky my girlfriend understands me.