Storyteller Disconnect? BAD.

I swear I'm going to start posting in the morning. Eventually.

So as I've been trying to revise my script today (Where the Wild Berries Grow, check out my community arts company's blog for more on that), and it's just been an incredibly slow process all summer. The biggest challenges I faced last year, sure, I know how to deal with now, but I just have new challenges this year. I have literally had almost no constructive feedback all summer, and have thus been totally alone in writing this time around.

So I've been disconnecting myself with the characters and the story so I can give myself unbiased feedback. This is a whole new problem though, as I've discovered. All writers, actors, storytellers, etc. beware: disconnecting from your characters and story is dangerous and definitely not advised. What happens is as follows:

1. I'm not motivated to develop the story and characters to learn more. By disconnecting, I don't feel the usual urge to know every detail about everyone and everything in the story.
2. And that means the story and characters come out flat.
3. Flat stories don't motivate me to learn more about the story.
4. Oh, look, it's a never ending cycle.

Take my word for it: don't try to create a story while disconnected to it. Connect! Being a writer (or any storyteller) requires you to become insane. You must live within the world that your character(s) live(s) in, or else you won't be able to tell the story the way it deserves to be told. People are much more interested in first-hand accounts than someone who heard from someone who heard from someone whose cousin heard from their neighbour who-- you get the picture.

So I started reconnecting with my characters today. Amazingly, I can suddenly write again. Sort of. I'm kind of trying to avoid insane-writer status, but I'm getting lost in their world again, and I doubt I'll be able to avoid insane-writer status for much longer. But two weeks of being an insane writer? I think I can manage to be insane for two weeks so I can get this script performance worthy.

Insanity, here I come.

England, Zubetube, and Other Spontaneity

And then, after I was so excited about Dance Hour, I didn't have time. Two days in a row. It's been a hectic two days in a row. Full of lots of not very much.

I jest, of course. I woke up Saturday with this strange urge to be important. I threw on the flashiest clothes I had (literally the flashiest; my shirt was covered in sequins. Yeeeaaah.), put on some make-up (hard to believe, I know), and topped it off with new shoes. Nose in the air, I walked to a yard sale near my house, looked at the items with disdain, and walked away, muttering about "Community Outreach." I'm sure everyone there was QUITE impressed with my apparent fame, fortune, and sheer importance. And British accent too, of course.

That, of course, was not enough. I grabbed my phone, called a few friends (they never answer their phones, bastards!), and eventually reached my friend Frank. "Okay, so I know this sounds weird, but I want to walk around and pretend to be famous." I was met with the expected amusement, but he agreed to fake importance with me, and we ended up wandering the outdoor mall/Old Town in our (not so) little Los Angeles suburb, British accents and everything.

Funniest. Day. Ever. We had full-on characters. I was quite the famous figure in England apparently, and Frank was apparently a rather uninformed underwear model. My publicist sent me to America and instructed me to act like a common person, the nerve! "The English have the right of way in America!" I exclaimed once, crossing the street and yelling about the terrible driving in this country.

And then we wandered into the music store. (Yeah, that one that's underground! It's awesome.) Frank the underwear model, apparently, knew nothing of music, and Elizabeth the super rich and famous knew everything and had done everything.

And then we found, wait for it . . . the ZUBETUBE!!! Coolest instrument EVER. "The ultimate cosmic sound machine." No kidding. After debating about totally how awesome it would be for our "space album" (more to come on that later!), we asked the price (under $15!), decided to split the cost, and bought the coolest instrument ever. I think I'll just have to do an entire post on the ZubeTube soon. It's amazing.

After that, I didn't get home until the AM, just running around, acting silly (boy do I have stories too!), and then I spent today doing all sorts of mundane things like copying CD after CD first onto the computer and then onto my phone. Check out the band Simply Red. Old 80s band; I just found their CD and decided I love them.

Even without Dance Hour, I managed to dance around a whole lot this weekend, from tap dancing to street musicians, to ridiculous dance offs, to jumping around the kitchen with my little brother.

Dance Hour

When I promised a whole HOUR of dancing a day, I thought to myself, "Backspace! Backspace! Backspace!!! That's crazy talk!" I was right. Dancing for a whole hour on a daily basis is crazy. But crazy is not synonymous with bad.

My first official "Dance Hour" (as I am henceforth referring to it as) was crazy. I turned on the TV, found the wonderful music channels (which I discovered when my family was running around in Italy or Germany or Spain or whatever cool place I couldn't go), turned up the volume, and set to work moving all the furniture out of my way. Couches, chairs, beanbags, tables, little brother's junk, etc. At last, I had a big open area to dance in. I grabbed my phone, started the stopwatch, and danced.

