I won a
first place, and a nice medal, for my non-fiction Iron Pen entry in 2010. It
was a nice little tale about winter walking in Bishop Hill. That got me hooked
and I’ve returned to Iron Pen’s twenty-four hours of creative challenge almost
every year since then. My first place for fiction came in 2012 with a story
about a writer’s critique group going seriously off the rails. It was fun to
personify that year’s prompt in the chaotic chorus of writers offering advice
for a newbie. I threw in everything I’d learned about the craft of writing up
to that point. I’d also been influenced by Genesius Guild productions and some
one act plays I’d recently seen. According to the judge’s comments I had heavy
competition and got the first, and the nifty medal, because I had written about
“writing.”
Fast forward
to January of this year. I was attending a meeting of Second Avenue Players, a
senior acting group that meets at CASI, discussing how to interact with a bunch
of Augie students. Plays were needed to show them how our group works. Larry
D’Autremont, our resident playwright, was reminiscing about his time with
Genesius Guild. Something about that conversation stuck with me. It took some
time, how long I will not say, but I was finally reminded of that Iron Pen
piece from long ago. How it too was inspired by Genesis performers and how I might
turn my short story into the real thing, a fully functioning play, because the
need was immediate. Twenty to thirty college students would be on hand
in a week’s time and they needed to participate. There’s nothing like a crisis
to spur one into action.
My memory
was not accurate enough to make my recovery search too easy, but I found my 2012
entry, all 860 words of it. From there I had an enjoyable evening expanding six
POVs, points of view, into ten speaking parts. Formatting was not done exactly to
industry standards, but I was in a hurry. I needed easy and simple. The next
morning, I came back to make things as gender neutral as I could for the
actors. Adding flexibility to ease and simplicity seemed like the best way to
go. There would be scant time to rehearse. Less time to stage. But in the end,
I would have my first play performed by real people. It made for an exciting week
waiting to see who would show up. A bonus came my way when a novel idea on how
to use this bit of old Iron Pen history in another situation came to me. How
practical it would be had to wait until I saw the end results of the first
adventure in beginning playacting by amateurs.
IRON PEN
CONTEST FOR 2020
PROMPT
ARRIVES BY EMAIL AT 5:00 PM ON FRIDAY, FEB. 21st.
WRITERS HAVE
24 HOURS.
ENTRIES HAVE
TO BE IN AT 5:00 PM ON SATURDAY, FEB. 22nd.
FOR MORE INFORMATION,
COST, AND INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO ENTER GO TO:
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