Writing in the Margins

Update

2009-10-06T13:43:00.002-05:00

Since my last post I have moved my father down from New Mexico, spent some quality time with him while unfortunately watching him deteriorate and die from cancer, come into some inheritance, published a book of short stories I had been putting off for too long, had my divorce finalized, bought a foreclosure house and begun fixing it up and replacing the things that had been removed from it since the foreclosure. Although I know I should be more actively shopping my first play, I've been working on a second play "PIGS" which turns out to be a comedy focused on the question of legacy with a plot centered on a middle-aged man dying of cancer and a possibly hallucinated talking vietnamese pot-bellied pig.

Cubism Reading

2008-11-19T18:22:00.001-06:00

Not surprisingly, Monday night in Baytown was not the ideal scheduling decision to lure an audience from Friendswood and Pearland to come to a reading. Had anyone tried to come, finding the room might have been an issue. But the scheduling decision was not mine. So the audience consisted of the cast and a subset of my writers group. Given that that the play has 11 characters, this was at least enough for the better jokes to get audible laughs.

The response was very positive from the students and the few people affiliated with the writer's group who hadn't heard much or any of the play. The biggest thing I noticed that I hadn't really thought about, is all the songs referenced came out long before any of the actors were born. And one of the songs was pretty obscure to begin with.

One thing I had confirmed was that two minor characters (Malik and Kurt) got a good response and should be given more to do if possible. But I haven't figured out where else they can go yet.

Life Mimics Art

2008-10-24T22:18:00.002-05:00

So what happens when, having occasionally gone through layoffs in your life, you write a play set against a backdrop of a corporation undergoing multiple rounds of layoffs? Apparently if you're me, you will soon set a possibly unsurpassable personal speed record for being laid off from a job. My new personal best is three days before being scheduled to report for a new job. (God, I really hope it isn't surpassable).

At 9:25 this morning I got a call verifying what time I should report on Monday and letting me know who to ask for when I got there. At 1:12 pm I had a call from United Players informing me that Mrs. Watts would not be traveling to Bountiful after all. The play fell victim to Hurricane Ike distracting people normally participating in the productions, some unexpected health problems and the good fortune of Mrs. Watts' daughter-in-law in getting a part in a bigger production. But Bountiful's cancelation wasn't a problem; I would need to focus on the new job anyway. Then, at 2:06 pm, I got my second call of the day from my would-be new employer. They'd called a big meeting and announced an immediate hiring freeze. But just as soon as the Global Economy picks back up they'll call me.

Naturally I had already informed my current employer I was leaving. But, not to worry, a few awkward emails later and I'm back where I was in the limbo that is contract work.

Cubism, Part II

2008-10-22T14:48:00.006-05:00

As promised, here are some of those further details about the reading. It will be held at 7pm on November 17, 2008 in the Bayer Conference Center at Lee College in Baytown. Food of some sort will be provided. Admission will be free. Seating is limited. And by limited, I mean a limited number of seats will be available. The seats themselves appear to be fully functional. And given that there will be food there, it would be very helpful if anyone who would like to attend would let me know so we can reserve a slice of pizza for you. If it turns out to be pizza. Might not be pizza. Since it's on a junior college campus there will be no wine or anything like that, so if you need a glass of wine to laugh loudly and stroke the author's ego, please take care of that (in moderation) before you get there.

Because I'm linking this blog post to the invitation, I'll add a little more information about the play. Cubism is a thoughtful comedy set in a company undergoing repeated rounds of layoffs. The time is somewhere in the mid to late 1990s. When the company gives up two floors of its building, Allison and Brian are assigned to a small conference room divided by a cubicle partition. Allison's commitment issues led her to break off an engagement and slow her progress with Brian. Brian spends his time obsessed with the possibility of losing his job, and increasingly, with Allison. The physical wall between them distorts their communicaiton even while allowing them the seclusion to react more freely to each other.

Other characters include:

KAREN, a lesbian coworker with a talents in story-telling, interpretive dance and softball
STEVE, Brian's would-be advisor on romantic matters and the creator and proponent of the Known-to-Unknown Do-You Ratio
KURT, a slightly nerdy Jewish I.T. worker
MALIK, a mainstream Moslem Pakistani I.T. worker with some reservations about his adopted country, who shares an office with Steve and Kurt
LUCY, a fifth-generation Chinese-American trying to learn Cantonese through fortune cookie vocabulary

Obviously there's more to all of these characters. I welcome you to come listen to the play and come up with more complete descriptions. And as I hope the audience will agree, there is no shortage of comedy. Keep in mind that the above description was written by someone with two Literature degrees and be thankful that I didn't go into a theoretical discussion of Picasso and viewing characters from multiple perspectives.

