Well, here we are and it’s been another two weeks, but I have a very good reason for not writin! last Sunday. We’ll get to that, I promise. But today it’s a fine autum October day and I’ve got my fireplace DVD playing while I listen to podcasts and my hair up in a towel because just got out of the shower. If you’re okay with all that, come on in and have a seat. I’ll get us something to drink while we chat about what all been’s going on.
Getting right down to it: the reason I didnโt write last Sunday is that I spent the previous Friday and Saturday participating in the 24 Hour Theatre Project, and by the time Sunday rolled around I was in no condition to do much of anything.
I can explain, but weโll have to go back to Friday evening.
At 7:30 PM I joined four other writers to draw our randomly selected genres and prompts/required lines.
Here are the full range of choices that could have been drawn in any combination:
I got Holiday Romance and the line โYour beauty is beyond compareโ from Dolly Partonโs Jolene.
Now, I had actually wanted Holiday Romance – and not because I wanted to write a traditional holiday romance, but because I wanted to take the genre and tell a story about love that included people who donโt necessarily experience romance the way society expects them to.
Was I purposely setting myself a difficult standard for a play that needed to be done in the next 12 hours?
Probably, but that didnโt stop me, and midnight, I had the bones of would become A Place at Beltane.
For those unfamiliar, Beltane is a spring festival traditionally associated with fertility, fire, and the beginning of summer. Depending on whoโs in charge of the festivities, it can be quite phallic. In an exercise of restraint, I kept the dick jokes to a minimum.
I thought it would be a good setting for a story with an aro/ace protagonist to make the audience grapple with what love actually entails and who we make space weโre not just in our lives, but in our media representation.
Did I say I was subverting the genre? Maybe I drifted so far away it isnโt even a holiday romance anymore. But anyway, back to the play.
A Place at Beltane centers on three characters: Wren, Mara, and Kit. Wren and Mara provide the romance, while Kit, who is autistic and aromantic-asexual (hello, author self-insert), finds themselves questioning whether thereโs really a place for them in a celebration thatโs supposed to be for everyone.
It could have been done by midnight, but then I realized that I had introduced Mara in the first few lines and then given her nothing to do for almost the entire remainder of the play, just to bring her back in the last two or three minutes. I spent the next three and a half hours trying to fix that.๏ฟผ
By 3:30 Saturday morning I was convinced Iโd done everything I could do with the script – mainly because the room had stopped making sense and started spinning, and Iโd managed to accidentally delete the script twice.
Thank you, CTL+Z, for being there in my time of need.
I hit send, and realized that if I was lucky, I could get about three hours of sleep before I needed to get up to be back at the theater to meet with the directors.
Of course, that meant I didnโt sleep at all.
I went horizontal, but my brain had other ideas and I ended up just looking at the ceiling until I had to get up and go back to the theatre.
And so at 7:30 Saturday morning the five writers met with the five directors, who randomly chose packets with the scripts inside. I wish I could say I met with the director to discuss the script and how Iโd envisioned it being performed, but truth be told I donโt know how I envisioned it being performed. I just had the story. I made it very much low effort so that anyone could stage and act in it. I think the only direction I gave was. โ if you end up with genders other than Iโve written, thatโs fine. Kit and Wren can be any gender, and if it comes to it, change Mara to Mark and call it a day.โ
Maybe I should have given some background on Beltane as well, but Iโm told that the director and cast had fun researching it for themselves.
And while that meeting went well enough, it also marked the beginning of a rather spectacular bout of self-doubt as suddenly I was convinced that what Iโd written was terrible.
And I donโt mean it was just a little rough around the edges or in need of some polishing, but genuinely, spectacularly awful. Iโd given these people something theyโd have to spend the day rehearsing and performing, and what if it was a complete disaster?
I kept going over the script in my head, finding things I could have written differently or things I should have included or things I should have left out, and at least once I was convinced I shouldโve written an entirely different play.
The lack of sleep wasnโt helping, and my adrenaline kept getting me over the next little humps such that I could never truly sleep, which only made me more miserable.
At one point I told Krystal that the whole thing was a โsucky poo poo of a flopโ and that I didnโt even want to show my face at the theatre that night.
The funny thing is, Iโd only had one cup of coffee. I can only imagine what caffeine would have done to the situation.
