Ben Crowder

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.

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.

[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. :)

[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.

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).)

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

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.

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.

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. :)

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.

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

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