And as threatened previously, I havestarted mining my email addresses and doing some social networking aimed mainly at people who already have Facebook Pages. Not terribly shameless self-promotion just yet. Baby steps.

Cubism

2008-10-08T23:42:00.003-05:00

Now that I've set a goal for this blog (shameless self-promotion) I need something to brag about. Or at least some sort of news. And I've got some. My play, Cubism is now a complete draft.

Cubism has everything you could want in a play. Girls. Guys. Softball. Cubicles. Layoffs. Foreigners. Misheard lyrics. Offstage incidents involving cattle. Email. The Known-to-Unknown Do-You Ratio (complete with graphing). Binge drinking. motivational speaking, and interpretive dance.

And even better, there are tentative plans for a public reading at Lee College in Baytown in November. Real live student actors delivering the lines I just finished writing. And there's the prospect of having an audience that will with any luck react in lots of the places where I think they will. And even more better, the real live student actors will no doubt bring in things I wasn't really thinking of. And the real live audience may react in ways I didn't foresee. So long as the reaction is generally positive I'll be happy.

Possible dates for the reading are on Monday nights; either the 10^th or the 17^th. These dates fall either on the first day off after eight days of rehearsals and performances, or the day after strike of United Players' production of "The Trip to Bountiful." I'll be playing the Sheriff, which means I don't have many lines to memorize and can show up late to performances.

I anticipate the best things about writing something for performance to be:

I will be able to hear live audience reaction. (Authors [and by authors I mean me] always crave immediate feedback. One method of obtaining it is to sit across from and staring at the reader quizzing him or her repeatedly about every reaction or lack thereof as she or he reads. Readers aren't generally comfortable with this.)
I don't have to do any of the performing and can focus on how the whole thing is working. Doing live readings of stories or excerpts can also be fun but you do have to focus on what you're reading.

So it's out there and we'll see how it goes. Of course there will be an additional post or posts as the schedule and details develop.

Wanted: A Successful Method of Blatant Self-Promotion

2008-09-28T21:51:00.001-05:00

Having published one book (a novel titled The Miracle Pancake of Delgado, Texas), wondering when and if to put out a collection of short stories (Texas Tales… mostly), and being well on my way to finishing a first draft of a play (Cubism), I was advised by a friend that I could stand to do a little self-promotion.

My past efforts at self-promotion in support of the pancake book have been less than productive. I made bookmarks and business cards. I made posters. I tried (albeit not very forcefully) to get friends and coworkers to buy the book. An offer of a "reading" at my alma mater dwindled into sitting at the Literature Club's table during an open house. I tried to interest IHOP in hosting a book-signing event on National Pancake Day (I think it was against their corporate policy but they were nice enough to string me along for a week). I participated briefly in a program where authors are offered a place to sit in grocery stores and accost passersby and attempt to make them buy signed books by sheer force of will. Only the techniques involving hounding people (whether friends and coworkers or grocery shoppers) yielded any results.

Thinking possibly I needed some work on my approach, I auditioned for a part in a play to conquer any residual fear of public speaking. Three plays, three musicals, and one musical revue later I'm still not selling books. I can sing and talk on stage. One of the reasons, I think, is that none of these activities necessarily convince strangers that I can write.

Based on a random sampling of authors (i.e., after talking to a few friends) I've determined that writers—especially writers of fiction—suffer from a sort of Cinderella complex (I'm sure if I wanted to I could come up with a more male-gender-appropriate metaphor but I once long ago wrote a paper where I defined my idea of the Cinderella complex as it related to some fictional female character or other. I tied in some Jungian stuff and was really thinking at that point of a girl I'd gone out with recently at the time. And it got an A. So that's how I think about this and it's not gender-specific in this usage. [Maybe Pip from Great Expectations would be slightly comparable]).

So back to writers as Cinderella. We want to be discovered and validated. However, unlike Cinderella, we don't want to live in obscurity. We don't want to scrub floors. Or be mistreated by step sisters or beaten by an older sister or even work alongside Joe in the Blacksmith shop. Just find us, recognize us and go sell our books while we sneak back to our keyboards, focus all our attention on ourselves and write some more.

Because that's what writing is all about. We (or maybe this is only me) like to examine ourselves in ridiculous depth. And then, if we're true writers of fiction we take our own experiences and thoughts, modify the hell out of them and send them out safely disguised so that no one could ever guess that we're that character. Or parts of that one. Which of course means that readers are free to assume we're exactly like that other character who is nothing like us and was actually just a straight portrait of some asshole we knew when we were kids or at our day jobs.

So as useful as self-promotion might be for writers of fiction, we just aren't generally cut out for it. Ideally a writer needs a method of showing off and bragging about himself that is more compatible with his native strengths. Writers write. Maybe the best idea would be to write a blog.