Introducing... "DAILY ED": My 'Play a Day' Project!

Happy 2010! This year, please join me online for my latest adventure: I’m writing a short play every day - and posting each and every one of them on this here blog thingie.

I was inspired, of course, by the fabulous Susan-Lori Parks, whose “365 Days/365 Plays” spurred me to write 365 short plays of my own back in 2007. (I’ve written about that play-a-day endeavor before, HERE and HERE.)  Ok, ok, that year many of those plays were hastily written in December, when I recommitted to the project after months away from it.  At the last minute, I crammed through by writing 6 or 7 plays every day until the end of the year.  (But I finished, within seconds of midnight on New Year’s Eve!)

This time, I’m trying to do things a little differently.  First, I am committing to writing only ONE play a day, every day of the year.  I think there’s something about the daily practice that’s important for my own writing development.

Second, I’m (gulp!) making the work public.  “Writing wants to be read,” writes Ariel Gore in her snappy and terrific book, “How to Be a Famous Writer Before You’re Dead.”  And I think that’s true: there were times in ’07 when I felt a wee bit like the Belle of Amherst, keeping my private stash of one-page-of-yellow-legal-pad-plays in a folder, for no one’s viewing but my own.

So whether it turns out to be a public sharing, a public spectacle, a public festival, or a public flop…  for better or for worse, you’ll find the daily plays at my blog (which you can also access via my website: www.edvalentine.com).

While I hope you’ll enjoy them, I have no idea how they’ll turn out!  If you want a taste of them, some of the ones I particularly enjoyed writing so far:

• Jan 2 (“Under the Sand”)
• Jan 7 (“Seventeen Antonios”)
• Jan 12 - today’s play (“The Beard Play”)
• And especially: Jan 6 (“Rough Beast” – for 3 Kings Day, a Nativity Play gone horribly wrong)

Over the course of this year, I hope you’ll feel free to pop in and check out the plays from time to time - or better yet, drop by on a daily basis!  Online, the stage door is always open.

Please feel free to leave or email your comments, too.  I’d love to hear your 'likes', 'dislikes', 'thumbs-ups' and 'thumbs-downs', your ‘loves’, and your ‘detests’ - and especially your 'what the heck was THATs???'.  Yes, I welcome and love love love to hear your feedback and questions!

So off we go – or, as Tennessee Williams put it: “En Avant!”  (“Forward!  Onward!  Ahead!”)  Only 352 days to go.  Hope you'll go forward with me this year, as well.

All the best,
Ed