Today I did something I haven’t done in at more than 15 years: I signed up for someone else’s playwriting workshop. This one-day affair was run by a very good friend and former student who confessed to me the other night that she was a little unsettled when she found out I’d signed up for it. (And I had thought she’d be hurt if I didn’t. Which shows why we shouldn’t make assumptions.) I assured her that I just wanted to be “anonymous playwright #7.” “I signed up for your workshop,” I told her, “because I already know what I think and I already know how I write plays, and I’m actually pretty tired of me, so I’d like to be putty in someone else’s hands.”

Which I was, and which I was glad to be. This workshop turned out to be just what I needed to do today:  unwind artistically, using someone else’s methods. It reminded me of fly fishing the first time under the tutelage of my friend the skilled master. And, as you’ll see, I got something else out of this workshop, something I hadn’t expected.

The workshop started in typical fashion for most things: waiting for the people who are late. Which always annoys me. Perhaps in 2009, I’m going to be consistently late so that people can wait for me. I was determined to be as unannoyed as possible by anything all day, so I checked email while pretending to be blase about waiting. (And the last person didn’t arrive until 10:52 — almost a full hour late. Glad we didn’t wait for her.) We got going by introducing ourselves and why we were here. Everyone had their own reasons, none of them far from mine: to change the workout routine. When it came to me, I volunteered that I was writing three plays at the same time and that I think they’re coming along well enough, but that I wanted to do something different for the day to get out of my head.

After a brief intro, we got the first writing prompt, which was: “Write an action. A single action: changing a lightbulb, changing a tire. Step one, step two, step three, step four.” “Plays are about action,” the workshop leader said (and I agree — good ones are, at least). Here was mine:

Starting my car:

Pick up my keys with my right hand. Put them into my pocket for some reason even though I’m going to fish them back out within a minute. (That reason being that I’m still afraid I’m going to drop them down a storm drain as I did once in 1984.) Find the car. If it is parked inside a parking garage, this is easier than ever because for five years and two cars in a row now I’ve made a point of buying a red car, having once lost a common grey-blue colored car in a parking structure in Pittsburgh for no fewer than two hours. Press the button on the key remote to unlock the car. Open the door, clutching those keys tightly so that, again, I don’t drop them onto the street or otherwise lose them. Throw my jacket onto the passenger seat. Get in. Close the door. Insert the key into the ignition. Hear music or the news as it comes on and if George W. Bush is on the news, immediately switch to a CD. Turn the key. Look in the rearview mirror. Look in the side mirror. Put the car into drive. Drive. Think about how much I love this car while driving.

(Just after I finished reading this aloud, that last late-arriving person arrived. Fifty-two minutes late, as I said, and now she had missed hearing what we’d read as well. “I’m so sorry,” she said, seeming not very sorry at all and, in fact, sounding rather casual, as though this were her routine. The way she said “So sorry” sounded like “Sue Sorry.” Later in the day we had a disagreement about what an unreliable narrator is (because, I think, she doesn’t understand the term), and I couldn’t help thinking that she exemplified one: saying she’s sorry when she isn’t.)

In any event, this little piece of unconscious writing clarified for me why I do that odd key thing: picking up the keys, putting them in my pocket, then removing them from the pocket less than a minute later when I’m near the car rather than simply carrying in my hand all along. I knew why I had the red car — to find it and because I like the color red and I like it on that car — but I hadn’t realized I’d internalized the 25-year-old lesson of how not to drop your keys down a storm drain. It’s unfortunate to be reminded just how self-programmed you are.

The next three prompts were drawn randomly over the course of the day from an envelope that the workshop leader had brought. We were to write a scene for each. The first prompt I drew said: “One of the characters is naked.” That stopped me for a few seconds, in which I conjured then rejected these three ideas:

1. My former roommate Gary’s story about a boy they used to call “Puddin’ Pop” who lived across the street and who would run naked into the woods; I couldn’t see what to do with that
2. someone who has been vomited all over and gotten locked into a bathroom while changing; again, it didn’t seem alive with possibility to me, and additionally drew forth in my head an image of Jim Carrey, a surefire creativity killer for me
3. a couple having had sex and the one partner refusing to hand back the clothing of the other; this seemed too close to play I already wrote some time last decade.

And then I had it — something I liked that I could run with. It was a story I’d read long ago about two famous men, one that has lived with me ever since. And so I had great fun writing that scene for about 10 minutes.

We were then told to write a scene while thinking about “compression of time,” i.e., a ticking clock — an imminent deadline that drives the action. I drew the prompt “one of them has a gun.” As soon as I saw it, I realized it could work with the scene I’d already written. So I just kept writing that scene, but now introduced a gun, which took me to a very fun place.

Now we were told to write a monologue. I immediately had a monologue in mind for one of my characters, in which he could pass judgment on the other man to us, without fully realizing his own declining situation. (Which would again provide an opportunity to display unreliable narration.) I drew my last writing prompt, which was “father and daughter” and I remembered that the other character had had a daughter, and so now each of them would have a monologue.

By now, having completely tossed out the instruction to write separate scenes, I realized I was writing a play that I would indeed be writing to completion, I said to the workshop leader, “Damn you. I came here with three plays I’m writing. Now I’m writing four.”

Every one-day writing workshop should work like this.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 13th, 2008 at 10:56 pm and is filed under Thoughts, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.