Has anyone else out there attepted to write their own scripts. How did it go? Where did you get your insperation from

I recently co-wrote a musical called a night in the east end to be performed in our church hall on the 22nd. It's basically a series of West End songs from assorted musicals strung together with a new storyline. It was a big responsibility but I quite enjoyed doing it

Anyone else ever atempted anything like this or is it just me

LL,
There are risk in what you have done. Aside from the artistic side of constructing a decent plot, you face two problems:
Firstly some of the copyright holders are (for good reasons, before Joseph Weinberger snarl at me) a little snotty about using songs from current shows in the context of a different musical - therefore you are in danger of breaching copyright in constructing your production.
Secondly, anyone putting on your show should pay royalties to the copyright holders of the original material. For pantomimes and reviews, this is generally covered by a non-specific payment to the performing rights society (effectively a licence to perform "any songs" away from their original setting. There's a thread running on this - or, the last time I looked, limping - elsewhere on the board).

For the second reason (and because people tend to ignore this issue and get themselves into minor technical breaches of copyright law), I have taken to writing my own songs for my pantomime scripts. (Nobody has yet thrown rotting fruit.)
Don't let the above put you off! Keep writing, but strive for originality!

Essay.

one of our group's members has written a number of musicals for children over the past few years, and had several of them published at French's ("Pandemonium", "Skool & Crossbones", "Shake Ripple & Roll") but it took a few years and a good few rejects to get them that far.

We also write other musicals that the group perform and are available for hire but unpublished.

And of course the usual pantos (I've written quite a lot of those) using music that you're allowed to perform without any more than the venue's own performing licence - remember you're not allowed to change the words.

My mind never stops... And my ideas just pop out of my head....

Usually when I'm half asleep.... Weird stuff...

I got too many "projects" to work on all at once...

I've been approached through my website to write a script for a musician who has written a few songs... This is my main project at the moment..

But as for writing... I can't just stay on the one thing, my mind doesn't work like that.... (much like my posts in these threads)... It's got to be everywhere at once... When I get an idea about something I just go round all my projects and see if it fits into to any...

The project I was contact to do has grown from a typical musical storyline to a very exciting fresh new one just by letting it grow in stages...

1. Write the plot...

2. Leave it fo a few weeks...

3. Read it again... And again... Take out what I don't like... Add or enhance what I do like...

6 months later, I STILL haven't started writing the script (except for 2 scenes) but the story has changed sooooo much and grown...

Other people can just sit down and write, that doesn't work for me, I find I get boring scripts if I do that...

At the level of the odd word, most of us would say "keep quiet about it" (and don't try to sell the show to anyone else) - but then it depends on the scale of your production (village hall or regional theatre) how much offence you are going to give!

As for the writer's block, there are two possibilities: either follow George's line (work chaotically - work on multiple things at once, put one away, come back and read it later and decide how you can improve it, develop it, and so on) of follow Douglas Adams who, in describing the creative process, said something like "I stare at a blank screen until the blood comes out of my forehead".

It is only a small fundraising production in the church hall, we don't even have a proper stage (just a portable one) so we shouldn't cause too much offence, except to some church members but thats got nothing to do with copywrite, and we'd probaly mange to do that whatever we did.

Also I must say I got some insperation from hanging out here. Though its only provided me with about 3 lines so I've got a long way to go yet

LL
Over the past year or so I've been writing sketches as opposed to scripts although a panto is lurking in my mind somewhere! My inspiration usually comes in the small hours after a quantity of drink! The sketches are written to fall in with the theme for our cabarets or revues and now other members of the cast are writing too.
We write with our members and their abilities, character portrayals, etc in mind but mainly its all down to their interpretation and sense of humour and they do go down very well in our shows.

Good luck with yours.