Monday, December 20, 2010
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Of Being Ambitious
November is going to be a fabulous month. Not only am I going to Rocky Horror (hello, Elza? Thanks again!) in a dress I am currently sewing by hand, I am participating in NaNoWriMo. Oh yes. I am. Madness? Perhaps. But I am going to do it.
In other news, I finished the lab coat dress and wore it the other day and am halfway through Iiii of Grave Business. This is the point were I generally draw a little picture of the scene and write several very very short stories. Like, two or three sentences. Good times. The other novel is also steaming along like a little archaic train. I'm also getting through 1984 and loving it. NEWSPEAK MUST NOT PREVAIL!!! My next post will be Grave Business, but I felt like I needed to branch out a little.
Love, Astrid xxx
P.S. I hardly ever use conditioner in my hair, and when I reread Harry Potter I make little squeaking noses of excitement at the foreshadowing.
In other news, I finished the lab coat dress and wore it the other day and am halfway through Iiii of Grave Business. This is the point were I generally draw a little picture of the scene and write several very very short stories. Like, two or three sentences. Good times. The other novel is also steaming along like a little archaic train. I'm also getting through 1984 and loving it. NEWSPEAK MUST NOT PREVAIL!!! My next post will be Grave Business, but I felt like I needed to branch out a little.
Love, Astrid xxx
P.S. I hardly ever use conditioner in my hair, and when I reread Harry Potter I make little squeaking noses of excitement at the foreshadowing.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Act 1 Scene 2
Firstly, Microsoft word is no longer even letting me TYPE! (Bonus Astrid point if you got the emotion in that statement.) Henceforth all scenes will be written directly into this little box. Read through to the end for my bonus fact of the me! Here's a picture not of the characters, but still inkeeping...
Enter Patience and Jack haphazardly wheeling a cadaver trolley. Levi trails after them. Patience and Jack give the trolley a fianal push off stage as Levi trys to get their attention.
Levi: When's tea?
Patience: When your father gets home.
Levi: When's that?
Patience: Soonish, nowish, neverish, depends how often you ask.
Levi occupies himself for a moment while Patience grooms Jack lovingly.
Jack: Excited for Friday then?
Patience: What's Friday?
Jack: Ah, only our wedding.
Patience: Oh course I remember, silly goose, I was testing.
They peck kiss as Asher enters.
Asher: How's everyone? Good? Hey Levi, what you got there?
Swings Levi around and starts chatting animatedly to him.
Enter Patience and Jack haphazardly wheeling a cadaver trolley. Levi trails after them. Patience and Jack give the trolley a fianal push off stage as Levi trys to get their attention.
Levi: When's tea?
Patience: When your father gets home.
Levi: When's that?
Patience: Soonish, nowish, neverish, depends how often you ask.
Levi occupies himself for a moment while Patience grooms Jack lovingly.
Jack: Excited for Friday then?
Patience: What's Friday?
Jack: Ah, only our wedding.
Patience: Oh course I remember, silly goose, I was testing.
They peck kiss as Asher enters.
Asher: How's everyone? Good? Hey Levi, what you got there?
Swings Levi around and starts chatting animatedly to him.
LOVE IN THE 1800'S
Jack: Clamped around my heart like a alligator,
On the path to love you're the navigator
I'd like to give credit where credit's due,
Is it anything to do with you?
Patience: I've only known love in the things I've read,
I've worked so long amongst the dead,
People always said my heart was cold,
I truely don't think I've oversold.
Both: So when the rain comes down
In our little ghost town
Shelter under my umbrella
We can stand together
Do you really think you can change my mind?
How can we be so akind?
Asher: Save something for the wedding night!
Patience: Eww... Asher!
Jack: Don't worry honey, I've got plenty more for you.
Patience: You better.
Asher: Okay... Taking innocent child away presently...
Asher and Levi exit, laving Patience and Jack holding hand center stage.