Within fifteen minutes, I was ready to be done. I was tired, out of breath, sweaty, and embarrassed by my own dancing. But I had promised an hour. So I kept dancing, looking like a very exhausted, stinky, untalented fool.

I don't know when it happened, but I stopped caring about the time. I was having way too much fun dancing and listening to all the music, and I was starting to like how sweaty I was getting. The hour was up, but I didn't bother to check my phone to see. I danced for more than just an hour, and when I finally had to move all the furniture back, I wished I could just keep dancing. It was crazy fun.

I woke up sore today. And not the ache-y back, cramped neck, body full of some serious tension sore. It was the worked hard, had some fun, body rejoicing sore. With some old aches and cramps mixed in, but not as prevalent. Less tension and restless sleep, more relaxation and comfortable sleep.

I love dancing.

P.S. I have some video clips, but my brother has the cord somewhere, and I've no idea where. If/when I find it, I'll put up some embarrassing video.

So You Think You Can Blog

This blogging daily thing won't be so hard if things like BEING ON THE SEASON SEVEN SEASON FINALE happen more often.

"You were on SYTYCD, say WHAT???" Yeah, I know. Okay, I'll explain. I am not a super mega awesome dancer, nor was I cool enough to be in the audience either. But I was on the show. For like two seconds. Yes, I leapt out of my seat (in this case, a rather comfy couch), tossed and/or hugged rather tightly the pillow I was clinging onto for the entirety of the episode, grabbed my brother, and excitedly pointed out my non-HD self. I rewound, replayed, and rewound again. I paused it and looked at myself on TV. It was exciting.

So how, you ask! Well, see, I partook in a wonderful thing called a flash mob on National Dance Day. We danced; it was exciting! National Dance Day was definitely one of the most enjoyable days I've had in quite some time, and I have enjoyable days nearly all the time. Video was sent to the wonderful people at SYTYCD, and they threw in a clip with me and other near me dancing in their "National Dance Day is cool" montage midway through the show.

Watch for me on Oprah next week. I'll be in a montage of bloggers who stare at their computers all day and develop extreme sensitivity to sunlight as a result. Yeeaaah.

But in all seriousness, the point of National Dance Day and the clips of regular people (like me!) dancing up on SYTYCD, along with Ellen DeGeneres, DANCE LEGEND, getting to dance on that incredible stage is that anyone can dance. In fact, anyone should dance. Whether you dance incredibly or incredibly bad doesn't matter; it's just about dancing for the sake of dancing.

Ah, dance, one of the many, many fields I want to get into more. I think I'll start dancing more often. (Because whilst driving isn't usually the best time.) Yeah, I know I've been saying that for nearly a year, but I mean! Look, just to prove my point, I am going to dance for at least 1 hour a day for the rest of summer vacation! HA! Take that, doubters!

I think I can blog, by the way.

One Hit Wonder

I should do this daily. Blog, that is.

I have this ridiculous fear that someone will figure out that I'm not actually as great as my 130 fans on Facebook seem to think I am (What?? 130??? When did THAT happen??). They'll tell someone else, and then it'll spread like wildfire that I'm just average and everyone will move on. Ever since I miraculously managed to write, direct, produce, and star in Without Direction, it's been about 100 times better and 100 times worse.

I accomplished something. I really did something! And no one can deny it, not even my self-depreciating, highly critical self. Without Direction is not something an average person could have done; it took someone incredible!

Somehow, the fear comes back, just as powerful as ever. It hits me with a profound, "So???" So Without Direction was cool, so what?. Is that all you've got? Peaked at seventeen? One hit wonder.

It's like a virus, mutating and adapting. Fear. It's everywhere. As I complete another script and begin production, I can feel the fear lurking in the back of my head, already mutating and adapting. It knows what I'm going to say. "See? I'm not just a one hit wonder! I did TWO plays!" It's spent months informing me that I'll never be able to come close to Without Direction, and, worse, that no number of plays at my old high school will make me anything more than a loser, a one hit wonder.

So I mutate and adapt. It's a never ending battle. Some days, it looks like I'm going to crush fear, and some days it looks like fear will crush me. I'm not sure I want to destroy fear though; for all the knocking down it does, fear, or overcoming fear, is what pushes me beyond my limits. Without fear, I'd probably just go take a nap.