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Barely any sleep and so many deadlines. I have to find time to revise The Forbidden Phoenix, finish the outline for Annick and write my sasquatch novel. The house is a mess and I just can't find the energy. If this keeps up any longer, I think I'm going to have to see a doctor and figure out why I'm so burnt out all the time.
My cats are driving me up the wall. Max is hopping all over the kitchen counter, while Buddy is yowling every time I run into the kitchen to chase Max. I think they've figured out how to push my buttons. I'm at their mercy and I don't like it. Grrrr.
Ugh, I can barely string two sentences together right now. This has been a long run for me. This weekend was a tough one with the one day trip to Jasper for a conference and then the 3 Day Novel finale. I'm sworn to secrecy, so I can't reveal the results, but trust me when I say that you'll want to watch the series. Everyone at the finale agreed that the clips from the show made them want to watch the show. We still don't know the air date, but I'll post it on my events page as soon as I know.
I had a great time at the finale, and I got to catch up with the other contestants. My only real disappointment was that we couldn't spend more time together. The gang had dinner together on Saturday night when I was in Jasper. Sigh.
Anyway, today, I was pretty bummed... post 3-Day Novel partum depression... because I know that the 12 contestants won't ever be in the same room together unless Book TV springs for a reunion show. Ah well, I guess that's what email and Facebook is for.
My brain sludge came from two back to back meetings about The Forbidden Phoenix. We're getting into the very boring but very necessary stage where we poke holes in every part of the script so that I can plug them up. Also, we're talking about getting a CD of songs from the show ready to sell at the Edmonton production. On top of the meetings, I had to come home and work on the Annick outline. Almost done. I just want to do one more pass tomorrow morning after a run and then I'm sending it off.
Okay, must get some sleep and shake off this brain sludge. I'm just wiped out.
I'm in Jasper enjoying the lovely mountain weather. It's balmy up here and my snow tires and melting... well, not quite, but close.
I'm up here to do an author talk for librarians and trustees. What a great audience. I was thrilled to see the nice turnout, and I was thrilled to hear lots of laughter. I was talking about the origins behind my plays and books, and for some reason I decided about halfway through to take a detour into talking about The Bone House, but the audience seemed to enjoy the talk.
Now I have to get to bed early so that I can hit the road at 8:00 am. I need to get to the CTV station for the secret taping of the 3 Day Novel Contest finale. I get to find out who wins the competition, but I won't be able to blog about it until after the series airs. I'm such a tease. Sorry.
Yay!!!!!! My publisher just told me that they have sold out the first print run of the book. Not bad, considering the official book launch was two weeks ago. I'm over the moon about this, especially since I was kicking myself for the last month about not pushing the book sales as hard as I should have been. I'll still have to market the book to make sure that the second and third print runs also sell out, but I have some breathing room. I won't do anything major until I know the next run is printed.
Tough slog today. I had to try to bang out the outline for this non-fiction book about Chinese inventions. I must admit that I'm sweating on this project. I don't have the contract yet, and everything depends on how well I capture a sense of the series in just four pages. I mapped out the sections of the book and gave a paragraph description of each section, along with a fleshed out section to demonstrate the tone I'd use for the book.
I'm going to look it over tonight and then polish it tomorrow. I'd like to send it off to the publisher by the end of the week, but I want to make sure that I have something that's decent. Hmm, no one ever reads work that shows up at the end of the week. Maybe I'll sit on it over the weekend and make sure that I can really kick the outline into shape. Yes, that's a much better idea.
Just came out of a meeting with the Citadel artistic director and had some very good notes about the script. I'm always amazed at how a writer and director can get so close to a script that they can't see the forest for the trees. It was nice to have someone come at the script who didn't see the workshop and could look at the whole thing as a first time audience member.
Some of the notes were about the nature of the Iron Dragon and what it represented. Also, there was confusion about what kind of villain was Horne and what he would do once he had the Iron Dragon. I think the fixes are pretty simple... well, relatively speaking. I have to cycle through the entire script and flag any lines that may generalize too much, and make sure that everything is specific and clear. It's the second hardest part of the job (creating the first draft is the hardest part), but I have to think very logically and distance myself from the script and look at it as if I were a first-time audience member.
Anyway, the notes were great to kick my butt into the final stretch. I'm getting together with my composer and director on Monday to cycle through the script and just kick the crap out of it, so that I can go away and fix all the holes that we created. It's going to be hard work, but it's better to get kicked around now than after the show has opened and I can't do anything to fix the story.
I just talked to my editor and learned that my article on destination weddings will be running next Friday (May 2). It should be a lot of fun. I used photos from my brothers wedding for the article, but I chose not to use my family for fodder in the article (I had to keep peace in the clan). Instead, I wrote about some of the stressed out brides at the resort. Let me tell you, there were more than a couple of Bridezillas on the rampage. Anyway, I hope you check out the article.
