Sharing It & Adulting | Communication

Why hello! Here are my October and November newsletters, which go into different issues we might face when crafting our stories or working creatively in general. They also have writing prompts and updates on my goings-on.

Sharing It & Adulting

Communication

Have a great rest of November!

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For every-other-month writings on creativity, writing prompts, and updates on the goings-on of my solo shows, film, workshops, acting gigs, and more, subscribe to my newsletter.

Thank you for reading my fortieth post! I love your comments! Please feel free to leave one below.

You Can Fix It

Did your show get a lackluster response at your first reading for trusted theatre friends?

Or have you not given the reading yet because every time you look at the script all you see are insurmountable problems?

You can fix it.

I’ve watched all four seasons of “Black Sails” over the last year. Season 1 had so many flaws that I literally forced myself to finish it only because someone I trust insisted that the show would improve tremendously in Season 2. It did and continued to do so with each season. It stopped depicting some characters as two-dimensional and disposable and began depicting characters from vastly different backgrounds as complex and recognizably human. No show is perfect but some speeches in this one were uniquely gorgeous. So if a TV show with serious flaws can turn itself around under the pressure of deadlines and ratings and corporate “mainstream” demands, then you can fix your solo show, without a network breathing down your neck and a whole lotta people’s jobs on the line. Thank goodness.

Some tips on how to fix your script:

1. Do you have a scene that includes a lot of ruminating, opining, venting, etc.? One that reads like a well written journal? Delete that sucker. You can keep the part in which you’re depicting behavior or something active that moves the plot forward or enriches the theme, but remove the part that reads like a…blog. I bet all that writing could be distilled into one narrative sentence or line of dialogue, and your delivery will give it more than enough substance.
2. Is there a recurring character who comes across as the Bad Guy or the Good Guy? One way to improve any script is by making sure that every character is prismatic or at least unpredictable at one point. That includes the character of you. If you’re a lovable victim or hero throughout your show, you’ve got a problem. Luckily, it’s easy to fix. Add a scene or two in which you’re the most flawed character in the play. Now your audience will believe you.
3. Work on another script for the sheer fun of it. As I mentioned in a previous post, when I didn’t know how to fix my current script, I started a new one with a goofy premise that made me giggle. It revived my muse and I ultimately realized that I could combine the two scripts, which made all the difference.
4. Walk away for at least two weeks. It’s okay, you can work on the “fun” script or another creative project that doesn’t fill you with dread/despair in the meantime. It can be tiny: a doodle a day, or a one-line poem, or a single photograph, whatever. You can also take a real break and just absorb other artists’ work. They may inspire you.
   When you come back to your piece after the break, it will be easier to see what can go, what can be enhanced, and what can be restructured. If you decide that only 5% can stay, that’s okay. Every moment you spent on it was valuable because you were making something. Imagine if you’d spent that time destroying something, or doing something you hate, or passively letting your life drift by.
   Naw. We’re here to create. As Martha Graham so famously said, “It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.” That is how we connect, as artists.
5. Set a timer to work on it for 20 minutes at a time, tops. I’ve fixed entire scenes in less time than that, especially after taking a break from working on the script. You do not have to give up an entire three-day holiday or spend 3-6 hours per day/night on it. Er, unless you’re on a deadline. The good news is: that deadline will arrive no matter what and it’s getting closer every minute…so the crunch will be over soon and then you can go back to 20-minute writing sessions when you revise. Woohoo!

Another tip: keep copies of each daily draft. I rename every single day’s work with the current date, so I can always go back to a previous date to find something I might have deleted or changed. Yes, this means I have a gajillion files for one script, but it also means I never lose anything I write.

You can also turn on the “show markups” option, but I find that that ends up looking too “busy” and confusing.

Do what works for you.

Always remember: your creative work matters. Every moment that you devote to it is productive and good. Better to have spent 10 minutes creating than several hours destroying/wasting/not-even-trying. The world is a better place for it, and I thank you.

BONUS: This talk is encouraging for anyone trying to make something. It also validates my point about spending less time on something while still working on it regularly.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Artists by Andrew Price

[Edited 4/11/17. -EL]

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Announcement: I’ve set my workshop schedule for the rest of 2017. Take a look! Click on “click for more” under “Group Solo Show & Memoir Workshops.”

Thank you for reading my twenty-second post! I love your comments! Please feel free to leave one below.

To Commit or Not To Commit

Progress! I gave my first two readings of the new show to trusted theatre friends and they didn’t look pained or embarrassed afterward. On the contrary, more than half were very enthusiastic, and the rest were encouraging. They all gave specific feedback, which I have been implementing into the script.

Must say I’m relieved. This new show has an element that is so quirky-weird, I was afraid that it would be off-putting to my first listeners. But that’s the element many of them liked the most!

