Writing The Play

Best line of the week

Jesus Christ is not a weapon.

Hurley's mom, Lost, Season 4, Ep. 12

Helpful conversation

At the end of April, I completed the draft of my wild and woolly ensemble play. I began this play in May 2006.  Way too long between start and finish.

Yet, there was no straight line from the beginning to the end. That is, as I began that play, I was finishing up the "final" draft of a different full-length play. During that two year period, I wrote two shorter plays, other plays had staged readings, some out-of-state workshop was attended, oh yeah, I moved from San Francisco to Louisville, and started an even newer play. I'm good at setting deadlines. Somethings, though, the glories of Life take precedence, and the play gets finished when it gets finished. MBH has an envious way of writing his first drafts very quickly, and then takes longer for his re-writes. I'm the opposite. I take longer to finish the first draft, and then get through the re-writes faster.

Perhaps that's all bullsh*t. My process keeps evolving. That's the one thing I know for sure.

I gave MBH the draft to read. Then he gave me some notes, a couple "this is me writing your play" comments, and mostly what he gave me was great conversation about the play. It was helpful to go through the play with him, and talk about what I had accomplished, and what I hadn't. One of the ideas I had for he play, I had not yet accomplished and wasn't sure how to get there. By the end of our conversation I knew exactly what I needed to do. And it wasn't from anything he told me to do. It was from listening to his experience of two main characters that prompted the light bulbs to go off in my head. That kind of helpful conversation comes when someone knows your work, knows what you're capable of, and doesn't have any ego invested in his own opinions about all of that.

It bears repeating that you need those Safe Friends to share your work with.

The last two weeks have been spent re-writing, and I've been very excited about the shape the play has taken. The Beloved is out of town this weekend. No distractions for me mean I'm confident this round of re-writes will get finished while she's gone.

And today from my home state, the Cali Supremes said:

In light of the fundamental nature of the substantive rights embodied in the
right to marry — and their central importance to an individual’s opportunity to
live a happy, meaningful, and satisfying life as a full member of society — the
California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil
right to all individuals and couples, without regard to their sexual orientation.

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF CALIFORNIA
In re MARRIAGE CASES (S1479999)

I had no doubt they would rule in this just manner.

Note sharing possibilities

An easy way to share and collaborate on notes are drool-able software features. Years ago, when I worked in computer technical support, one group I was in used Tornado Notes. I'm talking MS-DOS time, folks. TN was not a collaborative product, yet we pushed the envelope to make it so.

What I want out of any note keeping software:

• a way to easily clip texts, image, urls, from any application
• quick, unencumbered ability to type a note
• fast, comprehensive search features (including pdfs and images)
• the ability to store whatever I want (pdfs, images, text, handwritten notes)
• an ability to easily share notes, and allow others to add or modify notes
• to be able to access my notes anywhere there's a wi-fi connection, from any  wi-fi device
• uh, and really, really cheap (you can't get what you don't ask for, ya know)

Evernote is very close to all those personal requirements. I'm not sure where I'll end up with Evernote. Ultimately, a writer, out on my own, it will come down to cost.

I do like the idea of Evernote very much. The image recognition features, which can only improve over time, are very powerful. I value the platform and location independence of the product.

I have four Evernote invitations left, if anyone wants to try it out for his or her self. (Send me a email if you want one.)

I did fix my SoHo Notes problems satisfactorily. That wasn't pretty, as it ultimately involved doing a OS X "archive and install," and reinstalling SoHo Notes. I guess there are only so many upgrades any one laptop can bear over a handful of years.

Evernote allows you to publish notebooks. Aqua Minds Notetaker also allows you to publish notebooks. (I still use Notetaker in conjunction with SoHo Notes.) MBH and I tried using this Notetaker feature, some time ago, for a collaborative venture. It was not very effective. Since then Aqua Minds has created a collaborative NoteShare application that I have not tried. Can't afford it.

MBH and I settled on a private Typepad blog for keeping notes on our joint project. It works, although as our notes have grown, the blog requires more organization, and has become a bit unwieldy.

From SoHo Notes, you can email a note, and that's about it for sharing.

I've published an Evernote test notebook, with four notes, to see how it works. Future features (months and months away, from what I've read) will include collaborative notebooks, and the ability to share notebooks with specific users.

Bird of the week

On Wednesday the first Rose-Breasted Grosbeak arrived at our feeders. On Thursday, he brought 3 pals with him. Today there's 10. What kind of total dweeb have I become, when I feel a sight like this was worth leaving California for?

