Writer's Road Block
Taking a break. And by "taking a break," I mean "procrastinating even more egregiously than I have been."
It hasn't been a great couple of weeks for creative outlets. Six Ring Circus started up again, The Track Team got a swell new member, and we did great... for a audience of eight people. I auditioned for the Brave New Workshop, sort of a general talent pool thing, and I did poorly. No real time to prepare or draft an original monologue, among other things. The woman who was going to be in my Fringe show started hemming and hawing about not having any time, so I said it was okay, don't feel like you have to do it, I'll look elsewhere. (To be fair, her boyfriend is moving way out of state to attend medical school. She doesn't want to move and doesn't want to break up, so she's mentally and emotionally really scattered right now.) Then I found someone else who was willing to be in my show, and who would have been absurdly perfect. I was ecstatic for a couple of days, until I got her schedule. She had a conflict with one performance time slot, so no go. Oh, and I abandoned kicking caffeine. Again. Couldn't deal with being exhausted and headachey all the damn time.
All of this made me seriously entertain not doing acting and improv ever again. I was prepared to give up my Fringe slot, quit Six Ring... everything. It wasn't quite the morose, depressing, "why go on" thing it sounds like. I just couldn't help but notice there's no interest out there, and maybe I should spend my time on something else.
So anyway, I'm trying to do my show concept as a one-man show. I didn't want to do a one-man show. Well, back at the time of the Fringe lottery, I thought I wanted to do something solo, but I quickly realized I didn't like the creative isolation. I need to be around others, if only to hear them laugh when I say something intentionally funny, and discreetly not laugh when I say something unintentionally funny. I want to be a part of something, not off in my own corner.
Right now, I'm just spewing stuff out on a page, and hoping I can edit it and knit it together farther down the road. The solo structure has changed my concept quite a bit. All the arcs are gone now, and I'm left to worry if any new ones will take their place. An overarching "why" to the whole piece is gone now, and I'm not sure how much set up I need to set up. The voice has also changed. It's gone from being sort of silly and ridiculous to something more ranty. There are notable exceptions, but in general I don't much care for ranty, snarky humor. I don't think I have much of a feel for it. I'm afraid of just coming off as whiny.
Based on estimates others have given me, I'll need about fifteen pages to make a viable one-man show. I've got one page. Shit. And let's not talk about marketing. I don't have a clue what to do there, and besides I can't market what I don't have.
Whatever. Time to go back to not writing.
It hasn't been a great couple of weeks for creative outlets. Six Ring Circus started up again, The Track Team got a swell new member, and we did great... for a audience of eight people. I auditioned for the Brave New Workshop, sort of a general talent pool thing, and I did poorly. No real time to prepare or draft an original monologue, among other things. The woman who was going to be in my Fringe show started hemming and hawing about not having any time, so I said it was okay, don't feel like you have to do it, I'll look elsewhere. (To be fair, her boyfriend is moving way out of state to attend medical school. She doesn't want to move and doesn't want to break up, so she's mentally and emotionally really scattered right now.) Then I found someone else who was willing to be in my show, and who would have been absurdly perfect. I was ecstatic for a couple of days, until I got her schedule. She had a conflict with one performance time slot, so no go. Oh, and I abandoned kicking caffeine. Again. Couldn't deal with being exhausted and headachey all the damn time.
All of this made me seriously entertain not doing acting and improv ever again. I was prepared to give up my Fringe slot, quit Six Ring... everything. It wasn't quite the morose, depressing, "why go on" thing it sounds like. I just couldn't help but notice there's no interest out there, and maybe I should spend my time on something else.
So anyway, I'm trying to do my show concept as a one-man show. I didn't want to do a one-man show. Well, back at the time of the Fringe lottery, I thought I wanted to do something solo, but I quickly realized I didn't like the creative isolation. I need to be around others, if only to hear them laugh when I say something intentionally funny, and discreetly not laugh when I say something unintentionally funny. I want to be a part of something, not off in my own corner.
Right now, I'm just spewing stuff out on a page, and hoping I can edit it and knit it together farther down the road. The solo structure has changed my concept quite a bit. All the arcs are gone now, and I'm left to worry if any new ones will take their place. An overarching "why" to the whole piece is gone now, and I'm not sure how much set up I need to set up. The voice has also changed. It's gone from being sort of silly and ridiculous to something more ranty. There are notable exceptions, but in general I don't much care for ranty, snarky humor. I don't think I have much of a feel for it. I'm afraid of just coming off as whiny.
Based on estimates others have given me, I'll need about fifteen pages to make a viable one-man show. I've got one page. Shit. And let's not talk about marketing. I don't have a clue what to do there, and besides I can't market what I don't have.
Whatever. Time to go back to not writing.