It goes to show: as creators observing our own work, everything is in our heads until we have an audience or readership. We have to commit to sharing our work with people we trust so that the work can truly evolve.

Of course, I still have work to do. Writing and creating are mostly revision—but we knew that.

Now I’m trying to decide if I want to perform this show at a local fringe festival. The deadline to be included in their guide is at the end of the month. This fest might be the perfect debut for this particular show.

On the other hand: festivals cost money—venue rental, insurance, crew’s fees, PR, etc.

On the bright side: I envision this show having minimal production values. So I don’t have to worry about a lot of design elements and cues overwhelming our tech rehearsals, which happened with my first show. (I love that show’s design elements. The world premiere was beautifully lit and the projections and audio effects enhanced it subtly yet wonderfully—but it makes for long tech rehearsals when I go on tour. I’m ready for a minimalist approach this time.)

Most importantly: if I register with this fest, the new show will have to be ready by June. That’s right around the bend! I would need to start pre-production (hiring director and crew, renting the space, and more) right now.

I believe that I could have the script ready by June, but in order to be performance-ready, I’d have to spend all of May rehearsing the show, which means the script would need to be 90% ready by the end of April. (New solo-show scripts are tweaked and improved in rehearsal because the director also acts as a dramaturg.)

Meanwhile, I’m eyeballs-deep in post-production on the digital version of my first show. I want it to be available on DVD and streamable online by May. Could I do that and improve the new show’s script and start pre-production on that show in time for a June festival?

Hm.

Well, I’m giving myself until the end of March to decide. Whether or not I register with this fest, I will make myself accountable with this promise: I will perform the new show for a paying audience in 2017. (Gah!)

Speaking of accountability, I kept the promise I made in my last post! I rearranged the box and container that hold lots of future-projects material and stuck pretty labels onto them to remind me that there’s magic inside.

It worked! Now when I look at them I feel a warm inclination to use that material in the future. No more guilt.

This blog entry is more stream-of-consciousness than usual, so I’m wary of hitting “Publish,” but I’m going to post it as an example of committing to something outside of one’s comfort zone. After all, the entry itself is about commitment and the balancing act of making the choice: do I or don’t I and why?

I hope that you will take leaps of faith to further your creative output. And if you hedge like I did above over the fest, I recommend that you commit to furthering that output by a certain deadline.

I’ll never stop saying it: deadlines are beacons. They only help us to keep our promises. May you keep yours to fulfill your creative commitment(s) this year.

BONUS: Lovely, short guided meditations—a couple of which are only three (3) minutes long (!)—can help when we’re feeling uncertain:

Free Guided Meditations from the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center

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Thank you for reading my twenty-first post! I love your comments! Please feel free to leave one below.

The In-Between Time

Have you been going through a fallow period, bookings-wise? Perhaps you’re waiting for your first paid booking since you self-produced your show in a tiny black-box theatre a while back. Or perhaps your bookings were snowballing…and then came to an unexpected rest. Or perhaps you’ve only had bookings in fits and starts all along.

What to do during this time when it’s a matter of several months? Here are some tips for keeping your creative juices flowing and your spirits up:

1. Start every day doing something creative. It’s your calling, isn’t it? In my case, I work on my next show. If I begin the day that way, even if it’s only for 20 minutes to reread and tweak a single scene, it transforms the day. Most days I have to work on uninspiring, tedious administration and marketing and blahblahblah. But when I begin the day working on what I love, I always feel that my day was well spent no matter what else I did, because I pursued my purpose first.

Full disclosure: I’m writing this as a reminder to myself, having floundered in this area of late. For the past few weeks, I was just doing the necessary but boring uncreative stuff and wondering why I was feeling low. Today I finally looked at my next show’s latest draft, which needs a lot of work…and the day felt brighter. No matter what I do or don’t accomplish today, I’ll have begun the day right.

Now, you may have a day job or hold several part-time jobs in order to make ends meet. Perhaps your workdays start early, so the thought of waking up even earlier to work on something creative may feel oppressive, because you love and need your sleep. I feel you—I’m not a morning person myself. Thus I recommend doing the creative work whenever you can…but try to do it several times per week. Give yourself permission to only work for 10 minutes if that’s all you’ve got. You can write an entire scene in that time.

I rewrote the first draft of my first show late at night because I had several part-time jobs at the time. While I had more than 10 minutes, it could still take a while to get going—I’d sit down to write at 9:30pm but only begin at 11pm. (The void of Facebook.) It didn’t matter. I got it done and have no regrets about how or when I worked on it because I now have a show and it’s gone places.

So keep creating during this period between bookings. Even a doodle a day can lift the spirits and keep your creativity alive.

