There isn't any wasted. . .

time in writing, I don't think, unless the writing is designed to hurt someone who doesn't deserve it or to do some kind of pointless harm.  I have two completed YA novels, the untitled mystery I mentioned yesterday and another which I'm currently calling A DIFFERENT KIND OF AUTUMN.  These two lengthy stories will probably never go anywhere but my bottom drawer, but they had an important purpose.  They clarified in my mind a place, the fictional town of Hampton, where I have gone back to time and time again in my writing.  The mystery provided two characters, Sandra and Melissa, who became important in TISHA AND THE GIANT.  A DIFFERENT KIND OF  AUTUMN introduced Pete and Maggie, who became peripheral characters in TISHA, and occupy their own partially finished novel MAGGIE AND THE GHOSTIES.  Hampton also became the setting for my play THE NEW HAMPTON SOCCER WARS and Tisha, Becky, Martha, Katrina, and some others from the play became the main characters in TISHA AND THE GIANT.

Equally important is the sense of a place that I have for Hampton.  I know its houses and streets, churches and schools, parks and fields, and the places that surround it like it was a real.  I see the people of Hampton and the place itself very clearly, and this makes writing about these friends and enemies who live in this hypothetical town easier and more fun.

I'm done for today with a rather short post, because today has been busy.  Got my car serviced at 9:00, went to the Y at 9:30.  Lunch and dominoes with the Smolnycki's in the afternoon.  (If that doesn't sound like the activities at retirement community. . .) Then we watched the sad SU game at night.  Ah, well.

I need for a moment to return. . .

to what's happening with ARTHUR REDUX, the SUMMERPLAY 2009 script.  I had been avoiding working on ARTHUR because the part I was about to write was going to be really hard.  I have to devise a way for the Seven Great Virtues of Chastity, Modesty, Patience, Kindness, Diligence, Abstinence, and Generosity, each represented by a human character, to do battle with the Seven Deadly Vices, which include Lust, Envy, Pride, Sloth, Wrath, Greed and Gluttony, likewise represented by people.  And this battle must take place in a rather small hotel lobby.  A daunting task!

So this afternoon, I reread the first 40 pages of ARTHUR, which provided a little impetus for me to get back to writing the play.  When I write lengthy stuff, rereading becomes difficult but important.  If I've spent months working on a novel, the events of the first few chapters are hard to remember, so every other week or so, I have to begin rereading again.  Rich Wallace, the author of many published young adult novels, and whom I've been to 2 really good workshops with, talked about the necessity of rereading even if it is a kind of drudgery.

Now to the Double X Girls.  Those familiar with my 3rd play THE ADVENTURES OF STACEY FOXX AND THE DOUBLE X GIRLS know that there is nothing X-rated about the story.  STACEY FOXX deals with 5 young ladies who work putting on an adventure serial at a little radio station during World War II.  The first 4 plays I wrote were for high school casts.   I included as many good female roles as possible.  Lots more young women audition, yet playwrights seem to be guilty of providing more guy parts than parts for ladies.  I tried to write roles where young woman could be involved and strong and heroic and stuff like that.  And I thought I succeeded with THE DOUBLE X GIRLS, particularly in the persons of Bonnie Lange/Stacey Foxx and Claire Sauer/Big Barb O'Brien.

So, when I started to try writing novels for young people, I tried to feature female characters, too. But I worried that I wouldn't get it right.  As Henry Higgins says of women in MY FAIR LADY, it can be difficult to "learn the way the creatures think."  My first YA novel, still untitled, was a mystery novel.  It was fun writing it, and it featured a really heroic female protagonist.  But I'm afraid it was a bit too Nancy-Drewish.

Tisha in TISHA AND THE GIANT isn't heroic.  She's just human and trying to cope, and sometimes there's a little heroism in that.  My most recent attempt at a novel, the partially completed ZOMBIES ARE US, has a guy as protagonist, so I guess I'm getting a little nervous about trying to write from a female perspective.

And in conclusion, to Amanda and Stephanie.  If STACEY FOXX were to be presented 1000 times, your performances would remain the signature ones.

Being a teacher. . .

for 33 years can stunt your growth.  When you teach teenagers everyday, work with them on extra-curricular stuff many nights, and go to their games, and concerts, and things, as often as you can, you may start to view the world from a partially teenage perspective.  Now this doesn't happen to every teacher.  But it happened to me.  I realized that though I enjoyed hanging out with a close circle of adult friends, I enjoyed working, and talking, and hanging out with teenagers as much or more.  At my retirement party, I admitted that teenagers were my favorite people. They had prevented me from growing up, for which I will be eternally gratefully.  Therefore, it only makes sense that my novels and several of my plays were written for young people, although I hope that adults can enjoy them as well.  As SUMMERPLAY progresses through the years, I find myself writing about older folks.  But I don't think I have an adult novel in me yet.  At 61, I'm just not grown-up enough.

