Between 1990 and 1995, I wrote an hour-long monologue. Of course, I didn't spend the entire five years writing. It just took five years to gather the material. The first words came to me in a laundromat and were scribbled on the back of a brochure. I had no idea that I was writing a monologue or, for that matter, anything other than an idea.
The process continued in that manner. I wrote in journals and on scraps of paper whenever something struck me. Then I'd sit down and type up the scraps. If the words felt like they belonged, I'd look through the evolving script — though I didn't know for a few years that it was a script — to see where it fit in. The chronology of the writing had nothing to do with chronology of the script.
As pieces emerged, I emailed them off to my college roommate, Tom. I was in Minneapolis and he was in Boston. As he wrote back in response to my thoughts, our emails worked their way into the script. When it was finally finished, I was amazed that it made sense. Not because I didn't trust my writing skills, but because I never intended to write a script. Once things started to fit together, I applied craft to make it work, but the creation itself lacked intent.
This was the perfect way for me to create. I had honed my writing style while I was in college. By that time, a Mac had replaced my typewriter. I developed my writing style by letting words gush onto the screen and then cutting and pasting. It was as much about rhythm as it was content. "If I shift that over there, and move this here, and change that word, and cut that phrase, well it just feels right."
I am a digital writer. Yes, I keep a journal, and I start short poems on paper. But I write by shifting fragments around, and that style, my style, shows the impact of the tools I used to develop it.