I never saw air rage before, but I came close this weekend. For those in Alberta, you know the weekend was an unwelcome return to winter. I had the misfortune of being stuck on a plane on a runway at the Calgary airport for an hour, while delay after delay hit us.
The guy in front of me had obviously come straight from the airport bar to the airplane. He watched a hockey game on the satellite TV and actually cursed at the screen when his team lost the game, and then proceeded to gripe about it to the passengers across the aisle. When the flight delays were announced, the guy became more and more agitated. I could feel his tension from where I was sitting, and I could hear him mumbling. Finally, he pulled a flight attendant over and demanded to be let off the plane. Thankfully, the airline was able to accommodate him because he had no luggage on board.
I shudder what to think this guy would have been like if he stayed on the flight. Oh, and the main reason why we were delayed was because the snowstorm in Edmonton had turned the runways to sheer ice and there was no way a plane could brake on it. Hmm, isn't that a reasonable reason to stay put? I guess not when you've had a few beers in you.
Great day to finish out the Ottawa MASC conference. The weather was beautiful and the students were pretty darned excited for a Friday. I was surprised so many kids were eager to learn about writing. I think that speaks to how committed they are. And my favourite moment of the entire day... I got a yo-yo ball that the organizers were giving to all the kids. Yay! Yes, I am a kid at heart.
The day went downhill pretty quickly after I hit the airport though. There was and still is a huge snowstorm in Calgary, and my flight was delayed. Once I pulled into town at about 10 pm, I couldn't find a cab. I didn't get to my hotel until after midnight. Ugh.
I have to head to a young author conference Saturday morning. Hopefully, the roads will be cleared. Living in Alberta means playing winter roulette. You just never know when it'll hit you, but it'll hit you hard when it does.
This was the second day of the MASC conference, and it was a pretty fun day. The organizers had to scramble as the morning intro was moved from the theatre to the gymnasium, but everything went smoothly. The students in both the morning and afternoon sessions were great.
My only fear right now is that my volunteer had to run to the bathroom during my session. I'm not sure if he had food poisoning or a stomach flu, but now I'm all paranoid that it's a stomach flu that is highly contagious and I'll be down and out for the weekend. The terrible thing about being creative is that I can't put a lid on the imagination for contagious diseases (known and imaginary). If I don't blog tomorrow, you'll know that I wasn't imagining things.
First day of the MASC Young Author Conference. I conducted two workshops with spirited students from the Ottawa area. The organizers were great and the students were enthusiastic. My favourite moment of the day was when we did the practical demo and someone came up with the idea of a stapler grenade. Very funny.
Tonight, I have to figure out what to say at the morning's plenary to introduce myself. I don't want to talk too much, but I also want to give the kids a sense of how I became a writer. I'm sure I'll figure out something by the morning.
Here I am in the nation's capital and I spent most of the day in my hotel room. This afternoon, I had a library visit, which went over very well, but then I had to rush back to my hotel and write a Life article for the Edmonton Journal. The only time I could go out again was for dinner at Mama Teresa Restaurant, a very popular Italian restaurant which judging by the autographed photos on the walls is frequented by many politicians. The food was great, and I'm almost thinking of going back again.
The great news of the day is that I was able to contact someone at the Museum of Civilization to interview. I have to gather more research for the Annick book proposal. Hopefully, I'll be able to get enough to put my outline over the edge, so that I can get the contract.
Tomorrow, I'm into the MASC writing workshops, and then a dinner. If the weather is nice on Thursday, I might wander through Byward market after my meeting.
Phew! This was a long day. Just back from a cast party in which I thanked all the creative team and actors for doing such an awesome job on The Forbidden Phoenix.
The day was a blur. I ran into rehearsal and did a cue to cue of the first act summary, and then I watched what was supposed to be a light and easy run through, but turned into a full on run. After that, I headed into the lobby for the book signing. There was a great crowd for the book launch, and the line-up to get books signed kept growing and growing.
We had to hold the house five minutes so that I could run into the theatre and get on stage to narrate the first act. Funny story. No one told me how to get in the audience from the stage, so I was stuck in the wings for the first scene. Finally, I found a stagehand, who let me out.
The play went over really well, considering we only presented the second act. There were hoots and a couple of people even gave us a standing ovation. The major beats are there, but there are a few questions I still need answered and I need to polish the dialogue and lyrics so that everything feels consistent, but I'm in the home stretch! Yay! I'm thankful to everyone who came out to support the book launch and the play. Thank you one and all for the well wishes.
Oh boy, am I tired. We just finished a long day. I think the actors worked in a run. The rest of the rehearsal was spent cleaning up bits and working in microphone levels. Lots of technical elements had to be fiddled with. We used the evening to sort out the act one summary, which I am narrating. At least that went quickly. I'm pretty sure the actors' heads are pretty full.
