More about what I'm doing and why I'm doing it

When I insist (for some reason) that I'm not going to talk about the play I'm writing on this blog, I mean mostly that I'm not going to share the play itself. I will share updates about its progress. Like I'm going to do right now.

"What you describe is the single most important practice an aspiring writer can learn. It is, literally if you will, the make or break fact of the aspiring writer’s life: you either have or do not have the capacity to maintain a daily writing routine—same time, for the same amount of time, producing roughly the same quantity of words." ---Michael Ruhlman to The Amateur Gourmet

I'm the president of Witness Theater, a (nonreligious) student theater group at JHU. We produce about 3 showcases of student-written one-act plays a year, and one student-written full-length. I'm hoping to have a full-length ready to submit by Nov. 25; I started writing on Oct. 25.

I read the above-quoted interview and it scared me very much. I find many food/tv personalities scary (I have dreams where Alton Brown is mean to me), and Michael Ruhlman is my newest phobia. He's from Cleveland too. I just want him to love me.

So I've resolved to prove that I have the capacity to work at writing like it's my job; this blog is part of that effort.

I have not been a good boy so far. I intend to wake up at 9 every day and shuffle to my writing table (AKA the kitchen table). Not easy; see Fig. 1:

Good intentions<------------------------------------------->Good deeds

Fig. 1: Please note that they are far apart.

I have, however, written some of my play every day. Actually so far it's been transcribing the ideas that I already had which, for some reason, I had decided to sit on. I sometimes think it works to hold an idea in my head so that it can work itself out up there. But then I remember that what 'works' is to write it down as soon as it comes, work on it until it's too big or to small or too smudged to see anymore, and then maybe walk away. Then maybe (MAYBE) while you're gone, it will work itself out.

If I don't do my work, maybe naked children will do it for me! Photo from here.
(They wear hats instead of pants because their privates are on their heads.)

So I was going at a good clip, confusing memory for creativity, until, on Monday, the clipper stopped. The wind left my sails, to continue that metaphor. I was lost at sea. It was really mortifying.

Tuesday and Wednesday I sort of solved the problem by plotting the play out scene by scene. It feels like progress, though there are of course plenty of new anxieties: How flawed is my concept? Will it work? Can it work? And if (when) I dwell too long on these, that last one morphs into a question truly terrifying:

Can I work?

So on that terrifying note: Happy Halloween! What are you dressed up as? I'm a naked elf.

(It's more coincidence than costume).

Ditka's Revenge

The number of midwestern slavics with unfortunate facial hair is inexplicable. I am proud, now, to count myself in that multitude.

"Someone put a kielbasa in my mouth! I'm ready" www.threesources.com

I've had a long bad day. I'm sorry my third post ever is about the beetle-grub that's growing on my upper lip. In my defense, it's for a play.

I actually had the vague hope that my moustache would be both classy and rakish like those of certain movie stars--but that age is past, I think; new movie cameras too readily exposed the greasepaint with which Clark Gable beefed up his flavor saver.

I love and hate my moustache. It makes people uncomfortable, I think. They don't want to ask if--seriously? a moustache?

If they did inquire, I'd surely excuse it with the play, but in truth I'm the one who suggested it in the first place.

His Spirit Animal is a Hot Dog

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DAD?
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So the Indians are done for the year (obvy!); I'm really glad at least one man from the land of Cleve is succeeding for real for real.
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Photos taken from Google Image Search.
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I'm from Cleveland, by the way.

In the Interest of Attribution

"Bitch, please." Thanks for the photo, www.eleganthack.com

The title of this blog is also the title of a poem by the bitchin' poetess Marianne Moore. It was the title of that before it was the title of this.

Miss Moore wrote often in a syllabic style, establishing a new stanza form in each poem. A pretty neat way to work: rigorously formal but not slavishly inflexibe. Here's an example:

Like a Bulrush

Or the spike
of a channel marker, or the
moon, he superintended the demolition of his image in the
water by the wind; He did not strike

them at the
time as being different from
any other inhabitant of the water; it was as if he
were a seal in the combined livery

of bird plus
snake; it was as if he knew that
the penguins were not fish and as if in their bat-blindness, they did not
realize that he was amphibious.

Fear not the weird lineation and lack of capitals. This is a poem about a seal. Miss Moore wrote often of animals; her mother once said (according to Elizabeth Bishop, in response to a different poem, Nine Nectarines & Other Porcelain), "I am so glad that Marianne has decided to give the inhabitants of the zoo...a rest."

Miss Moore had this to say of critics:

...If he must give an opinion, it is permissible that the
critic should know what he likes. Gordon
Craig with his "this is I" and "this is mine," with his three
wise men, his "sad French greens" and his Chinese Cherry--Gordon Craig, so

inclinational and unashamed--has carried
the precept of being a good critic to the last extreme...

From Picking and Choosing. Miss Moore knew from criticism; she made her living reviewing books and editing various literary magazines. Her wise words will bear on this blog, which is going to be a bunch of different things (bear with, please).

Folks, that is some bear shit in the sand in Michigan.

I've embarked on National Playwriting Month 7 days early (yes, I started three days ago; I hope to finish 7 days early), and I'm going to post something on this blog every day, in order to keep myself on task. Miss Moore's thoughts on criticism are relevant because I probably will talk about my play infrequently, instead using that playwriting process as a way to look at related processes: acting, reading, directing, thinking, talking...

That little blurb (an inadequate representative, really, of Miss Moore's poem) is also relevant because Gordon Craig was a great family physician of the early 20th century theater, a true general practitioner: actor, author, director, critic, surgeon.

"I'm a dude, y'all." Thanks, WikiP.

I don't pretend to the expertise of Mr. Craig or Miss Moore (though obviously I do have my pretensions). I'm a senior at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. I'm in the process of applying to graduate schools for an MFA in dramatic writing. I like Sam Cooke and I like cooking, and I'm sure I'll find things to say about those things in the near future. Here's the first poem Marianne Moore ever wrote, composed in 1895 (I think she was 8?):

Dear St. Nicklus;

This Christmas morn
You do adorn
Bring Warner a horn
And me a doll
That is all.