Today, I did my last VC conference with the students in the Pembina Hills School Division. They were awesome, and full of great suggestions. My favourite Sasquatch names for potato chips were salty bark and crunchy leaves. Now I have to finish out the last chapter of A Close Shave and turn it in. Hopefully, I can tie up all the loose ends. Thanks to all the VC students, and congratulations to the two winners of the autographed books.
April 2007 Archives
Ever notice that the proportion of kitty affection grows as it gets nearer to their feeding time? My cats crawl over my wife in the morning until she gets up and feeds them. And during the day, when I'm in my basement office, they'll crawl up on my lap and stare at me with their big cute eyes for the five minutes it takes for my heart to melt and go up and feed them. Then they abandon me until the next feeding time. Hmmm... just who runs this house.
Whew! What a trip. The tour finished out with a fabulous day at Timberlea and St. Anne School. The junior high students at both schools were the best junior high audiences I've talked to in a very long time. They were excited and ready to go along with my insane interactive presentations. My favourite moment from Timberlea was a student who stopped me in the middle of the presentation to say that I was her hero. My absolute favourite moment from St. Anne was the demonstration when one of my actors came up with his own line of dialogue and had the class in stitches.
Timberlea students... you all rock!!!!
St. Anne students... you are awesome!!!!!!
Just got a reply from a student that saw one of my presentations, and it did my heart good to see their comment on my blog. What touched me the most was that the student was inspired to write a story that was 57 pages long, and it had nothing to do with a school assignment. Here's the comment.
"Hi MArty, I forgot to send a comment
you were awesome in the school.
I hope you stay that way
PLus if you need a book title i suggest you go with "The run" To make it a bit different then trouble.
It can be inspirational becuase I wrote a 57 page story on my own and it wasn't even for school =).
Anyways Hope you have a good day."
Thanks so much for making my day.
Finally got back to my computer. I've been touring the northern part of Alberta. I was at Fort Chipewyn yesterday and in Janvier today. The presentations at both schools were very interesting. Students at both schools were mostly aboriginal, and it was really revealing to see what stories worked and what didn't. Across the board, the one story that stood the test of time and culture was my story about my cats. I guess animals are the universal bond of all communities. Tomorrow, I'm on the road again. I hope I get to report on the tour, but if I don't I'll do some catch up reporting when I get back to Edmonton.
I forgot to mention my article in the Journal came out Friday. It was all about playing discount roulette... trying to jump in on a sale at the lowest price and ending up paying more. I had fun writing it, but my wife thought I made her out to be a miser. I thought that I was making her out to be sensible and me to be a spending fool. Hmmm. Maybe I should re-examine that article.
Made it safe and sound to Calgary. I'm in a hotel room getting ready for my presentations at the Young Author Conference tomorrow. I'm really starting to hate the stretch of highway between Edmonton and Calgary. Car whipped past me all the way down.
My only sweet moment of revenge came when I spotted a driver with Saskatchewan license plates blow past me on the way to Red Deer. About 20 minutes later, I passed him. He was getting a ticket from an RCMP officer.
But then about an hour out of Calgary, the same guy from Saskatchewan blew past my car again. Some people just don't learn. I think that the police should introduce a two-hour cooling off period for speeders on highways. The most you can gain by speeding is maybe 20 minutes, which is just enough time for a cup of coffee. Is that 20 minutes really worth it?
Whew! I finally can talk about this because it's official. My book, The Mystery of the Graffiti Ghoul, will be part of a city-wide campaign to get students in grades 4, 5, & 6 to read one book in the fall. This is a joint venture between the Edmonton Public Library and Child Friendly Edmonton.
Yay! I'm so thrilled to be a part of this project. There are plans for launches, pizza parties, a splashy web page and contests. Stay tuned for more details.
My short attention span is going to be the death of me, but not before I have some fun. I just pitched CBC Radio a half-hour series idea, and the producer liked the concept enough to commission me to write a pilot. I'm amazed, thrilled and totally insane because I have to also revise my Fringe play and my kids novel this summer. So, it looks like I'm going to be going pretty hard at the computer for the next few months.