REPRISE
Both: So when the rain comes down
In our little ghost town
Shelter under my umbrella
We can stand together
Don't think you can change my mind,
There's room enough for two, I'll make room for you.
Patience: Oh Jack, you know I'm so happy!
Jack: Me too, but also hungry. Actually, mostly hungry. Looks at Patience Kidding! Come on Mrs Almost Ketch.
Leave hand in hand, practically skipping.
Aw, aren't they sweet? The fact of Astrid is she really hates the colour her room is painted, and is plotting a screen of stars...
Aw, aren't they sweet? The fact of Astrid is she really hates the colour her room is painted, and is plotting a screen of stars...
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Business, quite serious business.
It is quite feasible (it is, don't try and change my mind) that someone will approch the previous entry and internally, or even externally as the mood strikes them, comment that it is 'interesting...'
I am a fan of interesting. Interesting is intriguing. As are synonyms.
But the point of this post is to enlighten, first about the musical, then a little about myself.
"Grave Business" began life as a favour to a friend. It was high school, it was Scotland, he was in need. Of a creative writing idea. So Ceidiog, Heather and I sat around a cafe table and devised a Victoriana Drama. It began as his short story, but I liked the idea so much I expanded and polished it until it announced a short story was not enough.
"A novella then!" I cried in desperation.
"Not even."
So it grew into a novel outline.
A novel outline long enough for a play.
"Be more ambitious, darling." It urged me.
So we arrive at musical.
In a short outline, "Grave Business" is a little bit madcap. In a slightly more helpful summary; "Grave Business" is set in a alternate Victorian London where a 'cure' for ageing has been discovered and as a minor side effect, people are no longer dying of old age. Our story follows Asher, a gravedigger, his irreverent mortitian sister Patience, and her newlywed husbund, Jack Ketch, of glam rock hangman origin. Asher has a terminally ill son, Levi. He wishes to purchase a dose of 'cure' to effectively 'freeze' his son so medical advancements can be made. Oh Asher, shame they haven't invented the NHS yet... Instead, they made a simple but underestimating law in which any doctor caught providing 'cure' to a youth below the age of eighteen may be given a sentence up to that of hanging.
Asher is haunted by the memory of his wife who died in childbirth. He takes the seemingly logical path and starts directing more business towards the family trade, via murder of course. The guilt eventually drives him to confess to his sister, who commits suicide because of the knowledge (a laundanum overdose, she dies in Jack's arms). Asher is caught out and sentenced to hang by the neck until dead. Jack is a hangman, I thought this just. Asher's son cannot be saved, even today the probibility would be low.
As I cannot write music I am resorting to drawing it instead. This accompanied scene 1:
This is the very height of my artistic talent. I hope I'm better with words. Note the square one in the back? It says "I Told You I Was Ill" and is a Spike Milligan reference.
A little more about me?
I was born in New Zealand, and today I had a substitute whom I suspect of being Dolores Umbridge.
I am a fan of interesting. Interesting is intriguing. As are synonyms.
But the point of this post is to enlighten, first about the musical, then a little about myself.
"Grave Business" began life as a favour to a friend. It was high school, it was Scotland, he was in need. Of a creative writing idea. So Ceidiog, Heather and I sat around a cafe table and devised a Victoriana Drama. It began as his short story, but I liked the idea so much I expanded and polished it until it announced a short story was not enough.
"A novella then!" I cried in desperation.
"Not even."
So it grew into a novel outline.
A novel outline long enough for a play.
"Be more ambitious, darling." It urged me.
So we arrive at musical.
In a short outline, "Grave Business" is a little bit madcap. In a slightly more helpful summary; "Grave Business" is set in a alternate Victorian London where a 'cure' for ageing has been discovered and as a minor side effect, people are no longer dying of old age. Our story follows Asher, a gravedigger, his irreverent mortitian sister Patience, and her newlywed husbund, Jack Ketch, of glam rock hangman origin. Asher has a terminally ill son, Levi. He wishes to purchase a dose of 'cure' to effectively 'freeze' his son so medical advancements can be made. Oh Asher, shame they haven't invented the NHS yet... Instead, they made a simple but underestimating law in which any doctor caught providing 'cure' to a youth below the age of eighteen may be given a sentence up to that of hanging.
