Here’s the trick

Don’t look at email, don’t look at Facebook. Just get the computer going and start bloody writing. 

I remember this from the winter in the 1990s which I spent here mostly on my own (Mike being in Vancouver during the week, teaching at UBC). I’d get up in the morning, make a cappuccino, then sit down at the computer to start writing. In three months I finished the first draft of what would become Unethical Practices. Writing all day, stopping for food breaks and to throw more wood on the fire, sometimes still writing at 10 o’clock at night when Mike rang. 

Of course I didn’t have the internet as a distraction. Email, yes, but it was the old days of dial-up. (Remember that noise?) Just writing.

Not sure I could still do that for days on end, but I did do it two days this week. And guess what? I finished The Waiting Room, one of those one-act plays I’ve been toying with recently. The one I suddenly remembered starting several years ago after finding myself completely stalled on a more recent effort. 

Sent a copy to my mate Donna – my go to gal for first reads of my theatrical material. As in “so I’ve just finished this and I think it might be okay”. 

As I explained it to her when I sent her a copy of the script, the basic plot is: A guy is in a hospital waiting room where he is awaiting news about his wife who is undergoing surgery. Another bloke arrives whose wife is also in hospital. They start talking. There is also a female character who is a sort of spirit, half in, half out of her body. The men in the waiting room cannot see or hear her. I also voiced my concern that people will feel there is too much exposition and not enough action.

Happily, she says she found it “intriguing” and thought  the exposition was worked into the dialogue quite nicely. 

Well, I’ll take that, thank you very much.

And she’s agreed to take part in a reading tomorrow evening, so I’ll have a better idea if it does actually work.

A new play that didn’t exist a week ago! How exciting is that?