Anyway, the pilot script doesn't mean a guarantee of production. The script is just something that the producers will look at and decide if they want to go ahead or not. But the great thing is that I'm going to get paid to write a script that may or may not hit the radio airwaves. If I can get the piece on the radio, I'd be thrilled, because this idea is a bit different from my other writing, and will give me a nice change of pace. I can't say anything about the idea until I've fleshed it out a bit more, but I can say that it is going to be a satire.
Weird how loosely connected bits of research and life experiences conspire to work their way into plays. Yesterday, I was revising God's Eye, and I started to weave in a speech about Zeno's Paradox. The famous one is Achilles and the Tortoise, which proposes that if a Tortoise had a head start, Achilles would never catch it because in the time he ran to where the turtle started, the turtle would have travelled a small distance, and by the time Achilles travelled to that point, the turtle would have travelled another small distance. Another way of looking at the paradox is an arrow is fired at a target. In order for the arrow to reach the target it must travel half the distance to a mid point and from there, it must travel half the distance between the mid point to the target. The point of the paradox is that if you accept that the arrow has to travel to a mid point, the arrow will never reach the target because there is an infinite number of halfway points.
When I was in elementary school, some twisted teacher proposed this paradox in a different way. He said if I had won a million dollars and gave away half of my winnings, and then half of the remainder and half of the remainer of the remainder, I'd never run out of money. It bugged the heck out of me and I could never wrap my mind around the concept.
Now that paradox is making its way into the play. Thematically, Norman is halfway between being Chinese and being Irish and his father, who is recovering from a stroke is halfway to being normal again. The paradox fits nicely. Not sure if it adds anything to the drama of the piece yet, but I like the idea right now. Let's see how long it stays in the draft.
Well, the Fringe is getting much nearer. I just received the artists' bulletin and tech info package. It's usually at this point when I start panicking about whether my play will be ready in time or not. And guess what? This year is no different. I cycled through the first 8 pages of the revised draft of God's Eye yesterday, and I think I finally found Norman's voice again. That gives me cause for relief, but now I'm worried about whether or not he'll actually have anything important to say in the play. Sigh. Writing a play is like having perpetual dinner with a date who can never make up her mind about what to eat.
Thanks to the students and staff at Jackson Heights School. I had a great time doing my presentations to the grades five and six students. The school is about 4 years old and has the coolest set up ever. The library is the main focus of the building with students walking through all the time. I always like it when books are the centre of attention.
Anyway, my lasting memory of the visit was an impromptu demonstration with some of the students. We acted out a bank robbery and I had a hoot watching a security guard chase a bank robber around the library. I'm sure the students in the nearby classes were probably wondering what we were doing.
My thanks to the great students! You're awesome.
Whew! This was a tough week, but a good week. I've cleared a lot of my shorter projects, so that I have room in my head and space on my schedule to tackle the novel revision. Thankfully, I don't have to start from scratch, but I just never know what might happen when I start yanking apart the book. I'll take the weekend to recharge and then I'll dive into the book. If I hit a wall, there's always God's Eye that I can pick at.
Thanks to Norton for the book suggestion! I'll look it up.
Great news. I finished a skeletal revised draft of God's Eye. It's ugly and not meant for any public reading, but I have the general shape as well as a lot of the ideas I wanted to explore in the play. Now I need to flesh out the skeleton and find if there's actually a play underneath all these ideas. The Summa structure worked really well, but the big test will come when I try to juggle speeches around. If I can do that without wrecking the flow of the play, then I have big problems. Every scene has to be in the right place or else the play will come off as episodic and flat.
The real work begins now... well not today. I have to catch up on some other projects, especially fleshing out a pitch for CBC Radio for Monday. Hoo boy, it's a lot of work, but I'd rather be doing this than work a hot dog stand.
