I finished my entry for this radio competition. It's a short story. I opted for fiction because I wanted to challenge myself. I still have time to try to write a monologue for the other category. I have until tomorrow to send out the entries. I guess I'd better stop procrastinating and get to it. Smaller projects are way easier to finish than big ones; if only I could figure out a way to reasonably view larger projects in bite-sized pieces.
June 2004 Archives
I dropped off copies of Mystery of the Frozen Brains to the students at Lymburn School. Much thanks to the great teacher-librarian, Laurie, for handling all the administrative work on top of her regular duties. She was brilliant. I'm sure the books caused a lot of chaos, but she handled it all with calm and poise. I'm in her debt.
The students were great. They all said hi. Some read the book and told me they enjoyed it. I was tickled to find out that one of the teachers was headed to France with the books as gifts for relatives. I can say that my book has gone to France now. Why do my things travel to cooler places than me?
I'm heading off to Vancouver next week for the taping of my CBC Radio Drama, The Gift, which is based on the true story of how my mother got out of China. The story is pretty powerful, and I hope I did it justice with the half hour drama.
Working for radio is pretty fun. The weird thing that I have to wrap my head around is that people can't see the action, so I have to find ways to indicate physical action through sound and dialogue. However, I can't be obvious with lines like "What are you doing over there with that match?" I've been rapped on the wrists a couple of times for doing radio for the thinking impaired. I just have to do a polish on the script and then the taping happens. I'm looking forward to meeting the actors and hearing this piece come together. It's the one that probably means most to my mom. I'm just sad that she doesn't speak English well enough to understand it.
I don't know when the show will air, but when I find out, I'll post it on the site.
I've been thinking about what to write as my follow up novel. My publisher asked me to submit at least a title and synopsis by the end of July. I hope to clear out time to write the manuscript in the month of July and August.
I think I have the starting image. I have the idea of the main character basically freaking out because he's playing goalie with minimal protection in a game of street hockey. He's worried that the rolled up UFO magazines wrapped around his shins aren't going to be hard enough to protec him. He wonders if he'll be able to deflect the hard rubber ball with the skinny hockey stick he's been given or catch the blazing thing with a ratty baseball mitt.
These are the things that went through my head when I had to play in net in the street hockey games. It's an action type of start and makes the audience sympathetic to the hero of the story. Now I just have to figure out where the story will go from there.
I just finished another day with my writing partner, Bob. We finished another song today. It was a tough slog today, because Bob had a cold and I wasn't feeling up to snuff. We talked through the second act and discussed where the songs needed to go, then we wrote one song. Well, I talked about what the song needed to do and what information needed to come out and he came up with the lyrics and music. I think I might have contributed one line to the song.
I don't think Bob minds. He's the one who has all the knowledge and expertise about songwriting. I'm the one who has all the information about the play. As long as I can clearly communicate that information to him, we're okay. Although, I imagine if someone had a camera on me during the sessions, it would be pretty funny watching me try to come up with rhymes. I look like I'm in grade one and learning the alphabet for the first time.
I went to read at another one of my old schools in Morinville. This time it was G.P. Vanier, which was a junior/senior high when I went to school, but now is a K - 5 school. As I drove up to the building, I spotted the old cemetery, which was the bane of my existence when I was a kid. Our first home was just across the street from the graveyard and I would sleep with my back to the wall and one eye open, afraid the dead would come get me.
I told this story at the reading and it started to dawn on me what the idea for the second novel might be. I think I might do something with my childhood paranoia about cemeteries. I'll have to do some thinking about this one.
Anyway, the readings were for grades 4 and 5, and they both went off very well. I got lots of great questions, including one girl who seemed genuinely interested in becoming a writer. I had a great time with the students at Vanier and I hope they enjoyed the reading.
I'm trying to keep a journal of the writing process of my Fringe play Repose. Today, I picked away at the revisions and got stumped. I'm trying to figure out the seduction scene between Manet and Gonzales. There's something lopsided about the scene. I think Manet is controlling the scene, but Gonzales is not doing anything for me. She's coming across as Mrs. Brady--a lot of innocuous reactions and dumb questions.
I think I've got to figure out what she wants in the scene. I know she has a crush on Manet and he's opening the door for her to express her feelings. Maybe she needs to be a little bolder in the scene. I'll try again tomorrow to crack the nut of the scene. When I do, I should be able to fly through the next 10 pages. But right now, I've slowed down to a crawl.
