April 2010
3 posts
4/25/10 - super quick update.
Some more bumps in the road, but mainly due to the content nature of my writing exercises. If it’s related to the teleplay I’m working on or deeply personal, I’m choosing not to share it with the public. I’ll try to balance it out more as we continue.
4/4/10 - Looks like I'm starting to hit every...
I’ve mentioned before that I really like word economy. I enjoy looking at the blank screen before I start writing. Ideally, I’d like to say as much as possible in as little space as possible. Why tell a story in 1,000,000 words if you can tell the exact same story in 1,000? It’s the whole notion of “curating a museum” that I’ve covered in previous entries. And,...
4/2/10 - Food for Thought
I find myself in a bit of an additional challenge now: my deadline is June 1st for the teleplay and it’s April 2nd. I’ve got to write this thing FAST. Well, ideally I’d like to get a functional draft going so I can revise it several times and replace dead scenes with better ones in time to make my deadline. First, I’ve got to have a good premise. I thought for a month about...
3/31/10 - Back on the wagon.
Agh, time off is no fun. I prioritized a bit to finish a short but fantastic book: Rework. The founders of 37signals decided to condense many of their tried-and-true methods and philosophies into a collection of bite-sized essays. Each essay is accompanied with a simple illustration and the entire package looks phenomenal. It only took me two hours to read through the book, and that was with a bit...
March 2010
12 posts
3/24/10 - Unfortunate
It’s odd to find that inspiration can be fleeting. I mean, it makes sense to me because it happens again and again, but I feel like it shouldn’t. One would think that once some external force causes air to rush into your sails, that you should launch forward and keep going until you’re finished. Unfortunately, this never seems like the case for me. I find that it’s easy to...
3/23/10 - Curating
Tonight, I pick the torch back up. Rather than the usual Explosions in the Sky soundtrack, I’ve opted for one of the more instrumental Broken Social Scene albums. We’ll see if there is a noticeable difference. I’m a bit more inclined to pay attention to some of the awesome songs I like. For instance, I forgot how magical the intro to “KC Accidental” sounds live....
The break.
Yes, there was quite a lapse in my posting. It was all due to one event: SXSW. I spent every single night (and most days) until Sunday partaking in SXSW-related activities. It was magical. Sunday was a day dedicated largely to getting back on track and today was a sick day.
Regular writing begins promptly tomorrow. I don’t plan to have any continued disturbances. In the spirit of SXSW, I...
3/10/10 - So tired.
Tonight is definitely one of those nights where I don’t want to write at all. Tonight is one of those nights where I don’t want to write. Tonight, I don’t want to write. I think and speak more in the terms of the first line, but I prefer to write more in terms of the third line - clean and efficient. It can still be just as honest as the first line, but without the gratuitous...
3/9/10 - Distractions
What motivates you? For me, it’s definitely the little bit of time I spend every now and then daydreaming about the future (which is weird, because that seems like a way to guarantee I’ll never be happy… always looking on to what’s next. I am happy, however. I’m in a good spot right now.) I realize more and more that each day is another day I can be working towards a...
3/8/10 - Change.
Tonight, there’s a feeling of nostalgia that I just can’t shake. I guess it’s a feeling like the end of an era is drawing near on my social life lately. I forced a few friends to go with me to the weekly pub quiz at Fado back in December 2008 and the holidays prevented me from going again until mid-January 2009. Once I started going in January, I made it a mission to make the...
3/7/10 - Less me, more you.
Trying to find the optimal time to write every day is difficult thus far. I’m currently writing right before my improv troupe meets for practice. As much as I want to do this writing and be able to sit down and focus on it, it’s harder than usual. I think there’s some sort of stress in the back of my mind that prevents me from focusing fully on everything. It’s stress...
3/6/10 - Connecting some dots.
Perhaps I’ll save yesterday’s idea for a post for another day. I’m not feeling very inspired by it right now. I’ve been experimenting with different environments for writing, and lately, I’ve found a combination of ambient music, relaxed seating and a distraction-free word processor on my laptop to be the best combination. I had seen Lifehacker and a few other...
I'll write. Even when it's late on a Friday night.
Without a doubt, the one piece of advice I keep hearing, seeing and reading more often than all others is this: write. Just write. I heard it from several different people at the Austin Film Festival last year. Mitch Hurwitz (paraphrased): “My first spec script was terrible. My second script was terrible. You just have to keep writing.” Paul Feig (paraphrased): “My first spec...
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There's a time to filter. Now isn't it.
Am I having fun as an improviser right now? Definitely. However, I’ve noticed a common thread in the vast majority of my best and worst improv shows: I perform at my best when I shut off the internal mechanism I have that worries what everyone else thinks. I performer even better than that when I can eliminate the filter in myself that worries about producing only quality content. ...
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Have fun?!?
Again and again, I hear improvisers give one key piece of advice to other improvisers before shows: have fun. In my very first improv class, my teacher instructed all of us to have fun. I find this request crucial to good improvisation, but the concept of “having fun” confused me for years. Here’s why. Newer, inexperienced improvisers get pushed in several directions. Often,...