The Phases of Balancing the Moon

Originally published in shorter form in LA Stage Times First Person.

Balancing the Moon is my first full-length play. Set in 1934, the story revolves around Jared Thornhill, a Freudian psychoanalyst who expects his wife Charlotte to put her poetry aside to type his academic articles. When an Irish love fairy possesses Charlotte and tries to teach Jared the ways of women, Jared learns he must tap into something much deeper than Freud to get Charlotte back.

Run with Your Creative Power

We tend to shrink from our creative power. I can be in the middle of a great writing binge, where I'm really in flow, and start thinking, "I need a cup of tea." It's all I can do to resist it, unless I am aware of what's happening. So I do these little negotiations with myself, kind of like what happens when I run and my body wants to stop. "Okay, if I can make it to that next turn, I'll rest." Then I get to the turn and do it again. "Okay, if I can make it to that tree..." etc., until I've forgotten about stopping and get to the end of the run.

It seems so easy on a run.

A Writer Gets Over Her Block

A writer friend emailed me the other day to say how she was doing, telling me about a trip to Montauk she took earlier in the year, and that she was ready for her next vacation. She had planned go to her annual writer's conference in Taos but canceled due to the wildfires going on there. Determined to use her vacation time to stay home and write, she said she was concerned she couldn't relax with her work routine on hold, and that she had been totally blocked and couldn't write.

She was doing yoga and meditation, watching movies and reading books to get inspired. She asked me for some tips on "getting the creative juices flowing."

Are You A Misfit Magnet? Put Them in Your Plays!

Great characters spawn great stories, the most inspiring based on real people. In his book "On Writing," Stephen King describes how he got the idea for his novel "Carrie" while working as a janitor cleaning a girls' shower at a high school. He couldn't quite connect to an outcast adolescent girl until he remembered, "...two of the most reviled girls in my class...how they acted, how they were treated." This gave King the pity and understanding to create Carrie. And Carrie, like many great characters, is a remarkable social misfit.

Getting the Most out of Feedback - 9 Things to Remember

Getting feedback for a new script or play can make you feel as if you're in one of those dreams where you are inexplicably butt naked in a crowd of people. You feel vulnerable, nervous, and slightly under dressed. But how you handle yourself in the hot seat can determine how much your script will benefit.

Instinct vs. Index Cards

I recently attended an ALAP Musical Theatre Workshop with writer-composer Mark Saltzman to develop a rock musical murder mystery called Pyroglyphic featuring the music of my good friend Sean Galuszka. Saltzman slavishly advocated the use of index cards to storyboard the narrative of a musical, before ANY writing even begins.

Torchwood, Dr. Who and Nietzsche

[Warning, this post has Dr. Who seasons 1-4 spoilers!]

I recently posted the following on my Facebook notes:

I finally watched Season 3 of Torchwood last night -Children of Earth. Despite my criticisms of the 5th Dr., I still prefer Dr. Who over Torchwood. At the core of Dr. Who is an immortal who believes unshakably in the Good of Man, and whose death and resurrection events envelop him in a magical glow of white light. At the core of Torchwood is an immortal who believes in nothing, and whose death and resurrections only take him in and out of a dark, empty void.

Getting Back in Flow

I have started this blog for several reasons. First, I think it will be helpful to discuss relevant things on my mind, like weird dreams, movies I'm repeat watching (like Anchorman), the crazies in my building, etc, as these things and more feed my hungry muse. I have diverse interests outside of theatre and playwriting, such as marketing, hiking, spirituality, reading runes, science fiction, eating sushi, dealing with over-entitled LA people, etc., so there are plenty of tangents for me to go on to keep it interesting.

Another reason has to do with establishing some routine. I have been unemployed since mid-January, and not having the normal work routine has been both freeing and annoying. "But you have so much time to write now!" Ah, there's the rub. Yes, there's a lot of downtime to fill, along with job hunting anxiety, so that whenever you sit down to write, there's a guilt thing that happens - in my case I guess it's a Calvinist guilt as opposed to Jewish or Catholic. Despite the fact that my work was not directly related to writing (I was a Marketing Coordinator for Disney Online), it satisfied something in my brain, forced me to organize my time, and gave me structure. Also they had great swag (which has nothing to do with routine, but just thought I'd mention it.)

I recently did a four week musical theatre workshop with Mark Saltzman, a playwright, screenwriter and Emmy award winning composer for Sesame Street. While it met only once a week, it was very intense, because I wrote, or met with my composer Sean Galuszka, or worked on storyboarding just about every day. When the workshop ended, I was armed with some new tools and a good structural foundation for my story and ready to go to work lubing my libretto (not the best metaphor I now see). But a week after it ended I lost momentum and went into a post-partum depression thing, kind of like what happens when your show closes - no more studying lines, no more applause, and sadly no more cast parties. That workshop was another routine that I had and then lost. Now it's up to me to create healthy routines and stay focused on doing what playwrights do - seeing, submitting, marketing and of course writing plays. And watching 30 Rock during writing breaks.

This is my equivalent of online "morning pages" as Julia Cameron calls them, to get the brain going, and see where it takes me. I'm trying to find my "Artist's Way" as it were instead of going by Tolkien's adage, "Not all who wander are lost." For this first post I'm already learning not over edit myself, because the point is to publish posts and be productive, and make these pages of the morning as opposed to the late afternoon. Hopefully they will inspire you, help you get past any blocks, and offer you some useful tips I've picked up over the years, (along with the bad habits that really work for me).

Stay classy playwrights, and thanks for stopping by!

Patricia