A New Writing Experience

Surprise, Mary!  Mary is one of my most faithful readers (she even has an alert on her tablet to let her know when I've added something to this blog) and she hasn't been able to read a new post here for a very long time.  I have lots of excuses (bad) and some reasons (good) why it's been so long since I posted.

One of those reasons makes me very happy because it's added to my word count goal for the year.  I wrote a Christmas play for a teacher I know who was too overwhelmed with unexpected events to write one herself, as she often does.  A thinker I have great respect for came up with the idea for the play and I just developed it and fleshed it out.  I'd never written a play before and also never written for young people ranging in age from five or six to well into their teens.  What joy and relief I felt when not only did that teacher assure me that "it's perfect," but the students were also pleased with it.

And now, with any kind of weather luck in the middle of December, I'll get to travel to the one-room school house on a western Manitoba Hutterite colony to watch the production as staged by the children of that school.  I have certain pictures that were in my mind when I wrote (and revised compulsively) and it will be exciting to see how the teacher and her students interpret setting, costuming, pace, and music themes.

I pictured something a little like this, although certainly not as elaborate, as I wrote but took care not to describe the setting in too much detail or tie it to one particular era in history because I didn't want to restrict the teacher or her pupils in their interpretation.  And it was easy for me to picture anything I pleased because I didn't need to worry about actually creating those backdrops.  

Writing the play, titled Hush Little Baby, was a great learning experience for me and much more fun than I expected.  But I'm sure the greatest payoff will be seeing it produced and meeting the actors.