Why “Write What You Like” is the real first rule of writing, with a hearty thanks to Austin Kleon for the assist.
creative process
Feel the dread and write it anyway.
Many years ago, I was in the world’s worst acting class. Its badness was made possible by its goodness. Much like a relationship where you’re slowly gaslighted into madness until a gigantic Acme mallet (or Joseph Cotten) shows up to snap you out of it, about 90% of what went down was fine, excellent, even. [...]
Yesterday morning, I finished reading Unbroken, the true-life story of Louis Zampirini’s triumphant, plague-filled journey from punk kid to Olympic runner to WWII Air Force bombadier to POW to haunted veteran to redeemed hero. It’s an amazing story. As I tore through it on my Kindle, the only way for the spindly-limbed gal to fly when [...]
There are three people and/or things directly to blame for me starting a blog way, way back on November 1, 2004: a severe onset of Crohn’s disease, which served both to jar things loose and make me unafear’d (or less afear’d) of looking like a jackass; my friend, Debbie, who is so discreet her web [...]
I’m perpetually about five steps behind the smart kids like Merlin and Julien, so I’m just now reading Twyla Tharp’s absolutely outstanding, OUTSTANDING, I tell you, book, The Creative Habit.* (Julien, if you’re reading this, you were 100% right, and I owe you a beer. Or something.) Since Merlin first started talking about the book [...]
Back when I was a young pup Shilling for the Man, I wrote a lot of ads for a certain mass-market sports beverage. As in, a lot of ads. Because while those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of working in the salt mines of advertising might not know it, the ratio of ads-come-up-with [...]
For those of you who do most of your creating off-stage, you may not have experienced the ¡olé! moment. That’s my new-favorite term for the magical thing that happens when you get in the zone and out of the way and the work just flows through you. The term comes to me via the astonishing [...]
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Closer to Python: My Mike Nichols Day, Part II
As I’m currently in the process of converting a play with music into a musical play, I’m newly fascinated by musical theater, especially the newer forms cropping up today: Avenue Q, Caroline or Change, all of Ken Roht‘s work, the Ramayana 2K4, which I guess better start calling itself R2K5 so it doesn’t sign its [...]
