A Rewrite and a New Play

At the moment, I'm struggling a little bit to stay on top of and immersed in the worlds of two different plays. It's pretty typical for me to be working on later drafts of one play while another play is coming out of my head for the first time. Right now, "The Drowning Dance" is in major rewrites. It's expanding like a giant breath. I've seen so many holes in the story that I left there when I told myself, "Don't worry about what goes here, just write the next thing that comes to mind!" It's a great technique for beginning a play, but it stinks to come back to the play and see gaping holes in plot and character interaction. So, I'm filling up those emotional and plot-based holes, chopping things that sounded good at the time I wrote them, but now, really don't fit in the play's bigger scheme of things. I have to keep reminding myself, this part is always scary. It's like playing a game of Operation-- can I excise these things without buzzing the side and upsetting everything that I've written? Will I accidently kill the soul of the play? It's a horror. But it's invigorating and energizing at the same time, mostly because having a play in a chopped up state is great motivation for me to work on the play. I hate disorder. I like chaos, but it has to be ordered chaos!

So, while I have one play-child in a mutated form of puberty, my other play is kicking my proverbial womb. Ouch! Stop that! Yes, I know you want out, but you're not fully formed yet! I don't want to send you out into the world prematurely and have you die! So, yeah... This new play, "Goody Goody," wants out badly. But I still don't quite know what the play is about... I have concepts-- Good boy wants to be bad, bad girl wants to be good-- but that's not really enough to base the play on. I have about 2 scenes that are gestating in my mind, waiting for me to sit down and type them out, but I feel like "Drowning Dance" is in a much more critical state, beckoning for my attention. Until I rearrange and re-form "DD," "Goody Goody" is going to have to keep waiting and simply be content with being mused upon in the shower or on the street as I walk. I'm hoping that my trip to NYC this week to see a reading of my play "Solamente Una Vez" will be just the thing to refuel my rapidly dwindling momentum.