Going Public

Last night, I went to my friend's housewarming. At the party, I had the pleasure of meeting some of her friends. This was the first time in a while that I was at a party and only knew the host...and everyone else knew each other. So I spent some time introducing myself and, of course, I had to discuss what I am up to.

As I have written before, I am not that coherent when discussing my work or when discussing my plans for the year.

"So, if you don't mind me asking, what is your play about?"

I could feel the jumble of words in my throat. I smiled and said, "Well..."

I tend to complicate things. I would be the sort of person who would write an entry on Wikipedia that would have one of those "this entry is too thorough" alerts. I started writing a summary in my head with themes and allusions included. With character names and the number of pages. And then something clicked in my head. They didn't need all of that and there was a very simple way of explaining the play.

So I smiled again and explained my play in one sentence. Two points for me.

"Please tell me you are submitting," one of her friends said.

"When I get this play to a place I am really proud of, I will," I said, wondering when that will be, hoping it is soon.

"Good! You should!"

I took a deep breath and sighed with relief. I had just managed my first "this is what I am doing, this is what I am writing" conversation without making a complete fool of myself.

The conversation then shifted to other things, allowing me to talk about my other interests. Women's studies. Social work. Education. When driving home, I thought about the conversations that we had. I realized that I want my work as a writer to spawn conversations about feminist issues, about social injustice, about current events, and about history. (I realized that I, eventually, want to start writing about those issues here Eventually. Baby steps. Baby. Steps.)

I'll settle, for now, on writing a good story, creating some good characters, and actually getting my work out into the world.

P.S. A little over a month ago my play was 30 pages. Now it is 96 a-hopefully-interesting-story-with-a hopefully-rich-world-and-hopefully-developed-characters pages.