No, it's not a cheesie tribute to Celine Dion. I just came back from the cardiologist with great news. The blip on my ECG a few months back is a minor abnormality. There's nothing to worry about. Whew! I have to admit that I was pretty stressed about my heart ever since the doctor had mentioned that I had a first degree AV block. Now, I can actually get back to my full exercise regime and try to lose the 10 pounds I gained over the last four months.
The weird thing is that I had no motivation to exercise or eat right in the months leading up to this meeting, but now that I know my heart will go on, I have every intention of getting back on the treadmill. Weird, huh? I wonder if it's human nature or if it's just me.
I can't believe the solution to the middle act of God's Eye was staring at me for the last five weeks. I've been reading St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae, which proposes various arguments for the existence and nature of God. There's a specific structure in which he outlines each of his cases. He begins with a question, then presents 1 - 3 objections, followed by a counter objection which is a statement rather than an argument. Then he presents his theory and finishes by addressing each of the objections. I could use this as the structure of the middle act as a mock intellectual court case for the existence of God. Since my main character is 9 years old, he can take liberties with how he presents the argument. He could even claim the whole thing is his version of a trail.
So now that I have the structure, let me see if the flesh will adhere to the bones. I sure hope it does. I'd hate to go back to the drawing board again.
Revisions on God's Eye are going very slow. I keep starting at the beginning of the draft and cycling through to clean up the dialogue and sharpen the transitions. The first 10 minutes of the play are going to be really tight. I kept starting over in the hopes that I could build enough momentum to carry me over into the doldrums of the middle act.
My big problem right now is that the first act sets up the dad's stroke and has Norman being very active trying to trick dad into doing rehab exercises. However, I can't continue that game for the rest of the play or else the story flattens out. Instead, I'm having Norman challenge his father's faith by questioning if there is a God. To keep things from getting too earnest, I've introduced two characters (who will be played by Norman) to argue for either side. The problem for me is that I can't have 30 pages of debate. There has to be some dramatic action as well. I have to keep reminding myself that the purpose behind the debate is to spur a reaction from Norman's dad, but I can't go back to the same tricks that I used in the first act. Hoo boy, this one's a tough nut to crack.
Last night, I swung by Chapters and picked up some books on Intelligent Design and the God Gene in the hopes that they'd give me ammunition for the middle act. I was surprised how many books about God were in the science section. That gives me hope that the theme that I'm tackling is relevant to today.
Okay, let me see if I can take another run at the middle act again.
I went into a weird zone yesterday and was able to bang out the chapter of A Close Shave, the book project for the video conference residency. Not sure how I did it, but I just started to string together one moment after the next until I had reached the end of the chapter. I want to question the process, because I don't know if I can repeat it. For some reason, there are days when I get up and I know exactly what to write and nothing can distract me. There are other days when I get up and one e-mail can take up a whole day.
The only thing that I can link to my success is the fact that I took Saturday off and got out of the house, which is also my office. I think that break from the routine helped me get some perspective. Now if only I can get some perspective on God's Eye and figure out how to crack the middle act. Ugh. I know what intellectual ground needs to be covered, but I can't map out the transitions, which means I still need to ground this piece in human decisions and real drama, rather than a collection of random ideas.
I'll try again tomorrow to crack the nut on that play. Time's running out. I have to switch tracks very soon to the revisions of my third book.
Yesterday, I had to get my zombie fix, so I headed out to watch the Grindhouse double feature featuring Planet Terror and Death Proof, two homages to B-movies by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino. I loved the trailers. They were hilarious satires and totally over the top, and most important of all... short.
The zombie fan in me enjoyed Planet Terror, but I don't know if it was because I'm just a sucker for zombie flicks. Anyway, the story moved along pretty well and there was some pretty gory scenes (a prerequisite for any undead movie). The Cherry Darling character was over the top, but then again, so was everyone else. By the end, I was pretty happy about the money I spent and I could have left Grindhouse feeling satisfied.
