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The August update

2 Aug 2008 at 7:58 am
Categories: Blank Slate, New Play Project, Plays, Writing

We’re in the middle of the run of Long Ago & Far Away, and it’s going quite well. (Last night’s Tree of Blood per­for­mance was head and shoul­ders above the last four per­for­mances, in fact. And Repeat­ing His­tory is prov­ing to be one of the audi­ence favorites.) Three more shows — two today and one Monday.

Monday also hap­pens to be the sub­mis­sion dead­line for the next set of New Play Project plays, Fire and Rain. Orig­i­nally I’d hoped to submit four plays, but now it’s look­ing like it’ll be two, with a small chance that I’ll finish a third one in time. The first is called Six­teen Stones and is about the brother of Jared, taking place around Ether 2–3. I’ve got ten pages writ­ten so far and just have to write the middle scene and it’ll be done (done as in first draft done, which is about all I can hope for con­sid­er­ing my time con­straints). The second is ten­ta­tively titled Miss­ing and is about a wheelchair-​bound mother whose three-year-old daugh­ter goes miss­ing in the woods. And the third is a comedy about four mis­sion­ar­ies, called Scram­bled Eggs. (I’ve got two or three pages of it writ­ten so far.)

Other than that, I’ve got a rather big project coming up in the near future, and I think within a week or two I’ll be able to announce it. This is the one that’s been con­sum­ing a lot of my time for the past month and a half. It’s the one I’m most excited about, too.

Oh, I’ll also be start­ing up a new blog in the next month or two — when­ever I find time to design it — and as a result this blog will change slightly, repur­pos­ing itself to fit into the new scheme of things. More on that once the new blog’s up.

The July update

9 Jul 2008 at 9:31 pm
Categories: Blank Slate, Directing, Film, New Play Project, Novels, Plays, Unbindery, Web Design, Writing

Over the past month, I’ve been revis­ing Tree of Blood a lot. (Ten or eleven times, to be exact.) After sev­eral revi­sions I real­ized that I’d writ­ten myself into sev­eral plot knots, pri­mar­ily because I’d been adding in all sorts of back­story with­out step­ping out to make sure it still made sense as a whole. And so I stopped myself. I wrote an out­line for the whole play, then went back and rewrote it from scratch, and after a few tweaks here and there, it’s notice­ably better. Still creepy, but with­out all the con­fus­ing holes in the plot. :) We’re in the middle of rehearsals at the moment and will be per­form­ing in a mere two weeks. Egads!

And I’m not assis­tant direct­ing any­more, by the way. I’m direct­ing. Yup, I don’t have all that much expe­ri­ence under my belt (assis­tant direct­ing a single forty-​five minute play and writ­ing four of my own plays, plus watch­ing lots of plays and movies over the course of my life :P), but I’m now the direc­tor of James Goldberg’s play Repeat­ing His­tory. It’s a good training-​wheel play, since it’s only three pages long. But it’s got its own chal­lenges, too — the bulk of the play is effec­tively a Pow­er­point pre­sen­ta­tion, for exam­ple. There’s only one char­ac­ter (well, there’s sort of a second char­ac­ter, but she only has two lines and she’s not onstage). And the play has a lot of his­tor­i­cal allu­sions that most people prob­a­bly aren’t going to get, because we’ve all for­got­ten almost every­thing we learned in U.S. History.

In other news, I’ve got a few new projects lining up. First, I really want to get back into writ­ing novels, so I’ve decided to aim at 1,000 words a day (which, as I learned from my NaNoW­riMo expe­ri­ence, should be a piece of cake) and I’ve started out­lin­ing the one I’ll focus on for the next few months.

Second, almost every time I watch a movie I want to start writ­ing screen­plays, so I’ve decided to finally start doing it. I’ll prob­a­bly start out with short films because, well, they’re shorter. :) And they’re sim­i­lar to short plays, which I’ve got a decent amount of expe­ri­ence with.