The second act looks okay. The only scene that I'm not entirely happy about is the Iron Dragon scene. It's a jury-rigged scene that has a lot of movement, but the story isn't a hundred percent clear. The music is not the right piece for what the actors are doing but to be fair, this isn't an easy scene to nail down, and I suspect I'll be rewriting it from now until production, because the scene will entirely rely on what the Iron Dragon looks like. Without any of us knowing the final creature creation, we're all doing guess work.
Still, having just one scene to rework out of an entire play is not bad. I'm looking forward to tomorrow's reading, but I'm really looking forward to the book launch. Hope everyone can drop by to one or the other.
Have a great weekend.
Here's the latest article. This one's about caffeine overdosing. Hope you enjoy.
We made good progress today. Ron was able to clean up a lot of the second act. I gave the actors the revised Iron Dragon scene this morning. There's a rough shape of a scene. I think I'll still have to look at the scene after the reading. Actually, I'm going to have to polish the whole script after the reading. A lot of decisions were made in a rush to accommodate what we were doing in the reading. I'd rather have the time to review each piece of dialogue and all the lyrics before we get into rehearsal.
I have to prepare a storytelling version of the first act and allow some room for songs so that we get the audiences up to speed. I wished we had made this decision at the beginning of the week so that I'd have enough time to prepare, but we did have to at least try to make things work. I think our plans were too ambitious, and I'm glad that we're pulling back tomorrow so that the actors can just make the second act work. Almost always, workshops and staged readings stop being about the script and start being about the performance, and that's always when things get tense.
Apologies for the lateness on this one. I was up until 1:00 am revising the Iron Dragon scene. The scene that Ron cobbled together was a combination of two older Iron Dragon scenes, taking the best from both and smashing them together. I had to piece together the pieces so that they flowed together rather than stuttered to an end. I think I have something decent. I'm sure it will get honed today as the cast sorts out the blocking. If this play were just a straight text show, I'd be more protective about the words, but because movement is as much a part of the storytelling, I have to strike a balance between what the words are doing and what the choreography is doing. In a lot of ways, this process has been like working on a film or TV script, where you tell the story on page, but then also have to tell the story on screen.
My only concern right now is the what the Iron Dragon will look like. In the staged reading, it will just be the actors in a congo line, but for the production we'll have a full on dragon costume that looks like a train. At one point, the villain Horne gets on the beast. I'm worried that may look silly and I voiced my concerns so that Ron knows to avoid the embarrassing version of the scene.
Today, I've got another speaking engagement and then I jump into rehearsals as the narrator. Am I nervous? You bet!
Okay, so now we're into the hard work of the rehearsal period. Ron is backtracking from the top of act 2 and trying to clean up the motivation and decisions of all the characters. It's vital work, but it's just tough to do when there's singing and fighting rehearsals going on at the same time.
I missed most of the rehearsal today, because I spent time at S. Bruce Smith, talking to the animated grade seven students about my writing. Then I had a media interview, and now I have to get ready for the Children's Literature Roundtable meeting this evening. This week has really been a melding of my two loves: fiction and theatre.
I hope to be able to sit in on rehearsal tomorrow. Ron's plan was to tackle the revised Iron Dragon scene. I gave him permission to cut lines and shift things around to suit the blocking of the scene. I kind of look at this process as if I were creating a shooting script for film. Once I see what they've done with my scene, I can tweak and finalize the dialogue.
So, Ron, my director has this brainstorm today after we watched the second act stumble through. It's obvious from the performances that we need time to just clean up stuff and make sure that the actions are grounded. So, instead of trying to rehearse the first act this week, we're going to do a little storytelling exercise, where a narrator hits the highlights of what happens in the first act up to the last two scenes of the first act, and then the actors will start performing. While the narrator tells the story, the actors will form little tableaus and spice in some dialogue in sections to give the first act some life and the narrator something to set up.
Who is that narrator going to be? Me... agggghhhhhh! I'm okay talking in public when I'm just telling my stories and I don't have to worry about other performers waiting on my cue. I tend to talk around a subject and sometimes I'll detour in the middle of a talk because I have a whim to go off somewhere else in my talk. Now, I have to be on point and give cues to other people. Pressure? Yes! Afraid? Definitely. Will I do it? Of course. What other choice do I have? Although, if there are any Marty Chan lookalikes reading this blog, please let me know.
Back at it today. I'm a bit tired thanks to an early morning start on the Global Morning News program. My actors and composer are also a bit tired because they were there too. Thankfully, we have a few hours before rehearsal. We're starting at 1:00 pm to accommodate the arrival of our Peking Opera consultant. I'm picking him up in an hour, but I thought I'd just blog to say that we're kicking into gear.
