Meaningless milestones and itinerant playwrights
Playwrights Nicholas Wardigo, Lindsay Harris-Friel, and Alex Dremann.
Another milestone! I hit 85,000 words on my new novel, The Lost City of the Metal Men, which officially makes it the longest thing I have ever written. I don’t know if that means anything to a non-writer, but I was proud enough to pour myself a martini on Wednesday night to celebrate. There was also feta cheese involved, because I really enjoy briny things with vodka.
Yesterday, I holed up in my favorite coffee shop (Hothouse Coffee, in Bryn Mawr) and began the penultimate chapter, which is the climax of the whole novel. I got there early, bought my croissant and latte, scored the prime table in the front window, prepped myself for an exciting morning of robot battles with machine guns, and my protagonist decided to tell a story. Of course. Because you can’t launch into a nail-biting firefight without putting it in context. I’ll probably end up keeping most of it, because it is pretty good and rather insightful into the character, but I find it funny how Nifty has evolved from messing with her colleagues to messing with her author.
In more social news, I managed to steal away into the city for an evening of catching up with fellow playwrights Lindsay Harris-Friel and Alex Dremann. I don’t see nearly enough of those guys. Lindsay is embarking on the second season of her pod-series, Jarnsaxa Rising. Sounds like it’s still in the development phase with rounding up the actors from the first season and whatnot, but it’s cool to hear she’s still working on it.
Alex, the maestro of short-short plays, is seeing a bunch of his produced in Seoul, South Korea, this summer. To celebrate, the country is hosting a number of physical challenges this winter. Say what you want about the Koreans; they take their theater seriously.