Third, I’m writ­ing some TV scripts for a demo for this new tele­vi­sion chan­nel that’ll be start­ing up soon. I don’t know how much I can talk about it yet — prob­a­bly more than this, but I’ll play it safe for now — but it’ll be fun. And regard­less of the fate of the chan­nel, it’ll be a really good learn­ing expe­ri­ence. Besides, who ever thought I’d be writ­ing for TV? Not me. :)

And last but not least, I need to start blog­ging on here more often. Monthly isn’t going to cut it. I’m also itch­ing to redesign the site, but that’ll have to wait for a bit. (I’m cur­rently redesign­ing the New Play Project site. And have been for a while; hope­fully I’ll get it done this weekend.)

Unbindery’s on hold for now.

Long ago and far away

12 Jun 2008 at 5:46 am
Categories: Blank Slate, Directing, New Play Project, Plays, Writing

[Cross-​posted from Top of the Mountains.]

This morn­ing I found out that Tree of Blood did indeed get accepted. :) It’ll be pro­duced as part of New Play Project’s Long Ago and Far Away show (seven short plays) on July 25–26, 28, August 1–2, 4. Times will most likely be 7:30 pm with 2:30 pm mati­nees on the Sat­ur­days, but I’ll have more solid details later. Audi­tions are ten­ta­tively sched­uled for June 24–25 on BYU campus (and anyone can try out). More on that later as well.

Oh, and I’m going to be assis­tant direct­ing again. I’d thought about pass­ing on that, since it is a bit of a time com­mit­ment, but I need my the­atre fix. :P And it’s a lot of fun to be more involved with the show — play­wrights do par­tic­i­pate, but not nearly as much as directors.

I’m going to try really hard to start writ­ing plays for the next show (Fire and Rain, reli­gious plays) in advance, so that I can submit six or seven. Why? Mainly the OCD. :P No, really, I have tons of ideas for plays — a flood of them — and the more I write, the better I’ll get. And dead­lines make me write. It’s not the sub­mit­ting that mat­ters so much to me (though it feels good to send in a flurry of scripts), it’s the writ­ing. And the get­ting better bit. :)

Tree of blood

5 Jun 2008 at 6:01 am
Categories: Blank Slate, New Play Project, Plays, Writing

[Cross-​posted from Top of the Mountains.]

There were enough good sub­mis­sions to the New Play Project Long Ago and Far Away set that they’ve added an extra round of finals, and my play Tree of Blood is one of the nine final­ists. Phew. :) We have till Tues­day night to revise our plays and make them the best that they can be; Wednes­day night the script selec­tion com­mit­tee will choose the final scripts.

Revi­sion is easier when you have third-​party per­spec­tives — a fresh eye and all — and so I’m look­ing for people who’d like to read the script and give me feed­back. (It doesn’t have to be detailed, really — just what you liked and what you didn’t like.) If any of you are inter­ested, email me (ben dot crow­der at gmail) and I’ll send you the script.

Long ago and far away is closer

3 Jun 2008 at 11:14 pm
Categories: Blank Slate, Directing, New Play Project, Plays, Writing

I sub­mit­ted three plays to this next New Play Project set, Long Ago and Far Away. (The plays are Tree of Blood, Rhymetime, and Do Not Pass Go, in case you were won­der­ing. Which you prob­a­bly weren’t. :)) And I’ve also cast my lot in to assis­tant direct some­thing again. Part of me is won­der­ing why on earth I did that — do I really have time for it? — but I couldn’t help myself. I need my the­atre fix. :)

I also need to start going to bed ear­lier. I meant to write seven plays way in advance for this set, but that didn’t happen. In fact, I really didn’t even get around to most of the work until today. (I rewrote Tree of Blood from scratch both this morn­ing and this after­noon, got the idea for Rhymetime four hours ago and started writ­ing it then, and revised Do Not Pass Go in about an hour. Barely made the dead­line (sort of).)

Starting the unbinding

29 May 2008 at 10:05 pm
Categories: Blank Slate, Digitization, Unbindery, Web Design

I’ve finally started work in earnest on Unbindery. After sev­eral false starts on the look, I came up with this, which I like:

Unbindery

I also wrote the login system this after­noon. Devel­op­ment is going a little slower than I’d hoped, but it’s still not bad. I expect to have a pro­to­type up and run­ning within a few days (assum­ing I put in the time, that is; I’m also trying to finish those plays for the “Long Ago and Far Away” NPP set, so time is limited).

