Ending the Year Right

I can't believe it's November already.  I was just at a party with some friends and we were all wondering:

"Where did the year go?"

I can't believe another year is heading towards an end.  And as I look back, I think about the work I've done this year.  I am trying to work on something new constantly.  And if I look at it as a list, objectively...

• I wrote four drafts of a pilot, then rewrote it again recently.
• I rewrote my play, The Snake Charmer.
• I rewrote my play, Open - and I'm currently working on another rewrite.
• I did a shit ton of research, getting ready for a new play I'm writing, I Want It.
• I outlined a new play that I'm hoping to finish by the end of the year to apply to the Ojai Playwrights Festival.
• I've applied to a bunch of summer play festivals.

Okay, that's a lot of work.  It doesn't feel like it necessarily, but for a year, that's an incredible amount of output.  The pilot took up a lot of room this year.  But so did the plays, which occupied my summer.  Then the research for I Want It took up two months.  I'm only pausing on it because I have more rewrites of other projects that came up and I want to do more research.  I also realized that I can use it to apply for a Sloan grant.

I just have to keep going.  This new play I'm giving myself two months to write, but in the meantime I have to finish new rewrites of Open and possibly The Snake Charmer (although that's slightly less important to me right now).  I want to get the new play done.  I have a strong idea I feel good about.  That means I also have a new play in 2014 I'll be working on for a New Play Reading Festival I try to take part in as often as I can (I took this year off).  It's just about getting as much done as possible.

I thought this year was going to be the Year of the Rewrite for me, and in a lot of ways, it was.  So I didn't expect to come up with a whole new idea for a new play about the priesthood.  Then I had an idea for a seven play cycle that I will be halfway done with in 2014 if I finish drafts of the three new plays I have ideas for.  One is I Want It and another is a play about growing up near Hollywood in the 1980s.  It surprised me that three new play ideas popped out of me this year.  I might get to one of them before the year is up, but I'm always letting ideas incubate for at least a year while I write other things.

I'm just grateful that I still have things I want to write about.  That's truly thrilling.  Writing occupies most of my time because even if I'm not physically writing new scripts, I'm researching them or I'm writing new blog posts.  Every day I write.  Every single day.  And it's building up an energy in me that continues to grow.  I'm gearing up for something.  I have no idea what it is, but something is coming.

Eight more weeks...keep pushing!