Day 45: Promises

Yesterday I made a couple of promises:  1) to write for an hour every day this week and 2)  to let you know how the first day of that went.  So despite the fact that I am literally falling asleep in front of my computer, here goes.

Last night's session was great.  I got 3.5 pages written, and discovered Frank and his daughter Vivian talking to each other for the first time in a good long while.  Side note -- it's challenging to write a conversation between two people who don't like to talk!  Tonight I continued that conversation, though unfortunately my hour didn't end up being quite a full hour due to the complete and utter lack of sleep I got last night (thank you, neighbor #1, for your car alarm and thank you, neighbor #2 for singing in the hallway at 6am).  But I did discover some important information about Frank and Vivian's relationship, and added another page and a half.

When I first began writing again last night, I was dismayed to realize that my last true writing session on this Frank play was January 30th.  How did a whole month go by?  Between the rewrite of Spirit Dust for the competition submission and the performance of All in the Shuffle  - not to mention life - February disappeared. 

This has made me re-examine another promise I made: to co-produce a collection of short plays with two friends of mine this May.  While I really want to do this, I fear that the energy and copious amounts of time I would need to dedicate to making that happen would not allow me the space and time I need to write this play.  As I mentioned in Day 43, I have been trying so hard to create space in my life to allow room for the things I want in my life.  My top priorities right now are time to teach and time to write my play and this blog.  If I fill up what little space I've created with yet another project,  I fear I will find myself again with months of writing time lost.  With my goal for birthing this play in October, I can scant afford to lose more time.  So I fear I must back out of my promise to my friends, which pains me greatly.  Since they are also writers, I sincerely hope they will understand.