2. Set a timer for your creative work. By now we all know that boundaries/limits/ parameters increase creative output—they don’t decrease it. Your brain will find ways to transcend limits if it has to. If it doesn’t have to, it may just become distracted by social media or the laundry.

Setting a timer works like gangbusters for me. If I set a timer to work on my new show for one hour, I will accomplish more in that hour than I would if I gave myself an open-ended stretch during which to create. It’s too easy to check my email when I don’t have a time limit. I’ve used an old-fashioned kitchen timer; the Pomodoro app; and online timers that can be found via Google. (Try it: Google “20 minute timer.”)

A time limit has many emotional similarities to a deadline. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I consider deadlines to be invaluable to the creative process.

3. Take care of yourself. I know it’s obvious, but some of us can get a bit slack with this, especially when we feel like we’re in limbo. Drink enough water, move your body regularly, go appreciate someone else’s artistic output at a museum or theatre or wherever you find inspiration, eat your fruits and veggies, meditate (there are some terrific three-minute meditations out there)…you know the drill.

I must add: do the healthy things that you enjoy. If drinking water bores you then pour in a dollop of juice—it’s not Sugar City if it’s just a dollop. If there’s only one kind of exercise you like, and it involves strolling with a pet, that counts. If you’re going through a phase during which you can’t bear to look at something emotionally painful (like Picasso’s Guernica) then look for art that gives you solace (like music that soothes or cheers you up). If a Sorolla exhibit comes to your neck of the woods, I can’t recommend his paintings of people at the beach highly enough. Instant cheer-up! (They don’t “translate” on a computer screen, so if you Google him, the images likely won’t do much for you, unfortunately.)

This entire year I’ve been working hard at taking good physical care of myself due to a lower back injury. I’m not in pain—it’s mostly just irritating—but it’s a longtime problem that needs to be resolved. So I’ve been doing everything I can to heal for some time now—chiropractic, acupuncture, cupping, special exercises, icing my back, avoiding sitting for more than 20 minutes at a time, etc. I think the past six months without bookings has been a necessary respite. Performing my show always exacerbates the problem, even though I’ve completely modified the blocking to accommodate my back. So six months off has likely been the best thing for my body in terms of healing.

This period between bookings will likely end. Meanwhile, you’ll have honored your creativity and perhaps even drafted a new show…which you’ll want to workshop for theatre friends you trust…which will get the ball rolling for a whole new production!

Just keep making things. That’s the stuff of life.

BONUS: An excellent article on how persistence, patience, and continuing to create can pay off in the end.

• Keep Making Things by Sam S. Mullins
  

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Thank you for reading my seventeenth post! I love your comments, so if you would like to leave one, but don’t see a “Leave a Reply” box below, scroll to the top and click on “Leave a Comment” or “# Comments” under the post title.

How To Choose

Have you amassed enough material for your show to create a nine-part miniseries?

Does it feel like every scene and character is vital because It’s Your Life And Every Bit Of It Made You Who You Are And You’ve Got To Honor All Of It So It’s Impossible To Choose?

And have you made sure that everything is thematically connected so there are no obvious scenes to cut? (If the answer is no, I highly recommend Alicia Dattner’s excellent posts on how to make sure of this: here and here.)

Meanwhile, do you know in your head and heart that you must make cuts, if for no other reason than that you don’t want to learn 15 hours’ worth of lines…but you’re stumped on how to edit the piece?

Here are my tips on how to choose which scenes to keep in your show:

1. Create an outline of it.

• You should be able to eyeball the list of scenes on a few pages instead of having to flip through the whole script.

2. In the margin, write the theme for each scene next to the scene’s heading.

• Examples: family dynamics, addiction, miscommunication, developing self respect, and so on. You know your themes best.
• The themes should have a common thread, which is the overarching theme. Again, if they don’t, click on the links above to learn how to make it happen.
  • Example: my show’s overarching theme is How Displacement Can Affect Identity. (The logline is a lot catchier: Who Are You When You’re from Everywhere and Nowhere?)
• Each scene’s theme is actually a subtheme of the show’s overarching one.
  • Example: my show touches on race, language, gender, nationality, culture, religion, and location. These are subthemes of the overarching displacement-and-identity theme of my story.

3. Count how many times a subtheme comes up.

4. If a subtheme pops up five or more times, cull those instances down to between one and three. (Four, tops.)

• Each instance should feature a different facet of the subtheme.
  • Examples: in one scene of my show, characters think I’m adopted when they see me with my biological mom. In another scene, my classmates bully me over what they perceive to be my race. In another, I lose friends who misunderstand something I say about race. In another, a stranger denies part of my racial heritage to my face.
    • These moments are separated by many other scenes in the show. They serve as echoes rather than duplicates, and they highlight the fact that race has been a recurring personal issue throughout my life in different ways. Some moments are played for laughs and some are serious.
• You can, of course, duplicate a moment if it was repeated in the same way throughout your life and that’s your point. But be sparing: the audience doesn’t need to witness it more than a few times if it’s exactly—or almost exactly—the same each time.
  • Duplicate moments are best kept short. A single sentence, a gesture, or a combination of the two will do.

