Intermission
a creative coffee break from writing the play

This is a little disgusting, I ‘m sure,  that my dog has a thing for things that have been in my ears. Occasionally, we will find Q-Tips strewn about the house, and I’m pretty sure it’s not me or The Beloved leaving a trail of some kind.

Last night, as I was having a phone conference with MBH about our TV pilot, I realized said dog was
happily munching away at something. I never expected my earphones to die such a quick and meaningless death. Needless to say, the situation made me a little cranky, which MBH quietly endured through our call.

We’re in the midst of writing the pilot script for our original half hour television series. Yeah, okay, it’s a sitcom. We’ve spent over a year working out characters, episodes, story arcs, etc., and finally started writing the first episode. We’ve segmented the episodes into four parts: teaser, Act 1, Act 2, and closing tag, each with their own associated minutes. Once we had the outline for the pilot, we decided to experiment by splitting the writing between us. I wrote the teaser and Act 1. He wrote Act 2 and the tag. And then we put them together to see what kind of creative mess we had made. Each of us deviated from the outline slightly. Our script clearly had difference voices for one character in particular, yet we had a very workable first attempt. We had to step back a bit and discuss the story and and the arcs of the initial episodes. We made small, surprisingly organic, changes, which we hope results in more compelling storytelling. Our goal, beyond the obvious completion of the scripts, is to somehow develop a third voice between our very distinctive writing styles. We decided the next step was for one of us to take the script alone and weave it all together, and incorporating the changes we talked about. I got that assignment because I have more time at the moment. Maybe below the surface of that decision was MBH thought I was cranky and needed something fun to do. It is fun, creating a new world.

Most of January has been spent retracted inside my, uh, turtle shell. The norovirus paved the way to a respiratory thing. I’m running a bit in slow motion and there’s much to catch up on. The play I’ve been writing is not yet finished. Normally I write about ten pages a day on average. This month the page count has been about four a week. Not that I count pages. As my energy returns to whatever normal is, I’m sure the writing will as well.

My morning routine is, after feeding previously mentioned dog, and our more behaved cat, is coffee and newspapers, followed by exercise (weights and cardio on alternate days), three to five hours  playwriting, and the remainder of the day dealing with the assorted important details of things like, uh, work. Sometimes work or other projects force the writing to the evening. Soon, I suspect the writing will move to the evenings more and more. I am the sort of writer who has to write. Eaten earbuds aside, I get pretty unbearable when I’m not writing.