The Playas and The Paintas

I've been staying busy lately, with different things. Work mostly, but my weekends have been somewhat filled, too. 

For instance, I attended a writing workshop a couple of weeks ago in Gwangju that was put on by the Gwangju Performance Project, the theater group that I'm part of. The workshop was held with the idea of bringing fellow expat writers together to write short one-act plays to submit (anonymously) for consideration for this December's performance. A few different scripts will be chosen, but each will tie together with a common line that we all have to use for our play to even be considered. 

I didn't think I would be able to write a play. I've written things before - short stories, poems, copy, articles - and I've been published multiple times over. But a play? Dialog has always been difficult, and it seems daunting because, in a script, it's got to seem natural yet also move the plot forward. But then I got an idea and just started writing. Well, after running my idea by a few trusted people to see if it was something they'd want to go see. Then I planned it in my head. And then I got the idea down on paper, from start to finish. And then I wrote the first draft. You get the idea - lots of work went into this thing. 

So I'll submit it and hopefully it will be chosen. Maybe I'll share it with you when I find out if it's been chosen or not. Until then, here is something else I'm pretty proud of. It is the result of a writing exercise where we were given a job and had to think of four or five different verbs to describe that job. Then we switched jobs with a partner and had to use that same list of verbs to describe our new job. The goal is to get the writer away from cliche. 

Thomas sat in front of his easel planning his masterpiece. He was having difficulty conceptualizing the idea he had in his mind and transforming it onto the canvas. He picked up his brush, dipped it in a mixture of Blue 3 and Yellow 1, and drew it up. Before setting it to the canvas, he placed it critically back down.