5. If your subthemes have already been culled but the show is still way too long, here’s my tried-and-true dirty secret method for choosing what to keep: present a 60-minute version of your show to an actual audience.

• The deadline should be non-negotiable. It can come from a class, a workshop, or your own small gathering of trusted theatre friends whom you’ve invited to watch the hourlong version in your living room. If it’s the latter: you must feed them and you may not mess with their schedules by backing out or delaying. This is real.
• Wait until midnight-ish the night before the presentation.
• Stand in your living room in your pajamas, cursing and sweating, holding a pen and a hard copy of the outline, and on anxious, irritable, possibly even belligerent instinct: circle the scenes you think could have the most impact on the audience. (Note: impact doesn’t have to equal fervor. A quiet moment can have great impact.)
  • If you’re convinced that all the scenes have equal impact, then choose randomly.
    • You read that right.
    • Yup. It’s how I did it.
    • It’s ok. You’re not carving this on stone tablets. You’re just trying something out for tomorrow’s (today’s! it’s past midnight!) presentation.
    • You will find out in less than 24 hours if the 60-minute version works overall, and what can stay or go.
    • You can add scenes back and delete others after this. We’re not writing in blood on sacred papyrus here.

In other words, when push comes to shove: just make choices and try them. Figuratively speaking, you’re throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. (It’s good spaghetti, so calm down. I honor your spaghetti.)

When you’re in rehearsal for the world premiere, your director will be an excellent dramaturg if they’re worth their salt, and that will make an enormous difference. But for now, try the above.

Let me know how this works for you. I hope you come away with a shorter, performable draft of your show that you feel good about. I would love to see it.

BONUS: In this video, This American Life’s Ira Glass gives excellent advice on storytelling for radio, much of which can be applied to solo shows:

• Ira Glass on Storytelling

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Announcement: I’m leading new solo show and memoir workshops in August and September. Give me a holler here if interested.

Thank you for reading my fourteenth post! I love your comments, so if you would like to leave one, but don’t see a “Leave a Reply” box below, scroll to the top and click on “Leave a Comment” or “# Comments” under the post title.

From Defeat to Celebration

I did it. I finished the first draft of my next show.

Such relief. So much more oxygen. Deep breath, and EXhale….

I did it by blending the second and third shows that I was working on. I just couldn’t crack the nut of the second show, even after feeling galvanized and recommitting to it, as I described in my third blog post. I restarted on a high note that steadily devolved into a broken croak.  Soon I was dreading working on the show.

Despondency followed. (Again.)

Finally it dawned on me: I don’t think I’m supposed to feel miserable every time I touch this (or any) creative project. Of course the creative process can be frustrating and daunting—especially when you’re working “on spec” (not getting paid to do it)—but I don’t believe I’m supposed to feel depressed and vanquished by it, when creative expression is so paramount for me and the life I’ve chosen.

So I gave myself permission to work exclusively on the third show, the quirky one, the one that makes me squirm with embarrassment while giggling helplessly. I always looked forward to working on it. I tackled it for at least an hour, Monday through Friday, for a few weeks.

While I was working on it, I realized that some of the themes in my second show were emerging in this third one—but in fictional-and-therefore-at-a-remove, rather than personally painful, ways. If I could find a way to tie the two shows together, I could finally complete the second show with excitement rather than dread.

It took some doing, but every time I got stymied, I’d just write another scene with the type of fictional dialogue that was originally exclusive to the third show. And then I’d take a painful piece on the same theme from the second show and put them side by side. So now, scenes from the third show are like an entertaining guide and introduction to the more intense, real scenes from the second show. Whether or not this will work for an audience remains to be seen—I’m not at that point in the creative process yet. But this tactic helped me to complete the first draft of the second show—this and my tried-and-true tactic of setting a hard deadline. Between my enthusiasm and the deadline, I was both inspired and galvanized to devote more hours to working on the show each day, and I completed the task. As I mentioned in my last post, that is cause for celebration!

