Like A Man Freed From Prison

I'm reveling in all my free time. It's like after a show closes and you suddenly have your life back. I have time to do all the things I want to do, all the things, the crazy, weird things that make your life normal, or at least make you feel comfortable.

For one thing I can blog some more. It's not a big deal to write here, and it doesn't take up that much time, but it shows just how little time I did have that I couldn't post here. I was blogging on our contemporary drama classes blog, and I literally would use very waking minute to do something for class: read standing on the subway, take twenty minutes to open the laptop sitting on some couches outside class to write five more lines of dialogue in a play. It was all so crazy. I do like to be busy, but the past five months were overload.

Did I mention what I did when I finished? I opened a bottle of cream soda, sat on the floor of the living room (or what we call the music room) and played guitar for about three hours. I've been so out of practice and it's something that I just love to do to relax--a lot of times I'll work for a while and take a break for about ten minutes. If I'm working in the office instead of on the couch I'll usually have Alice, one of our acoustics, propped against the table.

And I've been doing all the crazy little things that a man just freed from prison might do. Today I'm making bread. Yesterday I was in Boston (to drop off the infamous dramaturgy dossier), went to the graduate school office and figured out how I was going to pay for the summer semester, and then I went to Daddy's Junky Music and played a bunch of guitars they have there. (Also bought a metronome, something one of my music teachers, Lloyd Thayer has been beating in my head to get. I bought it off the salesman who walked in the guitar room and said hi, and I said hi back in a way that said, leave me the hell alone. They know me there and he was decent enough to let me alone and not hassle me with pushing a guitar sale.) I went a few doors up and grabbed a hamburger at Wendy's; Wendy's hamburgers are a nasty vice I have. I met my daughter for dinner and I was able to talk and listen without having this other tape running in the background of my brain, thinking about dialogue and plot and stage directions and getting this paper written or planning this project. I'm picking up laundry and making grocery lists and I'm making sense out of our house. Sue works two jobs to keep us going, so I'm the one who manages the house and I actually like doing it. I've always been kind of domestic. I like to cook and I like working at home; the only time I ever liked working in an office was when I was first starting out and I thought I was hot shit. It didn't take me long to realize I was what is known as a self-starter (hardly anyone is; most people need the whip from the office to keep them motivated) and did much better on my own away from the stupidity of office politics and general office shenanigans. I always thought that was so much noise.

It'll will all start again in a week and a half when summer starts. I am so excited about the classes I'm taking, but for now I'm happy to just be able to noodle around the apartment.

The Birth of a New Idea

So you take a piece of writing you've been working on for, oh say seven or eight months. Rewriting and rewriting. Let's say you're on 24th draft. And then, at around 2:30 this afternoon you get an email from your professor saying she needs a bunch of questions answered about your work class tomorrow (10:30 a.m.), and oh, yeah, this too:

Rewrite the first utterance/action of the play (one word, one line, one brief exchange or one image) so that it sums up what the play is about. Use sleight of hand, use magic, use trickery to tell us everything and draw us into the story in an instant. Be subtle, be obvious, be direct; be crafty; be brave. I want to know WHO it's about, WHAT KIND OF PLAY this is, and SOMETHING IMPORTANT ABOUT THE WORLD.

And when you think the play is just where you want it, because that's what we're talking about here--a play--at least the first half, which includes the "first utterance" because you slaved and slaved over it and rethought it and rethought it again and again last semester, what do you do when you get this message. Do your freak out? Or do you rethink it again?

Survey says: rethink it. And before even being in the class I don't even know where I came up with what I came up with, but I like it. And it is going to affect the rest of the play, how I visualize it, how I'd write the staging.

I only worked on Highland Center, Indiana on a couple of days during the break, and that was only on the second half, cleaning it up, moving things around. So, I hadn't even thought about the opening since maybe the end of November when I last worked on it in class.

Our minds are incredible, how they work, how they work without us even knowing what they're working on. When this happens, doesn't it almost prove that the universe and other worlds exist simply because there's no proof that they do? Our conscious minds are so limited, knowledge is like the dark matter of the universe: ninety-nine percent of it we can't see. This is why a person can believe that anything is possible, because a new idea is just there, just out of reach, just out of eyesight, waiting.

Crappy New England Weather Can't Rain on My Parade

Today was the kind of day when I always asked, why did the Pilgrims stay here? At a little past 5:30, today the day still has the kind of weather that makes you hate New England: Cold sleet is just falling out of the sky. The roads and sidewalks are thick ice, the kind that happens on a skating rinks towards the end of the day. Hard ice with puddles on top. Lakes of slush slosh on either side of crosswalks. And it's supposed to get worse tonight. Still, the weather couldn't put a damper on the first day back of classes.

First up today was dramaturgy with Kate Snodgrass, the head of our program. Familiar faces, new faces, and one student from last semester dropped out. Tons of reading. More tons of writing, and then the grad students have even more writing, plus we have to prepare and lead one class. And I can't wait.