For the truly notetaking obsessed

My Soho Notes has been misbehaving lately in software bloated fashions. Alas, I miss the old Stickybrain version. For a moment, I thought I'd switch to Journier. Then I discovered they're now charging $34.95.  Probably worth it. If I hadn't just shelled out for the rotten SoHo upgrade....

As I pondered dumping SoHo, I got it working again. I must change my own computing habits to realize its power. It's all about the shortcut keys. I also found a whole other crop of Mac notetaking software:

Tinderbox...jeez, louise it costs $299
Evernote...free for the moment. Requires an invitation. Read the graphic below.
Together...$39
VoodoPad...$49.95...there's a "lite" version for free.
EagleFiler...$40

This is not an Ad. This is an Adventure!

Updated 5:52pm:  Was Evernote able to search my handwritten note? Yes! Although the results were hit and miss. I suspect my messy handwriting to be the culprit. Still, I'm impressed.

Noodler's Ink
Esterbrook
Clairefontaine

It Resonates

The world is in our minds, it's up to us whether it changes or remains the same.

—playwright Carlyle Brown,  The Fula from America

 

 

Keeping Track

I've made a final checklist for the large cast play I've been writing.

I know, I know, I wrote a few days ago that I hated list keeping. That's about those freaks who insist you gotta checkoff the 1,000 people/places/things before you die, or keep bird lists, or have a detailed travel itinerary for each moment of your vacation. Some of us are not built for that kind of list-keeping, thank you very much.

There's a handful of details I want to be sure I haven't missed. The list contains questions about metaphors, specific character actions, things that need to be repeated, foreshadowing events, dialogue consistencies, whatever the things knocking about in my mind. I want to be sure I've dealt with them.

My plan is to be done with the draft by the end of Tuesday. I'm more than ready to let these characters go. The Powerbook has behaved since last Thursday, so no obstacle there. I'll pass the draft onto my Trusted Friend, and then turn my attention to the joint project with MBH.

It's Derby week, and we'll head to the track this week to watch the early morning workouts. My reward for finishing the draft.

Totally about my friend Eddie...kinda...sorta...yeah

My friend Eddie Conner believes "America's real crack problem" is the way we contradict what we want with what we say, and as a result cut ourselves off at the, uh, knees. Okay, that's my paraphrasing Eddie. He would never say it that way. He'd be very funny while he was saying it, too. A handful of years ago he even wrote a book called Kicking the Big BUT Syndrome. If you don't know what a big BUT is...listen to how many times you are offered help, or advice, and you respond with "Yes, but..." Or you tell yourself, "I want ____ in my life, but the ____ won't let me." Okay, you wouldn't say "______" You might say, "I want to be an artist, but I can't make a living at it." There are a myriad of more subtle ways we express our contradictions. I digress...this journal entry is about Eddie.

Except this paragraph is about me.... When I'm writing, I like to pay homage to my family in some way, and I put some gesture, personality trait, habit, secret, uh, something that is known to us. Sometimes I get in trouble for doing that. Anyway, my homage to Eddie has been to try to write this creative coffee-break journal without using the word "but." When I did a Google search on Intermission, I found I'd used the word some 41 times in the last three years. Not shabby.

Eddie calls himself a "soul intuitive coach." He teaches "new thought" principles. You know, law of attraction, Esther and Jerry Hicks and Abraham, Wayne Dyer, The Secret.  Only thing is, Eddie teaches with humor. He could be a stand-up comic. He's my personal Mark Twain.

He has a DVD being released in May, Living the Hi-Frequency Life.  I love that title. Then, I'm all about energy, what others call vibration or frequencies. I watched his DVD last night. It's in a workshop format...you know, Eddie doin' a workshop for some people. It's a great collection of his teaching tools, and the principles he uses in his life. If you want a different take on the law of attraction stuff, with some simple, practical tools, then check out Eddie's DVD. It's a lot of fun.

I've known Eddie more than ten years. I don't have many people I consider real friends. There's like three of 'em, and he's one. Yes, he's my dear, sweet friend, and I'm so proud of him!

To quote another friend, "WOOT!"

Pushing myself out of the way

The photo is of the Carolina Chickadee nesting in our backyard. I'm not sure which it is, the female or the male. We hope they've got their clutch full by now, and are looking forward to seeing how the babies will thrive.

