|
Categories: all aviation bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater Mon, 30 Nov 2009Normally, in November, I would be feverishly typing away on a novel. For instance, in 2006, I came up with my first novel, Troublesome Cargo. The next year, I came up with my favorite long-form project so far, Hybrids. In 2008, I was ridiculously busy, and did NaNoWriMo, but I really phoned it in with The Curious Adventures of Heinrich von Klausheim. Definitely not my best effort. This year, perhaps soured by the effort of 2008, I decided to try something different. My first novel hit the requisite 50,000 word mark in 12 days. My second in 14 days, and it ended up being 85,000 words. Clearly I was capable of the task. So this year, I decided to try writing a play. Enter NaPlWriMo (pronounced "napple-rai-mo"). The goal is similar to that of NaNoWriMo: write X amount of text in 30 days. Since a play is obviously different from a novel, the requrement is different too. Instead of writing to 50,000 words, the goal is 75 pages of 12 point Courier text. I started out much like I had with Hybrids (where I decided to see if I could write a story based simply on a word I'd heard on the news one day: "hybrids"): I started with a phrase. Someone mis-pasted the phrase, "Then, she stole my jacket and cell phone" into an IRC channel (online chat room sorta thing) I frequent. I liked the phrase, and thought I'd try writing a play around it. I was in no rush, unlike with the novel attempts in the past, because I had clearly demonstrated my ability to be a wordy firehose, and 75 pages didn't honestly look like a very daunting goal. So I tried to get my mind worked around the unique limitations of writing for the stage: limited locations, limited characters, nothing too outlandish and hard to stage. Doubtless experienced playwrights would have something to say on this kind of self-limitation, and I'd be interested to hear it, but that's how I handled things. The effort ended up taking 25 days to finish, which included at least three days on which I didn't write at all, and a few days where I made only a token attempt at getting any writing done. It was finished on the train down to Portland to hang out with my family for Thanksgiving. Today, I finished a first-pass edit to clean up obvious inconsistencies, giving me a fairly readable and not too unbearable 77 page play. I still haven't come up with a title yet, so I've just been calling it NaPlWriMo 2009. Click here to download the PDF of NaPlWriMo 2009 The play ended up being centered around time travel, and the enforcement of time travel regulations, based on a universe where timelines split every time a decision is made. It's an interesting exploration for me, and notably, I finally feel like I had some success creating believably unique characters. Previously, I've always felt like every character in a book was more or less myself with something added or subtracted. Whether my "believably unique" characters have anything more than a paper-thickness of depth to them is a completely different question, but I'll take progress where I can get it. Bret Fetzer, Artistic Director of Annex Theatre, made some (perhaps half-joking) motions about wanting to do a reading of it, and I've been considering talking to him about it. We'll see what happens. Maybe we'll see Nigel and crew on stage at some point in the future. Of course, because I finished in the allotted time, I am allowed to post this striking graphic on my blaggs: 
I iz a winnar! If you find yourself with constructive feedback regarding my latest foray into literary endeavors, please feel free to email or comment on FB, where this will end up in an hour or two. Hooray for creativity! Posted at 16:52 permanent link category: /misc Thu, 12 Nov 2009I have taken a few random pictures in the last couple of weeks, and thought I'd share them here.
This is a flower that was mysteriously growing out of a planter box on my deck. The weird thing is that it was blooming and happy in 50 degrees and rain in early November.
This is the Aurora Bridge, as seen from the Fremont Bridge. I was riding on my way to the theater, and this image was too good to pass up. It was taken at twilight, and was pretty stunning in the half-light. Finally, if you're in Seattle and want to see some of my photography "for real" instead of on a screen, I'll be putting up a gallery show at Annex Theatre, which will open November 27th, the day after Thanksgiving. Some of the pictures from this set of photos will be up on the walls. Come see a show, see the photos, and have a drink! We'll have three shows a night during this time, Fridays and Saturdays, including Penguins, Episode 1, in case you missed it the first time around. Posted at 11:25 permanent link category: /misc Mon, 09 Nov 2009Just in case you've always wanted to know how much power a well set up (but largely unmodified) 1972 Honda CL175 makes, have I got a treat for you! I took my racebike to the dyno at Ducati Seattle this weekend, and did a few pulls on the dyno. I wanted to get a snapshot of how the engine is behaving before I go tearing into it this winter to clean a few things up. Specifically, the cam is getting timed, and the head/cylinder interface at least is getting cleaned up, if not actually decked a few thousandths. I'm undecided on decking the head, because that will involve a whole bunch more work vs. just timing the cam. Fortunately, I have the CL175 streetbike (which is even now getting a teardown and rebuild) as a test-bed for engine changes. I'm looking forward to some fun this winter. Posted at 14:41 permanent link category: /motorcycle Mon, 02 Nov 2009That is, National Play Writing Month. I've decided this year that rather than write another novel, I'd try a new challenge, and write a play. I've been doing a lot of theater lately, so it seems like a fairly logical match. If you'd like to follow along, hit up the script and hit reload every day to see the progress I've made. The goal is to write 75 pages in 30 days. I'm already at 13+ pages in two days, so as with novels, I don't think the volume of output is going to be my challenge. Writing with the stage in mind is curiously constraining, but also a very interesting challenge. The play got off to a rocky start so far, but seems to have settled down nicely. Where it goes from here is definitely anybody's guess. Posted at 23:43 permanent link category: /misc Categories: all aviation gadgets misc motorcycle theater Written by Ian Johnston. Software is Blosxom. Questions? Please mail me at reaper at obairlann dot net. |
