Ben Crowder

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.

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.