Taking the good with the bad

Yesterday was a good writing day.  Today, not so good.  I didn’t get any writing done in the early part of the day and it’s likely that I’m not going to meet today’s target.  Okay, scratch that.  It’s inevitable that I’m not going to meet today’s target.  Avoiding the self-flagellation, I can examine this and…

Keeping focused

What the heck am I doing?  I let two days go by without doing my quota.  No pages on Friday or Sunday!  The month is going to be over before I’ve even gotten halfway through the first draft. It’s hard when you keep looking at the big picture.  When you keep looking at how far…

Drawing up the Battle Plans

Okay, I’m just taking a reality check for what needs to be done to get this play Cast Away written.  I have about six pages of script and various pages of notes so far.  Some of those notes will make it verbatim into the script.  But I do need to establish a plan to get…

My next project

In about two months, I will be onstage preforming a one man show called Cast Away.  The only problem is that I haven’t written it yet.  It’s an amorphous shape in my brain and I have some set bits for it, but I still have to write the thing.  I mean, if I was put…

Marking Milestones

I’m a big believer in setting goals.  And an important part of setting goals is creating tasks that move you towards those goals.  Instead of having a vague goal that you have no control over like “I want to be a famous playwright”; you create something that you can achieve, like “I will write 2…

Getting up again

There’s a proverb that goes “Fall down seven times, get up eight times”.  I’ve fallen “off” the daily writing habit.  Again.  It’s been over a month since I was writing daily, so I’m going to dust myself off and start the habit again. I know why I fell off.  Usually when I complete a first…

Scrivening with Scrivener

I first came across the word “scrivener” when someone gave me Bartleby the Scrivener to act out in charades.  I didn’t do so well and I always remembered that word.  That darn word.  There is an application called Scrivener by Literature and Latte which is for writers.  It is a mac application, but they’ve developed…

Perseverance trumps talent

Everyone knows the story of the Tortoise and the Hare, right? If not, where have you been for the last three thousand years?  Basically a rabbit and a turtle decide to have a long distance race and the rabbit is so fast and so far ahead that he takes a nap before reaching the finish…

Falling Down redux

Okay, so this is the first blog after “publicizing” my goals and what do I have to report?  Uh, I guess it’s a kind of good news/bad news thing.  I like to get the bad news first, so here it is:  I only wrote half a page of script last week.  Half a page?!? I…

Resolutions 2011

Now that we are three weeks into the New Year and the giddy effects of eggnog and champagne are wearing off, I thought I would look soberly at my resolutions for 2011.  I know, resolutions get a bad rap, because we tend to make grandiose resolutions thinking of what we could accomplish in a year,…