From Pixels To Print: A Revelation

My writing is ethereal. I don’t mean heavenly, I mean that instead of existing in reality, it exists on laptops and flat-screen monitors, Google phones and iPads. Pixels on screens bringing my words to you. So it has been, and so it continues to be.

Until now. Responding to some requests, I have emailed the text of my (as of yet unproduced) play to friends and relatives. I send the copies as PDFs, with the assumption that those kind enough to read the play will peruse it on whatever screen is at the nearest at whatever time is convenient.

But one friend pushed that little print icon on her screen (intentionally, I hope) and was soon swamped by 90 pages of my words, or rather the words of the half-dozen characters in my prison-life drama. She read and enjoyed and told me so.

I wasn’t home when she brought the pages to our house yesterday, so she left them with a request that I sign the cover page and return it to her. And I plan to do that. But not until I have spent time enjoying the pleasure of seeing my work in print.

I know I could have printed a copy at any time, just as I could have printed out any of my blogs. But I never have. I never saw the need to. But now seeing my work in print–even in this informal copy–changes my outlook on the play and on myself. It compares to when I was introduced to someone in the neighborhood and she said “I know your name, you’re the writer.”

If I can get this far I can go further. It may be with the current play, it may be with something else that I choose to write, or publish, or produce. I’ve got lots of time ahead of me, and a keyboard that calls to me.

And this time around, I may use the printer, too!

Want to read more of my blogs and keep track of how I am doing? Just enter your email address to subscribe.

From Critic to Critiqued: A Long Plays Journey Out Of Sight

As a connoisseur of critical reviews, I savor media critics who dare to slice and dice a popular restaurant, give a “thumbs down” to a blockbuster movie, or advise us to tune out the latest Walking Dead sequel. More than 10 years after it was published I still relish Pete Wells’s New York Times bloody evisceration of Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar, Guy Fieri’s Times Square outpost.

But now the glistening kitchen knife is pointed my way. My schadenfreude has been repaid with a critique of my first, unpublished, play, White Collar. The post-mortem.

Writing a full-length theater piece has been simultaneously challenging and exhilarating. Under the tutelage of my dramaturge, the work underwent seventeen revisions. It expanded and contracted like Weird Al’s accordion, going from one act to an act-and-a-half, back down to one, and finally a full two acts with a prologue and epilogue tossed in for good measure. Characters were added, subtracted, and redefined, while scenes were melded together using (almost) seamless segues. Only the final twist remained unmanipulated.

When the manuscript reached the ideal number of 90 pages, my dramaturge scrubbed out the obvious gaffes and cliches and submitted the work to his friend, a local theater producer. The producer didn’t like the play. At all.

In a very detailed email, he explained why. He saw dramatic inconsistencies, stilted dialogue, and characters who added nothing and had no arc. If the prologue was bad, the epilogue was worse. And too many witty retorts.

I could quibble with a few of his thoughts and comments–I could quibble with more than a few. But I will take this as a positive learning experience. I normally express myself in 500-word blogs, so completing a work of this length was immensely satisfying, even if it is nowhere near professional quality.

My next step? My cognoscenti included some suggestions. He even tossed in a compliment or two. I may use that insight to tear the play down and rebuild it in a few new ways—versions 18 through 30. But on my honor, no more witty retorts.

And from now on, Guy Fieri, I stand with you!

photo by phot.ai

26 And Me. The Unhandy Side Of Retirement

Did you read my blog detailing my first year of retirement? If you did, and I hope that was the case, you read about travel and pickleball, playwriting and volunteering. What you didn’t see was a description of any of the multitude of home improvement projects that kept me busy. There is a good reason I didn’t include them in my post. You see, there were none. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

To be quite clear about it, my Y chromosome totally lacks the Y326798g gene, more colloquially known as the “HandyMan Gene.” First identified in Bob Villa’s righthand-man Norm Abram of This Old House fame, with a variant discovered in Home Improvement’s Al Borland 10 years later, it is Y326798g that gives a man the confidence and the ability to hang drywall, paint a baseboard, and to cut once without measuring twice. I just have a big, gnarly, gene deletion where that stretch of DNA should be. It’s a gap only CRISPR could repair.