Right now, the director (Ron) has ambitious plans to try to stage both the first and second act. The rest of the creative team is trying to talk him off the ledge. It took us two weeks to get the second act into shape, and we still have stuff to clean up. This week, we also have to incorporate music underscoring and give time for the cast to immerse themselves in the world of Peking Opera.
At the very least, we'll do a shorthand of the first act so people know what is happening before they see the second act. We have a plan for a stumble through this afternoon and then the cast works with our consultant for the rest of the day. I might bow out of the Peking Opera stuff so that I can get a leg up on my work. I wish I had the energy I did when I was 25 and taking for granted that I'd always have this level of energy. Sigh. Aging is not fun.
Phew! I was in Banff with the composer of The Forbidden Phoenix to present an excerpt of the play to the Canadian Arts Summit. Foolishly, I decided to drive to Calgary right after the event to visit my wife in Calgary, but there was a spring snow storm from Canmore to Calgary. I'd never been so scared in my life. I could barely see the road and twice I almost went off into the ditch. Thankfully, one driver noticed me and pulled in front so that I could follow him all the way to Calgary. My nerves were sufficiently jangled that I am putting an end to any night driving in the mountains.
Anyway, one day off and then it's into the final week of workshop for The Forbidden Phoenix. This should be an intense week, as my director informed me that the actor playing the lead is willing to do the work so that we can stage the first act as well as the second act. It's an ambitious plan which may fall by the wayside on Wednesday. Let's see how far we get.
I just met with a potential illustrator for my picture book about the cats. She showed me some very cool samples and I think she is the one I want to work with. I knew her from before and saw some of her more serious stuff, and liked the style, but what really intrigued me was how she could draw cartoons as part of her school presentation. The cartoons were of animals and they were always so expressive and fun.
When she showed me some greeting cards she had done, I knew she was the one. There was the cutest blue dog on the back of a card that looked very cool. The great thing is that she will help connect me with a graphic designer and a printer. She'll also show me sketches for approval. Most important of all, she liked the manuscript and thought it would give her a lot of creative freedom.
Now I just have to put together a budget and figure out how to pay for this self-publishing venture. Any investors out there?
It looks like I'm doing nothing but outlines these days. The publisher at Annick Press wants to see an outline proposal for a non-fiction series he wants me to work on. The good news is that I have a template to build from, so the main part of the work will be in researching. The concept of the series is to look at different cultures and what they created. The first in the series was The Inuit Thought of It. Naturally, I'm doing what the Chinese thought of. I'm looking forward to this project, as it might be a good foot in the door with a larger publisher. If I play my cards right, I might be able to sell Annick some fiction down the line.
Time and time again, I keep seeing reminders of how much this industry operates on relationships. You can be a great writer, but if you don't have the right connections, you are stuck. I just have to make sure I don't burn any bridges in the publishing world... I burned enough bridges in TV.
Just had a talk with my producer about some pitches. He didn't care for two of the pitches, but was intrigued by the third... a story about the YouTube generation and why people seem to want to be noticed on the internet. The story isn't quite solid, so I have to do some further research and brainstorming. He's coming to town in a couple of weeks, so we can finally talk in person, and we'll kick around the idea so that I can get started on the next pilot.
The good news is that he let me off the hook with the concept of repeating what I did with Fulcrum of Evil. While it was fun to write a satire, it's nice to know that I don't have to replicate the style or substance in the new pilot. I liken it to doing improv. I remember some Theatresports guys did a very funny improv scene and then tried to replicate it as a comedy sketch a few weeks later. The reason why it worked in the first place was because it was spontaneous. The second time, it just didn't have the spark.
Okay, I'm off to cruise the internet and check out YouTube videos and blogs. Any recommendations?
Now this day is totally surreal. I just found out that The Mystery of the Graffiti Ghoul has been shortlisted for the R. Ross Annett Award for Children's Literature. The winners will be announced on June 7. I'm happy to be on the shortlist, and like all awards, I can't count on anything other than the nomination. Everything else is up to fate and the good mood of jurors.
Okay, so this is just getting surreal. Robert Walsh (my composer) has just pitched the idea of producing a CD of the show's songs in time for the opening of the show in the fall. He said it is possible, but it would take a lot of work. He's willing to do it, and we both agreed that it would be a good idea to aim for a CD release to go with the show.
Oh, and I guess in all the Mexico stuff, I forgot the big news. The Forbidden Phoenix is going to be a part of the Citadel season. Yay!
So, now you can understand all the stress about the second act workshop. I'm feeling pretty good about where the major beats are. I just have to take some time to polish the dialogue. It's tough trying to create dialogue for a piece that is stylistic. I can't get too lyrical and I can't be too naturalistic. I have to land somewhere in the middle. No doubt, people will give me their two cents about how the dialogue should be written from here until well after the show is done. Sigh. Welcome to the downside of being a playwright.