But the trailers kept me in the theatre a little longer... and what a mistake that was. Death Proof was a total dud. I loved Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs. I even liked Kill Bill (part one, not part two), so maybe I was expecting a lot from Death Proof. Unfortunately, the first half of the film was all character set up with two different groups having overly long conversations about pop culture and all of the unlucky actresses having to make their dialogue not sound exactly like how Quentin Taratino talks. The action sequence at the end of the movie was thrilling, but boy did I have to wait a long time.
I'm sure that Tarantino fans will banish me from the kingdom of Quentin for such blasphemy, but I really did not enjoy his half of the double bill. But that still won't stop me from seeing another movie by him.
But here's the weird experience. As I left this 18A movie, I heard two boys (about 8 or 9 years old) raving about the final scene to their mother. I thought 18A meant no kids allowed. I guess not. While the violence was pretty over the top, I kept wondering what kind of parent would think this kind of movie would be appropriate for their kids. Maybe I've become overly judgmental in my old age. In the end, it was just a movie, and I have to hope the today's kids know the difference between movies and reality.
However, I think back to my childhood and I remember how I had to just run out and buy a grey hoodie, a black toque and a pair of grey sweats after I saw Rocky. Of course, I didn't want to step into the ring with Apollo Creed, so I guess if I knew where to draw the line, maybe today's kids do too. Except... hasn't that line been moved further and further away from where it used to be when I was a kid?
Argh. Yesterday, I was revising God's Eye and realized that I had fallen in love with my research. I have to take a few steps back and come back at the play with the idea that it still has to be an ACTIVE story, and not just a series of stories and expositional speeches.
The problem is that this is a one-man show, and it's very easy to fall into the pattern of telling rather than showing. I think what I'm going to do this morning is mark off the key research points as milestones to strive for, and then find the dramatic and active way to illuminate these points. If I had another speaking character, no problem, but the challenge is to keep the play active with only one speaking character.
I'm not complainging. This was the challenge I set for myself when I sat down to write this play. I had seen too many one-handers that were storytelling exercises where the pivotal dramatic moment had already happened, and the character was withholding that information. What bothered me was that the moment had already happened and the character was being coy with the audience; revealing the moment only towards the climax of the play rather than out of an organic discovery. I always thought that structure belonged in the narrative world, but not in a theatre piece, so I wanted to see if I could write a one-hander without "cheating" the audience of the moment.
Who knows? I may find out that the task is impossible and I may have to withhold the key moment, but I'm going to have fun trying to see if I can do it another way.
Yesterday, I broke through the all important barrier... getting the first few pages done on my revised script. They were ugly pages, but I felt like I was building momentum. This morning, I'm revising those pages and getting more momentum. The hardest thing about working on this particular project is finding the voice of the character in middle of a bunch of new ideas and turns. I think it will take another draft before I fully recapture Norman's voice, but I'm getting closer. Back to work.
A big shout out to Greg, Tera and the soon-to-be-named intern at Big Earl. I was on their morning show today, and had a blast talking to Greg and Tera. They're very funny and very cool. I gave away a couple of copies of The Mystery of the Graffiti Ghoul, and I was sent some very funny pictures of cats. I wish the morning show team all the best! If you're interested, tune in to their show on weekday mornings on 96.3 FM. Gotta go now. My cat Max is trying to get on my computer... literally. MAX@@LJIF OW89WERN, VIJW E,KR VESWWE
Took the weekend off and just watched movies. I haven't done this in a long while. My wife and watched Shooter and Blades of Glory. The Mark Wahlberg thriller was better than I expected and the Will Ferrell comedy was about what I was hoping for. Both movies didn't require any thinking, and that's exactly what I needed on a Saturday afternoon.
Afterward, however, we rented Children of Men. Wow. That's a very cool movie. Looks great and the story was very cool. We also saw The Prestige, which was also pretty good, but also dark. Three of the four movies we saw were pretty depressing. I wonder if filmmakers are getting down on the world. Anyway, it was a nice break. Now it's back to work.