At the theater I saw someone who I've worked with in the past--she was the director for the first play for which I had a staged reading--and she was there working on her auditions for grad schools that she'll be doing for the next two weeks. And I remarked to her how many people I know who are doing such great things with their lives--real positive actions that make you forget about the economy and politics. And I also know so many people that just want to drag people down, or drag them back into the past, and on a day like today, as miserable as the weather was, they still just fade away. A gloomy, bitter day like today can still be so bright and optimistic

Yeah, it's a weird human trait that when people are miserable they want everyone else to be miserable, too. Yes, misery does love company, it certainly does. But not my company. (Plus when I came home there were even more books--scripts actually--for me to read. How cool is that?)

Back in the Saddle

And it feels so good. Spent almost the entire day working on Highland Center, Indiana, a full-length play and the one that I'll probably use for my thesis. Classes start next week, and my playwriting prof wrote to and wants to see some of our work by Friday. She wanted to know where we stood with it, if it was almost finished, if we were sick of it, or what. After working intently on it since around last May, I love going back into that world and dealing with those characters.

And she wants to see something else we're working on, and I'm thinking of showing her Red Dog. I haven't really touched that since the reading last March with Whistler in the Dark, and I know kind of what I want to do with it (based on some really good feedback from the audience that night) but also, just when you think something is easy, that's when you'll get snagged every time. 

I'm so lucky right now to be enjoying what I'm doing. I've written my entire life, professionally for thirty years, and there were times when I was simply writing for a paycheck, which should never happen. And now, I can't wait to get up and get working.

Tomorrow I'll be fixing up details for the writing class I'll be teaching, and again, I can't wait.

And yeah, it's all so familiar. Starting a couple of days ago I've been waking up at around 2:30, I think from the sheer weight of everything I have to accomplish. I just lie there with details swirling in my head. How to line up all the ducks for the class? What can I do about this particular sticky part of Highland Center? (Hint: if it's not character-driven, it's not the answer.)

So welcome back to my world.

ENG 202

"I am pleased to inform you that on the recommendation of your department, you have been selected to receive a Teaching Fellowship for the Spring Semester 2011." So starts the letter I received last fall. It was quite a thrill, one of many that happened during 2010. One of my goals when applying at Boston University was to teach upon graduation. As I wrote in my personal statement:

 

"Another reason I want to teach is because I want to be constantly around intelligent, creative people who value ideas, and work in a place where ideas are generated. I have worked for some incredibly stimulating organizations where creativity and openness were valued—as long as the bottom line was robust. But there is something about the nature of corporations and commerce that when, as soon as hard times come, they become very risk-aversive and ideas and creativity are the first things to be jettisoned. I want to belong to an organization where ideas—and not product or money—are generated and valued and protected."

I knew I wanted to be a writer--that I actually was a writer--when I was quite small. Starting at around second or third grade. It's all I ever really wanted to do, and quite frankly I can't imagine what I'd do if I couldn't write. I am so confident and comfortable in the medium--probably the way fish feel in water; the way we feel in air. But now I'm going to teach people how to swim, and it's a bit daunting. And what's troubling me the most is maybe that student who may not be right for the class, who may not have the talent, but is there anyway. Isn't that funny? The teaching fellows all got a letter from the department telling us to grade hard, to really push and challenge the students (well, it is Boston University, after all) and that the worst thing we could do is give an undeserving B. To encourage someone to continue to beat his or her head against a wall some more.

And I do get that. I don't think children should get trophies for just running out on the soccer field. There are winners and losers, and there is talent and then there are the wannabes. But what I've spent a good amount of time and energy doing is trying to figure out how to set up an environment that is encouraging and nurturing. A place where, if you really want to write, you'll get your chance. I don't want to get touchy feelie about this, because I truly don't see writing being that way. I guess maybe because I've always been able to do it, it doesn't seem that hard to me. It just takes practice. In my case, about forty years of practice, we all had to start somewhere. For me it was sophomore year in high school, where a student teacher named Miss Harbert showed me how to be a writer, then I turned around that craft back on her. On her final, she asked what we had learned, and I answered nothing. That writing in itself was what was needed. Or some such snotty reply. She was devastated. That's the power of words right there.

I still have the letter she sent me, hand-written from her home in Connecticut, telling me all classes weren't like hers, and all schools weren't like the one I was in, a public school in Cincinnati. And if I could find her today I'd tell her students would be lucky to have a class like hers. She got us to write, which is all you have to do. Sit down, and write everyday. If you do it every day for a semester, you'll certainly be better at the end of the semester than you were at the beginning. I'd almost guarantee it. Write every day for ten years, and you'll certainly be better. You might not be published. You might not be famous. But you'll be a better writer. And that's all  you really should strive for. The rest is gravy.