Before I go into the celebratory details, I’ll delineate what comes next in the process of creating this show. As I said in my second post, this blog is not a step-by-step guide on how to create a solo show, but I do want to give you a sense of how the editing process works for me:

1. Print hard copy of first draft and read in one sitting
   • Make notes/revisions on printout during and after reading
2. Incorporate edits into digital version
   • Also make any spontaneous revisions during this process
   • Print it out. (It’s now the second draft.)
3. Read it aloud on my feet and follow any physical and/or editorial impulses while video recording myself
4. Watch video while making notes on hard copy
5. Incorporate edits into digital version and transcribe any impulses that were followed
   • Also make any spontaneous revisions based on what I now think needs to be cut, expanded, moved, rewritten entirely, added
   • Print it out. (It’s now the third draft.)
6. Repeat #3 through #5. (It’s now the fourth draft.)
7. Create outline of script, including every scene
8. IMPROVISE THE WHOLE THING, never reading script, just glancing at outline while video recording myself
9. Watch video and transcribe all newly worded sections—which may be 90% of the script. THAT’S OKAY. The way I spontaneously verbalize in real life is more immediate and effective than any nicely written wordy scene that sounds like an essay being delivered aloud. My brain will be able to memorize those improvised lines more easily than the essay-ish ones. Also, the audience will be able to grasp my meaning more easily because it will be more conversational vs. intellectual. As Terrie Silverman says: the improvised version is the true edit. (She’s right. It made all the difference to my first show.)
   • Print it out. (It’s now the fifth draft.)
10. Present a staged reading of the fifth draft for theatre-professional friends in my living room.
    • Serve them food beforehand and wine after.
    • Ask them specific questions for applicable feedback—never “Did you like it?” More like: “Did the structure work or would you order scenes differently?” “Any scenes too long/short?” “Any scene unnecessary?” “Was there anything you wanted to know more about?”

This is just my process. Yours might be different—you might improvise everything from the start and transcribe several iterations. Regardless, what comes next in my process is not what I’m going to concentrate on now.

Right now, I’m going to celebrate my achievement. Will it be by pampering myself with a professional manicure? Watching a movie I’ve been dying to see? Starting to read a book I’m excited about? Binge-watching five episodes of a TV show?  Buying myself a new fancy wallet? (My current one is bedraggled.) Taking my husband and me out to our favorite taco joint? The possibilities are endless. The only rule I will follow is this: I will do something that feels like a real and kind reward. I earned it.

We all earn it—every time we finish a draft, meet a deadline, take a step toward the creative goal. Every single time. And that celebration, of course, is part of the process.

BONUS: One of my favorite inspirations, as well as a lovely way to celebrate an achievement, large or small:

• Poetry by Mary Oliver (I especially love “Wild Geese,” “The Swan,” and “Where Does the Dance Begin, Where Does It End?”)

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Thank you for reading my sixth post! I would love to know what attracted you to this blog. If you would like to leave a comment, but don’t see a “Leave a Reply” box below, scroll to the top and click on “Leave a Comment” or “# Comments” under the post title.

Overcoming Resistance

Are you feeling resistant to working on your solo show? Some tips:

1.  Try doing another creative task when you “should” be creating your show.  This works for me like gangbusters.

• As I mentioned in my last post, I tricked myself into writing my first solo show by writing an essay about the show. So I began the process under less pressure—the real pressure was on writing the essay.
• In the midst of taking a six-month solo show master class, I wrote another essay with a pressing deadline. As soon as I finished it, I hustled to make the class’s next deadline as well.
  • I’ll keep alluding to it in almost every post: a deadline is a beacon. Sail your ship (show) to that light. It’s like a homecoming: you want to get there, and not too late.
• I was supposed to work on this blog yesterday, but I worked on my second show instead. I was supposed to work on my second show today, and I’m working on this blog instead. Apparently I have a need to thwart my own authority. Rebellion via creation! Or is it the other way around? Regardless: by golly, it works.

2.  You may think you’re resisting when in fact you’re doing exactly what you need to do. For instance, if you were “supposed” to write a new scene but found yourself making an outline of the show instead, I’m betting that that outline will be helpful to you in the long run. The new scene may need to gestate while you look at the big picture (the outline).

• If you work on something unplanned yet related to your show (like an outline), and you think This is chaos, what am I doing?!… Congratulations! You are entrenched in the sometimes rocky, baffling, flying blind, hanging-by-a-fingernail process of solo show creation! Well done! And if you’re trying to see the big picture, then there’s a good chance you’re going to have an actual show, even if it seems like a jumbled mess right now.
• Validate your work by circling every scene/idea you like/love/have-hope-for. You created it. It was worth every second of work/imagination that went into it.

3.  No act of creation is wasted. Every element of your show that seems out of place/unnecessary/incomplete/lousy needed to be generated. It’ll be reworked or discarded, but your current draft is supposed to include material that never makes it into the final draft. The show is like a clay sculpture: everything you write/improvise constitutes the clay; everything you edit shapes the sculpture. Can’t sculpt without the clay.

4.  Are you resisting by not working on any creative project? Maybe you’re overwhelmed by the next step. So: break the next step down to its smallest component.

