I’ve had to put the re-write of my play Circus on hold while I write the upcoming Christmas production for my church.  I struggled through the month of July to come up with an original plot to tell the Christmas story.  This in fact is the challenge of any script. I remember back in my screenwriting days at York University, a professor told us that there are only 36 plotlines in the entire world and that every script written is variations of those plotlines. How’s that for intimidation next time you think of writing something original.

The script I came up with is called Story of a Boy and begins in 1969 during the Vietnam era and concludes in 2009.   Story of a Boy speaks about how in life we can all get a little lost sometimes and in order to find our way back home we must be willing to accept love and forgiveness even if we feel we don’t deserve it.   The events of the play take place on Christmas Eve and journeys through several decades where characters from the Christmas story help our protagonists along the way.  There are 9 songs interspersed within the drama which mix different genres of music and should appeal to a large audience.

Story of a Boy has been cast and rehearsals will begin in mid-Sept.  The Circus long-hand draft is complete and more than half of it has been typed into the computer.  My hope is to have the rest typed by the end of August.  There is also a writing grant I will be applying for on behalf of Circus in September.

I’ve gotten mixed results from various screenwriting competitions this past month. Home received a great critique from a contest named Script Savvy and is also a semi-finalists in  Writemovies. For now, I am putting Home aside and will begin writing a new spec script. I want to have a new screenplay written by the end of the year.  Home has consumed a lot of my screenwriting time this past year and I need a break from it.  I believe strongly in the script and know that somewhere there is a home for it.

I end with this:

“You can’t wait for inspiration; you have to go after it with a club.”

– Jack London