Despite my genetic deletion, there are some minor repairs and adjustments I am capable of accomplishing. For instance, Barb has repeatedly reminded me that the pair of twin beds in one of the loft bedrooms are as close to collapse as the Berlin Wall had been in the autumn of 1989. In an attempt to avoid an international incident, I lugged my toolbox (more on that later) up the stairs, used trial and error to select the proper hex wrench, and in the span of slightly less than one hour tightened the 16 bolts that kept the two Bob’s Discount Furniture beds from falling apart. Tragedy averted!

Now about the toolbox. I may use them rarely, but I have a lot of tools in that black box; 26 pounds worth, to be exact. It has an insert tray of wrenches and another of screwdrivers. It contains whatchamacallits and thing-a-ma-jigs and even a petite-sized hand saw with a rusty blade that reeks of tetanus spores. Where most of the tools came from is a mystery to me, but I love their brilliant patina. I just can’t recall buying any of those wrenches, screwdrivers, thing-a-ma-jigs, or either of the two hammers that nestle at the bottom of the rectangular box.

I did make one significant tool purchase recently. The ancient electric drill we inherited from my father-in-law drilled its last hole a few months ago, ending its life in a blaze of sparks. Feeling emasculated not owning a working driller (a name bestowed upon drills by a long-ago Israeli boyfriend of our daughter Laury) I ventured into Home Depot and found a menacing-looking battery-powered model for under a hundred dollars. I have only used it once, but it looks cool hanging in the garage. At least, it looks cool to me.

So if any of you need help with something around the house, please don’t call me for my help or my advice. But I will be happy to lend you my tools, all 26 pounds of them. You can borrow my cool drill too. Just be sure to return it to its spot of glory on the garage wall. I might even find a use for it–someday soon.

Like the blog?

DON’T FORGET TO SHARE

Subscribe to our blog! No spam ever.

To Write, or Not To Write-Is That the Question?

I was on an early morning walk through the neighborhood, Cooper as always pulling at his leash, sniffing at every signpost, looking out for every one of his girlfriends. We came to an intersection and Coop gave a tug, drawing me across the street to a corner lot where a new pup was romping with a woman whom I had never met before.

We crossed the street and in the neighborhood tradition the Pup-Mom and I exchanged the essential facts about our dogs–where we got them, their lineage, their age, and then admired the coats on each other’s furry friend.

While the dogs were playing together and just before Cooper got muddy pawprints all over the new human neighbor I remembered my social graces and introduced myself. “Oh,” she said. “I recognize the name. Aren’t you the writer?”

Wow! Yes, my family and a lot of friends, colleagues, and social media contacts know I write a blog. They will sometimes bring up a particular post, mention they found it informative, or well-written, or fun. Or they will complain that my inclusion of a particular song has planted a weeks-long earworm in their brain. Those interactions are always with the clear understanding that my relationship with them is primarily that of a relative, co-worker, or friend who sometimes spits out 500 electronic words.

But this was different. I have never before been recognized as someone who tries to tell stories as part of my identity. It was thrilling.

Though I didn’t ask, I assume the neighbor (whose name in my true absent-minded fashion I have already forgotten) had read one of the blogs I had posted on the neighborhood FaceBook page–maybe my silhouette dog vs. geese story. But whichever blog it was, something I had written had stuck in her mind for at least a few weeks. I felt like the garage band who had heard their song on the radio for the first time.

So when my inevitable retirement as a full-time pathologist comes around, maybe I will give this writing thing a serious look. Take one of those online masterclasses (learn how to write short stories from Joyce Carol Oates or creative writing from Margaret Atwood) and eventually learn to write dialogue. I will finally produce that medical thriller Barb is always telling me I have inside my head.

Cooper, you have done me a favor with your insistence on meeting every dog in the neighborhood. Maybe I will just write a novel about you!

Like what you read here? Add your name to our subscription list below. No spam, I promise! ___

#mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; }
/* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block.
We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */

Subscribe to our mailing list

* indicates required

Email Address *

First Name

Last Name

//s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.mailchimp.com/js/mc-validate.js(function($) {window.fnames = new Array(); window.ftypes = new Array();fnames[0]=’EMAIL’;ftypes[0]=’email’;fnames[1]=’FNAME’;ftypes[1]=’text’;fnames[2]=’LNAME’;ftypes[2]=’text’;}(jQuery));var $mcj = jQuery.noConflict(true); ———————————–