• Want to write a scene? In the space of two minutes (not one second more—set a timer!), write anything that comes to mind for that scene: character(s), topic, dialogue, anything. Stop when the timer goes off. You’re done for today unless you want to do more. I’m serious.

5.  Celebrate every achievement during this process, large or small.

•  Wrote a new scene? Call a dear friend. Improvised a three-minute bit while recording it on your laptop? Read a cherished poem or book chapter. Met a deadline? Take yourself to the movies or watch a treasured DVD/blu-ray.
  • Obviously, these are just random suggestions—please do what feels like celebration to you. Anything that feels like a reward that’s easy and kind: do it.
  • The quality of the achievement is irrelevant at this point. Just celebrate the fact that you completed a task.

You may be more disciplined (and better adjusted) than I am and need none of the tips above. This is only a good thing. Celebrate it! However, if you’re like me, then you’re not alone. Celebrate that!

BONUS: One of my favorite pieces of writing on getting out of your own way to write/create:

• Write Like a Motherfucker by Cheryl Strayed, in response to a letter sent to her at The Rumpus’s “Dear Sugar” column.

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Thank you for reading my fifth post! I would love to know what attracted you to this blog. If you would like to leave a comment, but don’t see a “Leave a Reply” box below, scroll to the top and click on “Leave a Comment” or “# Comments” under the post title.

Baby Steps

I’m a huge believer in breaking an overwhelming task down into manageable, easy, you-might-even-look-forward-to-doing-them chunks. Some tips:

1. If you’re not in the habit of creative writing, write for only an hour per week. (Yup.) And if you’re not taking a workshop/class for solo shows, I recommend finding a writing buddy. You’ll each work on your own stuff, but you’ll agree to meet once per week at a coffeehouse or library or wherever—it doesn’t matter as long as it’s a place where you can concentrate.
   • When I started working on my first show, I was utterly out of the writing habit. So once per week I met with a friend who was working on a novel. We would spend the first 20-30 minutes catching up and then we would write for an hour. At the 59-minute mark my writing impulse/ability would shut down because I was so out of the habit. Then my friend and I would spend another 30-60 minutes talking about whatever. She was as out of practice with writing as I was so it worked out well.
   • Those hourlong writing sessions led to my completing an essay about writing my show. (The “excerpts” in the essay were the first pieces I wrote for the show.) After that, I kept working on the show itself and ultimately came to perform it…but I wouldn’t have a show at all if I hadn’t met with my friend to write for an hour a week in the very beginning.

2. Develop a 10-15-minute segment that you can take to storytelling venues. You can start even smaller and just perform it for friends in your own home, which is what I did. Before I had a (godawful) full-length first draft, I had 12 minutes that I showed to theatre friends in my living room. Thanks to their encouragement, I took those 12 minutes to two festivals. Then I wrote the rest of the show, then completely rewrote it, then kept tweaking it in rehearsal with my director’s help, and then premiered it. But the final version only exists because of those 12 minutes in my living room, which only existed because…you get the picture.

3. The bite-sized chunks need deadlines. (I’ll always urge you to work with deadlines.) For instance, my first show was created in these chunks with these deadlines in this order:

• I had to complete the essay (with “excerpts from the show”) in time to submit for consideration for inclusion in an anthology. (It was accepted, which was wonderful, but it might just as easily not have been. I was gonna meet the deadline, regardless.)
• I had to have 12 minutes of my show ready to perform at a festival.
• I had to complete the (horrid) first full-length draft in time to submit to a playwriting competition. It didn’t even make it to the semi-finals (it really was terrible), but it led to my being offered a scholarship to a playwriting class.
• I had to have 30-ish minutes of okay-to-good material ready for a staged reading at the end of that playwriting class.
• I had to have a solid, performable full-length draft ready for a staged reading at the end of a six-month solo show master class.

4. Just concentrate on each chunk instead of worrying about the distance to your ultimate goal. Everybody works at different paces. I have a colleague who wrote a kick-ass solo show in six months. My show, on the other hand, took a few years. Please don’t worry about the time it takes compared to someone else. Worry about the chunks, each one of which will be an achievement worth celebrating. Each one will give you the courage to take the next step.

5. The chunks and their deadlines are determined by contests, festivals, workshops/classes, and calls for submissions. You can find them on listservs, Facebook Groups, even email messages that are serendipitously forwarded to you—all for writers or performers or “creative types”…or people who have a certain kind of story in common. Go for the ones that excite you. Many may scare you but the ones that make your heart beat a little faster in a good way (alongside the not-so-pleasant fear) are the ones to focus on.

• Don’t rely on friends to set deadlines for you. You may come to resent them. Let your friends be your friends while the contests/festivals/ workshops/calls-for-submissions are the bona fide deadline setters.

