16
Mar
Weekend Update
0
I outlined the rest of Thrice-Blessed yesterday. I’m excited. I’ve never done a detailed outline before, and to have the rest of the book laid out so clearly in front of me is new and astonishing. It is, of course, subject to change, if I get to a certain point and realize my characters wouldn’t do X or Y. But it’s nice to have it there. I got a little stuck in the swampy middle of this book. I’d come to the end of a chapter and peer out into the unknown and be scared that the alligators might eat me if I set a foot wrong. It’s heartening to know that I have all my little signposts to guide me, all the major conversations and conflicts set up for the second half of the book. And according to my outline, I am 57% finished with this draft!
I also had a brainchild last Thursday on the way to meet the lovely Diana Peterfreund for drinks. Perhaps her genius is catching? I got to hear about her new sekrit project and I’m super-excited for the day I can read it. I was thinking about my magic cupcake Valentine’s Day love book–which I started writing last spring and got 50 pages into only to kind of…lose interest. It was about family and divorce and wanting to be special and it involved a bakery and unrequited love and I like all those things. But something about it wasn’t working. I was also thinking about a play I wrote in college called Quasi-Girl, and somehow the two twined together, and I had a total eureka moment. Basically, if I fused the two of them together, I think it could be awesome. But between writing Thrice and revising Garolass, I do not know when this will happen. Someday, I hope. In the meantime, I took notes!
In other exciting news, the brilliant playwright husband worked all fall with a group of high school students at Imagination Stage in Bethesda. They collaborated and wrote a play together, and this weekend the play was performed. I saw the show on Friday and I was seriously impressed. I knew the script would be good but I was expecting the performance might be a bit painful. It wasn’t. It was certainly better than any of my own high school productions–clever and thoughtful (the theme was healing and expressing grief). The kids showed so much enthusiasm and quite a bit of talent. Steve was so proud of them, and I was so proud of him. It was his first time teaching and they’ve offered him the position again next year. Now, on to the next production! He’s got three staged readings, two twenty-four hour plays, and two CapFringe shows going on, plus a commission to write, in the next four months. I fear I may be widowed by the theatre for awhile.
But that’s okay. I wrote my first fictional marriage proposal this weekend. I hope it’s appropriately swoony. There’s a rose garden and a grey day and an unintended confession.
Speaking of grey days, I hear that it’s supposed to be sunny and 65 later this week. I. Can’t. Wait.
