25 April 2009

A thought comes... it's a true feeling, a funny feeling. And I get to develop it.

This weekend, I brought my roommate of two years home to see my town and meet my friends. The whole time, I've been looking at my town the way she might be seeing it now, for the first time.

Honestly, this place is beautiful. Right now, everything is alive, and breathing. The trees -- thousands of different breeds, all dreamed up and grown by a creative God -- are lush and green, the mountains, rolling along below sparkling blue skies, are covered in life. My small town is populated by happy people, full of love, and has so much to offer by way of culture and storytelling. It took me two years attending college in another state to drive 200 miles home again and realize all this.

Anyway, I tell you all this not just to make you jealous and wish you lived in northwestern North Carolina, but to share that I'm desperate to write a story about it all. And I think I'm going to spend my summer doing just that. I'll be living here, and experiencing the story to some degree, at least, so it'll be fairly easy to accurately capture what I'm aiming to. I just want to be sure I record the eccentricities of the customs and lifestyles I've grown up with in the south, without being stereotypical -- because there's nothing commonplace about the way I felt today.

Writing is more fun than performing, because I get to color with words.

Okay. It's been a few days since my joyful, triumphant feeling of success faded from my class on Tuesday, but I'm going to try to record all this with the same factual enthusiasm I felt. After all, I honestly should have blogged sooner. But, well, I didn't, so here we go.

My "production team" in my Theatre Appreciation class had our dress rehearsal and performance earlier this week. We performed the short play I wrote, which, as I looked back to find the link to that post, I realize I haven't mentioned since that very first read-through. Okay. Let me backtrack even further.

Our team met at least once a week outside class since that first read-through, slowly working on character development and line memorization. I was constantly impressed by how natural the lines I had written were, especially when I thought back on how effortless it all was. The lines I'd written, spoken by these amateur actors, were actually believable! We were witty, and hurt, and compassionate when it made sense. It was an awesome process.

So on Tuesday, at class time, we were totally prepared. We'd had a dress rehearsal the night before with our minimal props and our casual, practical costumes, and our lines were smooth and our acting natural. Still, we were nervous. Some of the plays we'd seen in class had been truly miserable to watch, and others were surprisingly well made. And, of course, our group was slated to go last, after three other performances.

But we got out there, in front of our class of 100 other bored students (and all my roommates, who'd come for moral support/to see what the fuss was all about/to get me to shut up), and we were AWESOME. Every line was delivered with perfect ease and fluidity, and the one mishap we experienced was covered up by some smooth improv on the part of one of the actors. We were brilliant. :D

Following our performance was a Q&A session with our professor/the other students. We were all giddy with the thought that we were actually finished, and it had actually gone well after all our preparation, and then -- another surprise -- the audience weren't bored! They had loved everything about our play! Every actor was complimented, they loved our director's choices, and my script -- they adored my script! I couldn't believe it! They'd actually appreciated our simple, emotional play about four people stuck in an elevator together. We didn't try too hard, but we didn't play down our strengths, either. Our professor was extremely impressed.

Afterward, when class was dismissed and we'd taken a group picture in costume, one of the senior students came over to shake my hand (lol) and say how much he enjoyed it. He asked me about my writing process and told me I should definitely consider taking THEA 350 -- the playwriting course. I couldn't believe it, honestly. I couldn't.

Later, Lauryn told me she just knows I'm "going to be famous one day." I never imagined I'd enjoy playwriting -- novels always seemed like my forte. But what if there's something to this? What if all those years of writing plays at Thanksgiving about pilgrims and forcing my siblings to memorize lines and put on a show before dinner in front of our grandparents were actually leading somewhere? What if this is an open door?

11 April 2009

Every accomplishment starts with the decision to try.

I'm really enjoying writing my story excerpts on ashleydoeswritings. It's something to look forward to each night, and a goal to meet. I like goals.

Plus, I've already got a lot of the story planned out, so I promise I'm not wasting your time. Well, I mean, the concept of Viette's story isn't at all original, but it's just practice, right? :]

08 April 2009

The thoughts are there, but they create no reflection in you.

Sorry, I haven't had much to blog about lately. Honestly, I've been very very busy, but there's been no time to write, which means my NaNo-in-April project was the first to go out the window. I'm keeping the files on my desktop, though, which means they'll be there laying down a thick guilt trip every time I choose to Skype and/or watch Buffy with the Vultures to unwind after all my other obligations are out of the way.

I still think in stories, if you were wondering. I just don't quite have the time to record them as I'd like.

//Edit: my answer to this dilemma. http://ashleydoeswritings.blogspot.com/