One of the strangest things about these month long writing challenges like NaNoWriMo and Script Frenzy is how, at the end of the month, you find yourself simultaneously completely sick of it and keen to get your normal life back and a little sad to see it go. There’s that feeling of relief from being finished while you still miss the frenzy of all that writing. You’re sick of doing all that work but once you get your normal life back, you wonder what you ever did with all this free time.

Screnzy 2012 was a weird one for me. I was still rather sick for the first half of it so the only writing I did was at write-ins until mid-month. This was also a very busy month at my “day job” and I was burnt out and exhausted from several all nighters in the midst of what should have been my most productive writing time. But you’ll notice that, whining aside, I still finished with over 100 pages. My final count was 131. But it was… unsatisfying because I didn’t get to do what I set out to do.

The thing that really messed me up this year was the fact that I attempted to be a rebel. See, my original plan for Screnzy was… Continue Reading »

So, my failing health aside, you wonder, how are things? I haven’t written a personal post in a while because, frankly, I’ve been mostly miserable and who wants to hear me whine? Nobody. But you know I’m sick so there’s no point on dwelling on that. What else is going on, you wonder? Continue Reading »

Over the summer, I took a playwriting class. One week, for our assignment, I handed in a scene from The Muppet Play which happens to take place in a subway car. The instructor praised this scene as being an unusual setting, one you didn’t often see in plays, which made me insanely self-conscious. Not because I can’t take praise but instead because…

I realized as he said it that have never written a play for adults that DOESN’T have at least one scene that takes place in a subway. In fact, the entire play of Daddy Issues takes play on a subway platform. There even was a subway scene in TheLibrary before I self-consciously cut it out after noticing my apparent obsession with subways on stage.

Why am I seemingly incapable of not writing subways into my adult stage plays? OK, I did work in New York for many years and commute via subway every day but I also took a bus everyday and I haven’t had the urge to add buses into any of my plays.

Then I noticed something else… The two short stories for adults I’ve outlined recently? Both have subways, one featuring subway cars in a very major role.

But of all the YA novels, short stories and plays I have in various states of finished… there is only one subway and it’s really more of an underground train station, not NYC type subway like the others. My YA is mostly subway free, even the ones that take place in cities.

What the heck? What is going on in my subconscious that content for adults = subways. Is it because I commuted via subway for my first real adult job and I associate it with being an adult? Is it some NYC centric world view that everyone commutes to work via subway train? Is it symbolic of my relationship with rats? What?

I give you permission to psychoanalyze what is going on in my mind here with the subway obsession. Have you ever noticed an unintentional theme in your writing?

Oh, and today is the last day to grab a free copy of Daddy Issues (aka the subway play to end all subway plays) if you haven’t already. You’ve only got until midnight PST so get on that before the train leaves the station, if you will.