BONUS: A link to one of my favorite books on overcoming resistance and creating your art:

•  The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. (I came across it via this link that you might also find helpful: The 5 Essential Books You Need to Write Your Essay or Solo Show by James Judd. Full disclosure: I haven’t read all of the books in that list.)

Restart

I’m writing my second solo show. And my third. I got so stymied on my second one that I opted to abandon it temporarily and work on a third that my husband encouraged me to write because it’s about something funny-embarrassing-unusual—let’s call it quirky. My first show was autobiographical and included some painful stuff; my second does, too; so the third one is a nice break from potential angst.

The second one has been bringing up my junk, as storytelling coach Terrie Silverman would put it.

The third one’s first pages flew onto the laptop screen when I couldn’t bear to touch the second one, and they made me grin and snort. I was having fun writing fictional dialogue, because that’s how I want to begin the third show, before I go into personal narrative about something that embarrasses me yet I think/hope will make people laugh…which is not something that should concern me during the creation process. I do best when I forget “the audience” and write stuff that makes me laugh. At least one person will enjoy it, guaranteed! Meanwhile, there’s no guarantee that there will be an audience beyond my closest friends, even given my first show’s positive trajectory. And yet…I mention the audience because I want to be honest here. I have hopes for all of my projects when I’m creating them. Those hopes can be motivating, but only up to a point, after which it’s just me doing the work for one of two reasons:

• I’m feeling accountable (to a class, a deadline, etc.), or
• I’m actually feeling engaged in the creation process.

Full disclosure: I wrote most of the above in April. I’ve since worked on both the second and third shows intermittently while taking long breaks to tour my first show. The breaks have been long because a lot of time was devoted to the following:

• communicating with each venue liaison and/or technical director as each booking date loomed
• rehearsing the show to get it back on its feet or keep it sharp
• “teching” and performing it
• traveling back and forth, and
• recovering—it takes me a full week to recover from travel+performance+travel. I’ll write more about that in another post.

Anyway, I wanted to write the third solo show because it made me happy. Unlike the second one, which made me want to go all fetal and whimpering.

I couldn’t decide if the second one wasn’t ready to be written or if I had just reached the second step of writing a solo show, a.k.a. The Hard Part. The Hard Part is not rewriting (though that can be hard!). The Hard Part is rereading what you’ve got after a month and realizing that 90% doesn’t work but you’re not sure why and you’re not sure what to cut and you’re pretty sure you have more to say and you want to make it good and it doesn’t seem possible and how are you going to end this thing, anyway? (Seriously: what’s the ending?!?) And maybe you can’t meld those three themes, maybe they have to be separated into three shows, or maybe you’re just being slow witted about it, or maybe you’re repeating your first show without realizing it or writing a sucky sequel, or maybe This Time You Really Are Not That Interesting. So if you’re me, you get stuck…especially if the one person with whom you’ve shared the work thinks it needs a huge overhaul. If you trust this person (I do), then the piece might suddenly look like Pacaya.

No wonder I started working on something else, something that made me giggle.

By the way, I never intend to write a show that hurts. I always intend to tell a good true story and make people laugh. I usually manage the latter when I perform my first show, but this seems to be secondary to making people remember instances of loss or hurt in their own lives. And the discombobulating thing is: they often thank me afterward. So it seems to be therapeutic and cathartic for a lot of folks, which is deeply gratifying—I’m so glad it’s helping people. But the selfish part of me wishes I could have written it in a way that guaranteed laughter throughout. Selfish because I’m all alone up there and when they laugh I know they’re following along. And as any comedian will tell you, an audience’s appreciative/delighted laughter feels like love to the performer. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like feeling loved.

When the audience is silent it can be hard to tell if they’re listening intently and absorbing, or only partially listening while resisting and judging, or just feeling bored. Some audiences barely chuckle. Others crack up regularly. Most are somewhere in between.

Back to the second show: I know now that back in April (and May and June) I had simply reached The Hard Part. I’m feeling ready to dive in again, thanks to the fantastic theatre conference I attended in Cape Town, South Africa. When you hear:

• panelists discuss the Protest theatre they were all creating in the 1980s, making art that changed their country’s trajectory in solidarity against the Apartheid government;
• the opening keynote speaker reference brilliant playwrights you’ve heard of and African ones you haven’t, and are reminded of the breadth of good work there is out there that isn’t getting international recognition, but is enhancing lives locally;
• the closing keynote speaker mention the tremendous backlash she experienced when she and her fellow writers shared their work about being women who enjoyed sex;
• your fellow playwrights talk about the very real censorship they’ve experienced as artists in Uganda, Zimbabwe, Chile…

…you may end up feeling galvanized to finish your second show, because you’re so lucky to be able to create it in a safe environment in the first place. And if you’re in a hostile environment, then hopefully your fellow artists’ courage and tenacity will galvanize you, too, and you’ll find allies.

