The Starving Playwright

Have you ever had a huge school project, or a paper, or something that you were assigned by someone, that you had to do, and get done, and you tried and tried to do something good, but you hated your own work, and you went a day without working on it, and you felt so guilty, and you had the worst case of writer’s block ever, and you absolutely didn’t know what to do with the piece of junk in the first place?

Well, I have, and it’s not even schoolwork. Allow me to tell you about it.

If you’re one of my followers on Tumblr (which right now is only my friend MaKaylah, actually, and I don’t even think she’s reading this), then you might already know about this, but my youth group and I do this talent show every year, and we usually do a human video, but this year, we decided we’d rather do a play. I’m the only person who’s big on writing in my youth group, that I know of, and I also volunteered my services, so I’ve been selected by my pastor to write a play. Now, this is my first time trying to write a play, or at least, more than three or four pages of a play, and so I really have no idea how this is going to go. I got the official assignment last Sunday, and my youth pastor has very high expectations. He wants it to be humorous, but also tug at the heartstrings, and to have a theme of resurrection, and to feature true stories of the struggles of kids in the youth group, and alos to maybe have some songs and dances…It seems like he thinks I’m an amalgamation of Stephen Sondheim, Rodgers and Hammerstein, and Shakespeare, which, for the record, I’m not.

So far, I’ve written two whole scenes, and I’m working on the third one. I have maybe the worst case of writer’s block that I’ve ever had in my life, and I keep reading it and thinking, “Oh, this is so cheesy,” and “Oh my gosh, none of the kids are going to want to act in this,” and things like that. Allow me to state the obvious and say that writing is hard. Also, writing a play is much more difficult than I had expected. I suppose it comes naturally to some, but I’m more used to writing in basic prose, or in epistolary form. However, I do enjoy the challenge, and like I said in my last post, I do have a great story idea that I think would work better in the form of a play than in a novel… I suppose I’ll consider this as preparation for the future.

Oh, and I’ve forgotten to mention that I read The Hobbit shortly before Christmas break ended, and so, I’ve begun the semester with 125 extra credit points in my Lewis/Tolkien seminar. I was very disappointed in three aspects of the ending…cough…if all you Thorin/Fili/Kili fans get what I mean… L

Jessie and Kili forever!  Or, if you’re a Twitter addict, who doesn’t mind using hashtags outside of Twitter, #jessieandkiliforever.

 ~ Jess ~