Hello chums – I am cancelling our show for June 4 and putting June 18 on hold.
I know we will pick back up, but I don’t have a vision for that at the moment. One thought is to open the forum for us we writers (we ALL are writers) and have the next monologues be about this time in which we find ourselves.
As to June 4, it feels cavalier to ask people to tune in to an internet performance when lives are exploding or being snuffed out or disregarded. We have all been through a very tough few weeks, soon to be months. To add these terrible circumstances to the mix is almost incomprehensible.
But as we know, the boundaries of that which is incomprehensible have been moved several times over.
So let us use this privilege called time as befits us individually.
Get out that pen and paper and write.
There are two exercises I use:
Aide memoir – Think of a specific event and describe it using only your senses: sight, sound, taste, touch, smell – and that extra one called thought. Literally what you are thinking. Like Sargeant Friday used to say, “The facts ma’m. Just the facts.” No adverbs, few adjectives. This is a hallmark of Stephen King’s writing.
An example “I sat on the couch and watched the building burn on the television while my cat sat on the red towel and cleaned herself.” Got that, right? No more words needed.
The other is Timed Writing. Put your pen to paper and let the words pour onto the page without punctuation or thought or criticism. If you do’t know how to start, write “I don’t know how to start” as many times as needed before the wheels are greased and you are riding without training wheels.
Remember you have a public life, a private life and a secret life. The first is boring. The second is conditional. The third is source of the spring waters of your life.
Stay safe. Stay sane – or not.
xo
tulis