So, for me: creating the second show may bring up my junk, but it will also purge it, and I know that alongside any grief, acrimony, shame, and bewilderment: I will find humor, surprises, grace, bemusement, solace, and delight. And that is likely to be a story worth sharing.

BONUS: One of my favorite Brain Pickings posts—very helpful to anyone creating a solo show, whether the first or the 50th.

• Dani Shapiro on Vulnerability, the Creative Impulse, the Writing Life, and How to Live with Presence by Maria Popova

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Thank you for reading my third post! I would love to know what attracted you to this blog. If you would like to leave a comment, but don’t see a “Leave a Reply” box below, scroll to the top and click on “Leave a Comment” or “# Comments” under the post title.

Writing Your First Solo Show

First of all: wonderful!
And: courage!
Not to mention: yoiks!
And finally: YES.

You’re embarking on one of the greatest adventures a person can take. It will be a roller coaster, a swamp slog, a winged flight, a quicksand sink, a melancholy stroll, a thrill ride, a gory brawl, a hilarious road trip with friends, a lonely trudge, and a journey of a thousand metaphorical miles…that are absolutely worth walking.

Five major tips I can give you as a person who wrote, produced, and acts in her own one-woman show and has managed to tour it around the USA and three continents:

1.  Write down the reason(s) that you want to create this show. Every possible reason is valid. Then write a short, straightforward version on the back of a business card*  and place the card where you can see it every time you work on the show. Here’s my card for my first show–I propped it against my laptop stand:

2.  Deadlines will save you. A call for submissions, a contest, a class that assigns work due by particular dates, will all help you to make progress. If you’re someone who is most accountable toward others, then I recommend you take a class in which the instructor and your classmates will expect to experience your work each week. A class in which you must present a complete rough draft of the whole piece (or a whole scene) in the last session can make all the difference.

3.  Your classmates are a precious source of courage and tenacity if you do take a workshop or class. When I was writing my first show I took two workshops—one for playwriting and one for solo shows—and while both instructors gave valuable feedback and instruction, the gold of those classes were my classmates. Watching them be brave and share their work every single week made it impossible for me to hang back and hide. I watched them make progress, stumble, fall, get up, stumble again, and fly as they presented that week’s work…which gave me the impetus and stamina to keep working on my show. Almost every week I’d find myself thinking, “If s/he’s brave enough to share that, and the sky hasn’t fallen, then maybe I can share my story about ____,” or “If s/he can fail to engage us this week after doing amazing work for the past month, then my ‘failures’ are likely temporary, too…and just as important as the victories.” Above all, I learned from my classmates: about storytelling and about living.

4.  Listen to all feedback. From classmates, instructors, trusted colleagues for whom you workshop segments of your show, and your director. They may say things you don’t agree with, but that will help you to clarify your intent with that scene or character. You cannot see/hear your own work. Even watching it on video isn’t the same as being another human with their own perspective. If more than one person says they want to know more about ___, or wants you to slow down, or doesn’t know why that scene is in the show, etc., listen to them. Experiment with their suggestions. You may need to rewrite or cut something, or just perform it differently. Sometimes a long sentence can be replaced with a physical gesture that is more immediate and effective. If you trust someone’s feedback even when you don’t fully understand it, you may come to understand it over time—sometimes you have to do something repeatedly for it to click. (And if that moment never comes, then, of course: do it the way that feels justified to you.)

5.  Your director is also your dramaturg. You may feel wedded to certain scenes or to the order in which you’ve placed them, but you must listen to your director’s feedback about the text and structure, not just the performance. Give your director credit for her/his dramaturgy. The greatest things my director, Sofie Calderon, did for me:

1. She made me justify everything that she wanted me to change or toss if I was stubbornly holding onto it. I had to rewrite it or perform it in such a way that it moved the story forward, or gave it rich, fun detail. If I couldn’t make it worthy in her eyes it had to go.
2. She made me use my whole body and the whole stage. I couldn’t just stand there and mumble, which was my instinct, because I was petrified even after decades of acting. (If you and your director are taking the Spaulding Gray sitting-behind-a-desk approach, this tip is not applicable, of course.)

*I got the business card idea from superb writer/editor/coach Terri Wagener.

BONUS: A gajillion websites and articles have been helpful to me on this journey. I’ll share at least one with each blog post. Take what works for you, discard the rest, as with any advice.

• Rise and shine: the daily routines of history’s most creative minds by Oliver Burkeman [The Guardian review (including edited extracts) of Daily Rituals by Mason Currey] 

Thank you for reading my first post! If you would like to leave a comment, but don’t see a “Leave a Reply” box below, scroll to the top and click on “Leave a Comment” under the post title.