Since it’s been a while, I sup­pose I ought to men­tion what Unbindery actu­ally is. :) In a nut­shell, it’s a book dig­i­ti­za­tion web app — you see an image of a page on your screen and you type in what it says. (I’m also plan­ning to use it for OCR cleanup.) It’s effec­tively the same sort of thing as Dis­trib­uted Proof­read­ers, except that I’m trying to create a more aes­thetic and fun user expe­ri­ence. Some­thing more modern and not so 90s. :) I’m also trying to make it easier to pro­duce non-​English texts (like Thai).

Anyway, I’ll announce when the prototype’s up, and everyone’s wel­come to try it out — I want all the feed­back I can get.

Inconsequential fixations

29 May 2008 at 6:55 am
Categories: Blank Slate, Plays, Productivity, Writing

From the 37signals post Worka­holics fixate on incon­se­quen­tial details:

Good advice for anyone who wants to be more effi­cient: When you’re sweat­ing for hours over a tiny detail, stop and ask your­self, “Is this really worth the amount of time I’m spend­ing on it?” If not, declare “good enough” and move on.

The per­fec­tion­ist in me ini­tially cried out, “No! You can’t just skim over the details like that!” But he’s right. It’s not a call for medi­oc­rity. It’s a real­ity check.

I’ve been think­ing about this in regard to my play­writ­ing, for exam­ple. Say I write a play. I could revise it ad infini­tum, and osten­si­bly it should get better over time, yes. (Though too much tin­ker­ing can be a hazard.) But is it worth it to keep revis­ing? Some revi­sion, yes. But there’s a point at which it no longer becomes worth the time I’m putting into it, and then it’s best to move on and write some­thing new. You learn not only from pol­ish­ing your cur­rent bit of work, but also from start­ing the next one. And the next one. And the next one.

The house of usher

19 May 2008 at 11:24 pm
Categories: Blank Slate, Graphic Design, New Play Project, Plays, Web Design, Writing

This’ll be quick because it’s late and I’m tired. I’ve been help­ing out with ush­er­ing and the box office/concessions booth for New Play Project’s pro­duc­tion of Swal­low the Sun. You know, box office is a lot of fun. And I didn’t even expect to like it as much as I do. :)

During the show I man both the box office and con­ces­sion booth, which basi­cally means two hours of dead time because everyone’s up watch­ing the show. And so I’ve been work­ing on some plays to submit to the next New Play Project fes­ti­val, “Long Ago and Far Away.” As I’m wont to do, in fact, I’ve gone a bit over­board and have seven plays that I plan to finish and submit by the dead­line (June 3). Yeah, I should prob­a­bly just focus on three or so and make them really good, but almost all of the seven ideas are com­pelling and I really want to see them come to life. So we’ll see. Time con­straints will end up affect­ing how many actu­ally get writ­ten, of course. :)

And finally, I’ve been slowly work­ing on redesign­ing the New Play Project web­site using MODx, but I real­ized tonight that I really ought to just switch over to Word­Press. I’ve got far more expe­ri­ence with Word­Press, it’s a more pop­u­lar plat­form, and it’s focused on blog­ging which is just what we need. (With MODx I would have had to write my own blog­ging system. Rein­vent­ing the wheel. Point­less.) I need to get approval on switch­ing to WP 2.5, but I’m pretty sure that won’t be a problem.

In other news, I’m jug­gling a hand­ful of small free­lance design projects (book covers and brochures and such), read­ing the first book of the Bar­ti­maeus tril­ogy (loving it, too), and con­sis­tently get­ting to bed later than I’d like. :)

Spring ward directory

13 May 2008 at 9:58 pm
Categories: Blank Slate, Graphic Design, LDS

I’m not doing such a good job at updat­ing this fre­quently, am I. Lately I’ve been in more of a design mood than a writ­ing mood, with the cur­rent project on the burner being our ward direc­tory. I used the old look for a solid year, and while there’s no real reason I had to change it, I did want to freshen things up a bit. This new design (no screen­shots yet, I’m afraid) uses a circle motif and feels a bit lighter — which is good, since it’s for spring/summer. I’m hoping to have the whole thing done within a week.

Night and day

3 May 2008 at 12:40 pm
Categories: Blank Slate, Painting, Photoshop

Got the urge to start paint­ing again, so I did this in Photoshop:

Night and Day

For some obscure reason, paint­ing smoke is really, really fun. :)

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