And now for something completely different.  Why is my blog entitled THE BLUE MOON GRILLE?  Many of you know the answer to this.  SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE BLUE MOON GRILLE was the title of SUMMERPLAY  2006, one of my favorites of the plays I have written.  The Blue Moon Grille was the setting, a little bar and grille (with an "e" on the end of it to make it classy) in Denton, a town within 800 miles in some direction of Nashville.  Especially on Saturday nights, stories and wisdom were dispensed by the denizens of the Blue Moon.  The wisest of the lot was owner and philosopher Stan Morton, perfectly portrayed by Rick Zuber.  Behind the bar was a wall covered with sayings stuck there by Stan.  He explained to Tuck, a young man just arrived at the Blue Moon, "I'm a collector of words of wisdom.  When someone says something I think is clever or smart, I write it down and stick it to the wall."

So from my Blue Moon Grille, I'm going to tell some stories about my writing and about other things, and I hope to dispense an occasional bit of interest if not of wisdom.  Perhaps, you'd care to post a comment.  Maybe Stan will stick it to the wall!

Tomorrow I think I will deal with memories of the Double X Girls!

Day Two. . .

   and my biggest worry is that I will be unable to properly post today's entry. Computer stuff that is user friendly to most people is user sadistic to me.  I wanted to load a couple of pictures yesterday, but I couldn't figure out how to get them where I wanted them.  Ah, well. . .

Although this isn't related to writing, I had a lot of fun last night talking to 3 of my fraternity brothers from oh so many years past.  I was amazed how their voices hadn't changed even though I hadn't heard them in close to 25 years.  Actually, I once wrote half a novel about my fraternity. . . a long time ago.  It was titled BRAND X,  so my calls to my old friends are minorly writing related.  And the brothers of Alpha Lambda Chi will know to what the title refers.  Perhaps, their voices will rise in a glorious hymn!

I have so rewritten the first chapter of TISHA AND THE GIANT that I'm afraid I may be screwing it up.  Here follows the first sentence to Chapter One:

"The first Friday of school that year was a glorious late summer day with a huge blue sky, a temperature in the high seventies, and just enough breeze finding its way into the windows of Hampton High School during ninth period to rustle the papers in the looseleaf notebooks and carry in the sweet smell of the grass being cut on the athletic fields."

I used to love the first Friday of any school year.  There was the take-a-breath feel to it, the promise of the first Saturday of the year, and a hint of great possibilities in the air.  Tomorrow I think I'll write about why I write for teenagers.

To begin with. . .

My blog is The Blue Moon Grille, and I am the Motleyblogger.  This is enough information to reveal my identity to those who know me, and enough information for me to remain anonymous to those who don't.

I, the Motleyblogger, am a retired English teacher, a playwright of limited but joyous success, and a dabbler in many kinds of writing.  In this blog, I plan on chronicling, among other things, the progress of my writing and my attempts to get published.  I have decided that maybe if I blog about it, I will actually send some of my work to some real publishing houses and see just what the heck might occur.  Perhaps, a few people, will enjoy following my efforts.  (I'd call them struggles, but they really aren't, because I am really loving writing these days.)

Currently, I am working on two projects.  I have been wrapped up recently in the rewriting of a young adult novel which I first finished a couple of years ago.  (Notice the alliteration in that sentence.  Outstanding!)  Its title is TISHA AND THE GIANT, and it's the story of Tisha, one of those high school golden girls for whom everything has always gone swell, and whose picture perfect life starts to crumble.  It is also the story of Kevin, a fanciful boy who imagines he is a superhero named the Giant.  Kevin has a super crush on Tisha, who is his math tutor, and when he realizes she is being stalked by a man he calls the "Lump," Kevin decides he must become her protector.

I am also about two-thirds through this summer's SUMMERPLAY script.  It is titled ARTHUR REDUX, which means, in case you don't know, "Arthur returns."  Part of the Arthurian legend is that someday, the King who created the round table will return.  (Rather Christ-symbolish, don't you think?) In the play, he returns with Merlin the Magician, and they end up in modern day Cape Cod.  I haven't worked on ARTHUR too much this past week, because I've been tied up with TISHA AND THE GIANT, but if I'm going to meet my completion deadline by April 15, I'd better get my acts in gear. 

Enough for today.  Now I have to figure out how to get this crazy blog properly together.