Writer's Room

Writer's Room

I don't want to jinx it, but I've been writing the show every morning. I keep an electric kettle, instant coffee, creamer, and box of Costco muffins next to my bed. When I wake up, I make coffee, then write 3 morning journal pages on my ReMarkable tablet. These 3 pages are an exercise from The Artist's Way that have dramatically improved my ability to process life events, stress, creative discouragements, etc. because they require me to check in daily. Being unemployed for the last few months, before I started doing morning pages, I would bounce around all the time doing whatever I felt like, which did include a lot of productive and creative things, but didn't set me up to consistently make progress on any one thing, and left me without much time to think and plan my overall direction.

After the morning pages, I pull out my laptop and write at least one scene of FLIES FLIES FLIES. This has served me well so far, because I've roughly outlined the scenes of episode 3 and have a first draft to consult. This morning I almost got stuck when I realized I wanted to change the episode plot dramatically and it might involve creating whole new characters. Today I hope to figure that out and make a plan for tomorrow morning so the daily writing can continue.

After I write the show for 15 minutes, I let myself eat a muffin. It's kind of a nice reward.

I wish I were writing this show in a "proper" writer's room with other funny & smart creatives. Maybe someday I can, but for now, I write in bed before I shower or talk to anyone. :P I do get help with the writing from a critique group that meets online, and feedback from my friends/the cast.

Back in August, I ran the first table read of episode 2 for Patreon subscribers and the cast. I was nervous about having patrons there, because the cast isn't used to having a live audience. So I focused on scheduling it around the cast's availability and I didn't do much to promote it to patrons. (Also a lot of the patrons are my family, and the show is raunchy/adult in places so I was embarassed.) This backfired when some cast members got sick, so we only had 3 readers--one for screen directions, then me and one other person to somehow voice every character in a pretty chaotic episode. Our one audience member was my Granny, which made it the most intense version of what I'd been afraid of (dropping F bombs and making innuendos in front of my religious relatives). It actually went great! Now I don't feel so afraid to upset my loved ones by writing and performing my truth. For the next table read, I will broadcast the news wider and include patrons in the scheduling poll.

Since so few people made it to the event, I posted the episode 2 teleplay PDF for patrons to read. If that interests you, become a patron!