Asher is haunted by the memory of his wife who died in childbirth. He takes the seemingly logical path and starts directing more business towards the family trade, via murder of course. The guilt eventually drives him to confess to his sister, who commits suicide because of the knowledge (a laundanum overdose, she dies in Jack's arms). Asher is caught out and sentenced to hang by the neck until dead. Jack is a hangman, I thought this just. Asher's son cannot be saved, even today the probibility would be low.
As I cannot write music I am resorting to drawing it instead. This accompanied scene 1:
This is the very height of my artistic talent. I hope I'm better with words. Note the square one in the back? It says "I Told You I Was Ill" and is a Spike Milligan reference.
A little more about me?
I was born in New Zealand, and today I had a substitute whom I suspect of being Dolores Umbridge.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Oh look! A preview!
Being one of those "I like it, but no-one else will... WRITER'S ANGST!" types, I have decided to open myself up to the glory and anominity of the internet. It is a good plan, until, that is I lose momentum and the project is shelved. Here is a musical scene. Enjoy Act1 Scene1 of Grave Business...
A graveyard. Asher is filling in a grave slowly, I small crowd of mourners are gathered in Victorian mourning garb.
Asher: Happy Thursday dearies how are you all? (Woman weeps openly) Don’t mind them; bit of a shock, the burial process, really drives the final nail in. Pardon the pun. This ain’t the London my parents knew, but it’s the only city to be in these days is still Old, sorry, Young London Town.
LONDON TOWN
Centre of the Empire
Home of the Crown
Where the fallen can fall
‘Till there ain’t no down
Stop! It’s London Town!
Fleas and cats
And rats and dogs
The rich, the poor
And the turning cogs
Stop! It’s London Town!
Digging holes is what I do
I can dig you one
I can dig you two
But you don’t get old!
Stop! It’s London Town!
50 years? Well you look 14,
Miracle? No – just a doctor’s cream.
Yes ageing ‘as stopped!
In London Town
In London Town
In London... London... London...
It’s an alright life. Won’t complain. Hard business though when immortality is the prevailing trend of the times. Still, won’t complain, can’t complain. Right, that's me done 'ere, now off to my sister's for tea, and a chat about her young lad.
Exit Asher whistling LONDON TOWN tune. Spade casually thrown over shoulder.
Thank you for not giving up before this point. My angst is already slightly reduced.
A graveyard. Asher is filling in a grave slowly, I small crowd of mourners are gathered in Victorian mourning garb.
Asher: Happy Thursday dearies how are you all? (Woman weeps openly) Don’t mind them; bit of a shock, the burial process, really drives the final nail in. Pardon the pun. This ain’t the London my parents knew, but it’s the only city to be in these days is still Old, sorry, Young London Town.
LONDON TOWN
Centre of the Empire
Home of the Crown
Where the fallen can fall
‘Till there ain’t no down
Stop! It’s London Town!
Fleas and cats
And rats and dogs
The rich, the poor
And the turning cogs
Stop! It’s London Town!
Digging holes is what I do
I can dig you one
I can dig you two
But you don’t get old!
Stop! It’s London Town!
50 years? Well you look 14,
Miracle? No – just a doctor’s cream.
Yes ageing ‘as stopped!
In London Town
In London Town
In London... London... London...
It’s an alright life. Won’t complain. Hard business though when immortality is the prevailing trend of the times. Still, won’t complain, can’t complain. Right, that's me done 'ere, now off to my sister's for tea, and a chat about her young lad.
Exit Asher whistling LONDON TOWN tune. Spade casually thrown over shoulder.
Thank you for not giving up before this point. My angst is already slightly reduced.
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