Let me start by saying that I have nothing against National Playwriting Month. I think it’s a fine endeavor, and if it inspires people to be more creative, that’s fantastic.
For those who aren’t familiar with the concept, this is the deal: over the course of the month of November, you draft a new play, start to finish, in the virtual company of other playwrights who are ostensibly doing the same thing. Sounds nice, no? I’d almost be willing to join in myself, except for one little thing:
I’ve never in my entire life written an entire draft in just one month, and I probably never will.
The closest I’ve come, in fact, was the first draft of LET X, which I wrote in six weeks. It came out of me lightning-quick, which is probably the only way I could have scripted such a tightly-woven narrative; if I’d stopped to think about what I was doing, I’d probably have suffered from analysis paralysis and never written the thing at all. Still: six weeks. Not a month, but a month and a half, and it came at a point in my life during which I was looking for reasons to avoid being at home and sequester myself at the coffee shop I wrote in. I could never do the same thing now: not with a wife and family who capture my attention so readily and happily.
Let’s break down the challenge, shall we? 30 days of writing. At three pages a day, you’d end up with a solid 90-page script in a month. But no veteran playwright works every day, right? I know I don’t; I take weekends off. (Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that I take two days off a week, and sometimes those days are Saturday and Sunday.) That leaves me with (realistically) 20 or so days in the month during which to write. To get to a 90-page script during the month of November, then, I would need to produce 4.5 pages a day.
4.5 pages a day? In any given month, I might get one or two days that productive, period—if I’m lucky. There are also dry stretches during which I never get more than a page or two at most in any given day. And I’m somebody who’s incredibly disciplined. I write all the time, almost every day. I’m at 26 pages in the play I’m currently working on. I could start on page 27 tomorrow and I still wouldn’t finish by the end of November.
So… the task seems impossible to me. I must also admit that it seems unlikely to produce good work as well.
I once knew a playwright who told me she wrote an entire full-length play in a single weekend. My immediate response, which I did not share, is that it had to be crap: nothing good gets written that quickly. While my position on this matter might be a bit more nuanced now—I’m certain there are playwrights of quality who draft more quickly than I do—I remain certain that hyper-speed is not the right pace at which to create a well-honed script.
My former non-fiction professor Joseph Epstein once told me that if I wrote 250 words a day, by the end of a year I’d have a draft of a book. 250 words is approximately two paragraphs, maybe three; it’s one page of writing. That’s the most, he suggested—and I completely concur—that anyone can expect to produce and still be adhering to standards of quality. He was speaking about non-fiction, of course, but I believe the same principle applies to drama. For my mind, I’d set the goal at two pages of dialogue per day… one of which is likely, in the fullness of time, to be cut. At that pace, three months for a first draft makes a great deal more sense.
So it’s a bit misleading to think that at the end of November, one might have a polished piece, and I don’t want young playwrights to assume it’s possible. To be fair, that’s not what the folks holding the event are claiming. They tweeted as much to me the day the event started. They understand the need to refine the first draft for some time after the month is over…
… which makes me wonder why they don’t just plan, say, a six-month event instead? Or better yet, a yearlong event! A month to research, three months to draft, three months to revise, a month to let it go and forget it, a week to hold a reading, two more months to revise, a week-long workshop and reading, a few weeks of vacation here and there, and three weeks to recover at the end of the year. That would be an event that would make sense to me—an event that would resemble the pace I typically keep, and that I think young writers should be encouraged to keep as well.
Having said all that, I don’t want to just be the grumpy Gus I almost certainly sound like. I really am happy for anyone with the focus and stamina to knock out a draft of a play in a month. Go get ’em, folks. The world absolutely needs more stories, not fewer—so go make ’em!
Aside from my own drafting pace–which we’ve tweeted about–I like the sprint of the month. Not because it’ll be a polished draft, not because it’s a finished piece, but because the sitting down and banging it out is the hardest part of what we do. It’s much easier to go back and revise. And researching and outlining, I could do that forever. Putting the actual dialogue to paper, that’s the trick.
A six-month event is too long a span of time to comprehend, let alone a year. There’s no time pressure. It’s too easy to lose track, to let other things distract you. The rest of your plan assumes the writer has a group ready to workshop and read–many of us do, yes, and it’s possible to pull a group together, but for most young playwrights, is it going to be a loose group of people or a tightly focused workshop with a director they can trust?
Yes, it’s a great outline for the full process from start to finish, with a polished stage-ready piece at the end. And yes, young writers should listen and plan accordingly. But a sprint can be a good thing, too, even if only for shaking out the limbs, loosening the joints and kicking up ideas. Think of it as free writing that might lead somewhere…
You know… I think you’re right. Free writing that might lead somewhere is the right way to think about it. I’m just wary of the program inculcating in young playwrights the sense that a real play usually gets written in that amount of time, start to finish. It doesn’t, period.
As for whether my six-month (or yearlong) event would work… why not? People sign up for marathons and 5Ks…
I’m all for sprint-writing, because for me, it’s far easier to edit a draft than it is to finish the draft in the first place. I’ve written about six plays, and each play that I wrote I started and finished in a matter of days. Then I’d spend six months editing, revising and rewriting. The first draft got it all down on paper, and the subsequent drafts smoothed it out and refined it.
If I were to analyze every word I wrote as I wrote it, I would never, ever finish. I would second guess everything, start over a hundred times, and never finish.
Gotta do a fast first draft, then once it’s finished, the looming distance required to produce the final draft doesn’t seem so far.
You’re the one writer I’ve decided to cheer on this month, sans reservation. Get that thing!
Hi Gwydion:
I think you have good points, but I’m curious. Where on our site are we telling playwrights (young, etc) that they’ll have a polished, solid play by the end of November? I’m not trying to start an argument. I genuinely want to know – because that isn’t the intention of Naplwrimo. And if there’s a message on our site that contradicts that statement, please point it out so it can be corrected.
Cheers,
Elizabeth Spreen
Program Director, Naplwrimo
Okay, so, first of all: thank you for responding, and for doing so with generosity.
I’ve taken another look at your site — this time without my Grumpy Gus glasses on — and I agree that you aren’t sending that message anywhere. My apologies, sincerely, for suggesting that you are.
I think I went into the whole thing with the assumption that only a new (and thus young — which is also incorrect) playwright would need the kick-in-the-pants inspiration you’re offering. I see now that I’m wrong. Heck, there are comments here from two colleagues who find appeal in what you’re doing, and I trust them both.
In other words: ignore me. 🙂
Though perhaps I might suggest making it clearer, on your site, that the month-long burst is only a way to get started… and that a great deal more effort is required to get from what you’ll end up with to a production-ready script.
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