This morning, we chased balloons from the Kentucky Expo to the Water Tower. From there, we watched them fly over the river and land in Indiana. A gorgeous morning for the Great Balloon Rush-Hour Race. Balloons are a happy thing. Last September, we chased balloons from Bowman Field to some unsuspecting neighborhood way on the other side of town. This is a photo from that chase:

Saturday night, my Powerbook started freezing up. That lasted until yesterday, when I found the apparent cause and corrected it. (A loose Airport Extreme card.) It was more of an opportunity to obsess about something else than it being a panic problem. Because I have redundant backup systems, I wasn't worried about losing any files.

The niggling thought was that the PB failure was timely. I had promised my compadre, MBH, I would get him a copy of my play by the 25th (uh, that's today, as I write this entry). I need to get this off my plate, and give some attention to a joint project we are working on. As long as the PB didn't work properly, I could obsess about fixing it, and hold on to the play. Reluctance to let go, and all that.

Still, it's good to rest the writing mind, and focus on unrelated things. In those moments, inspiration bubbles forth, and new lines of dialog or action are created.

So, back to it. The day is early still.

Nesting

Last year someone told me if I put up a bluebird nest box, bluebirds would nest in it. Falling for the bait, I read a lot about bluebird houses, where to position them, when to put one up, how to protect it against house sparrows and snakes, and installed one in the backyard. Then we waited. We got mealworms, hoping the wiggly things would catch the bluebirds' attention.

Nearly every bird in Louisville has been in our backyard. 'Cept them bluebirds.

A few days ago, a pair of Carolina Chickadees ate up the mealworms, and moved into the nest box. These are tiny, handsome birds. In just four days, they took an empty box and built
a moss nest.

Uh, I suppose that's what is meant by "busy little bird." *ahem*

Well, I was very impressed. We're still moving furniture around.

Two days after finishing up the nest, the first egg came. Some five to eight eggs may get laid in the nest. I've calculated she should be up to three by now.

The egg is that white round thing to the left. It has red-brown spots on it. (You may have noticed, my photography skills have yet to improve.)

Okay, so Project Feederwatch is over. Now, NestWatch is on.

A year ago, we landed in Louisville. A year ago, I knew nothing about Bluebird conservation, Chickadees, moss nests, or mealworms. A year ago...

Earthquake Notes

Around 5:37 this morning, we were awakened by the house shaking. At first I thought, "must be a thunderstorm," and as the vibration wore on, I thought, "WTF, an earthquake?"

One of the reasons I left California was out of weariness of expecting the next "big one." My Higher Power has a wicked sense of humor. Honestly, I've recognized at least one other tremor in the year we've been here. They pretty much happen everywhere, don't they?  In San Francisco, tremors occur with all the time. When you grow up along a fault line, you don't freak out when there's a moderate or minor tremor.  I was cocky about it at times, too. "Oh, a 5.2? No biggie."

When you know how devastating quakes can be, however, you learn to do the best you can to prepare for one. Which means: prepare to survive as best you can during, and then afterwards. No one can telll you when a bad quake is going to hit. It's a little like guerrilla warfare. You know it's gonna hit, just not when or where exactly.

Today is the anniversary of California's 1906 earthquake. As a kid, I was taught the earthquake itself didn't do much damage. It was the fire that caused San Francisco's collapse. As an adult, I learned that the fire story was a lie, perpetuated by the real estate and business community, which was trying to prevent panic about moving to San Francisco back in the day. The fire was bad. Sill, it was the earthquake, not the fire, that set the City in ruin. Thousands of people--not hundreds as originally reported--lost their lives. Gladys Hansen set the record straight in her wonderful book, Denial of Disaster.

Denial of Disaster was published shortly after the Loma Prieta quake of 1989. Oddly, this book helped me through some my post-traumatic stress from that '89 quake.

Years later, I studied screenwriting with James Dalessandro, who wrote a novel about 1906. He made a pretty good documentary about the quake, too, The Damnedest Finest Ruins. Brad Bird is directing the film of James' novel.

Fortunately, in today's quake, centered in Illinois at 5.2 magnitude, no one was hurt, no real damage sustained. It was a little tough watching the news people here who did not know how to report the quake. Uh, folks, we don't call the police when an earthquake hits. We call the USGS.

Folks here love to talk about the pending big one expected along the New Madrid fault. That fault line throws out a magnitude 6.0 or greater every 80 years. It's over due. People talk about this pending quake like it's a source of pride, or it's some kind of weird contest with California. No one seems prepared for it.

Yeah, I'm a little cranky today.

I'm prepared, too.

Notebooks

Started a year ago or so, it's new to me, blackcover.net discusses the quest for perfect little black notebook. Now I'm trying to figure out which of my international traveling friends I can talk into bringing me back an Alwych or a Stifflexible notebook.

Until then, the Miguelruis still rules.