Krystal asked me about the friends who would be there and gently but firmly made sure I got myself to the theatre on time, with the understanding that the pessimism could stay in my head.
๏ฟผAnd it did, for the most part, after some not so gentle reminders, which I needed.
Once I got there and met the cast, I started feeling a good bit better. Everyone was lovely, and seeing the people whoโd spent the day bringing something Iโd written to life was a rather wonderful experience in itself.
My play was the last of the five performed that evening, which was also fine with me, just so long as I wasnโt first.
And it went well.
It got a modest round of applause, and later I found out that some people had been so moved by the performance that theyโd actually forgotten to clap.
One person told me it was like Iโd taken a Hallmark movie and stabbed it in the back.
This was a compliment, and I took it as one.
Another person told me theyโd then brought to tears, and then pointed out two lines they said were so distinctly mine that theyโd have recognized my writing even if my name hadnโt appeared in the program.
Iโm still thinking about that.
Iโve spent so much time wondering whether my writing is any good, or whether the things I want to say will mean anything to anyone else, that hearing someone say they recognized me in the words was something I hadnโt expected.
And then there was the friend who brought me a hand-drawn Pusheen card and a bouquet of artificial flowers!
Eventually I went home and slept for fourteen hours, after which I felt vaguely human again – but only vaguely, which is why there wasnโt a blog post last Sunday.
And if Iโve been smart, I would have taken Monday off of work as well. Iโll have to remember that if I participate next time.
Of course, life hasnโt been all theatre and writing over the last two weeks. Thereโs been work and laundry and cooking and the usual assortment of things that need doing whether Iโve feels like doing them or not.
I know firsthand that the problem with telling yourself โIโll get up early tomorrow and do Xโ is that when tomorrow morning comes, you actually have to get up early and do X.
This concerned laundry, which I can confirm was completed before I had to go to work.
Then there was the day that Krystalโs tires needed air. I found our air pump and it made all the right noises and appeared to be doing exactly what an air pump ought to do.
Except it wasnโt actually pumping any air, which seems like a rather significant flaw in an air pump.
For a moment, I was concerned that the valves had gone out in her tires the same way the valve had gone out in mine a few months ago, but when all four tires refused to take any air, I thought maybe it was the air pump itself. So I went around the corner to the gas station paid three dollars for air – three dollars, can you believe it ?!? – and it got my tires right back up where they needed to be.
I also had the opportunity to feed a neighborโs cat and discovered that he was just as excited about getting pets as he was about getting food.
Blurry photos of Morris for proof:
Iโve also been dogsitting my friend Luna, so thereโs been plenty of animal company lately. She also likes the cooler weather, to the point that I can hardly convince her to come inside!
And speaking of animals, I saw someone walking around campus wearing an inflatable dinosaur costume . . . I have no idea why they did that, but I loved it.
In food news, I recently made Sloppy Joes recently and decided to add some pinto beans. Iโve done this before, and I remember liking the results, but apparently I didnโt remember exactly what I did the last time.
Because instead of Sloppy Joes with beans, I ended up with something that existed in a rather curious space somewhere between Sloppy Joes and taco filling.
It was good, though!
This past week also marked the twentieth anniversary of My Chemical Romanceโs The Black Parade.
TWENTY YEARS
I donโt know how that happened, because Iโm fairly certain 2006 wasnโt twenty years ago, but apparently the calendar disagrees.
To mark the occasion I got out my vinyl records and listened to I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love, Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, and The Black Parade.
Yesterday was also a very important anniversary in the history of my baking career.
Eight years ago, John Scalzi complimented my apple pie.
If youโve been reading this blog for a while, you probably already know this story, because I tend to bring it up every October. But I made John Scalzi an apple pie back in 2018, and he later described it as โexquisite.โ
He even wrote a note about the pie in my copy of The Consuming Fire.
Now, Iโm sure John Scalzi has eaten many pies in his life, and he may not remember the one I made for him, but I certainly remember making it, and I intend to continue celebrating the anniversary for as long as I remember when it happened, which hopefully wonโt be for a while because Iโve set up a yearly reminder on my calendar.
I think that gets us caught up on the last couple of weeks.
Iโm still working on various writing ideas and trying to keep up with the ordinary things that need doing, and now that the theatre project is over Iโm hoping to get back into something resembling my usual routine.
What about you?
What have you been up to lately?
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