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i should be writing. [Apr. 7th, 2011|05:05 pm]
[mood |sadunproductive.]
[music |just me yelling at myself in my head]

In my last entry, I mentioned that I was thinking of moving onto another site that is not livejournal. And I haven't updated since. I'm still not sure whether I want to just move my blog or if I should do some sort of combination blog/"hey look at my playwriting!" sort of thing. And it's annoying because I don't want to post here in the meantime when I could be using a shiny new blog, but I also would need to plan out how said shiny new blog would look.

Also, I need to be writing. Not sitting here thinking about what my proposed new blog design should be. I moved, I got a new laptop, and now I need to start writing again. I wish I didn't have this freeze-up every time I go to start something new. I have a writing group meeting on Tuesday, and it's currently Thursday early-evening. I want to get a good 10 pages or so of something new started. Instead I've spent my time unpacking from the recent move, arranging all my dvds on the entertainment center, and watching Smallville with the roommates. We're on season 2.

It's sad when you've been so unproductive that going outside to throw the recyclables out into the bin makes you feel so much better and more organized.

And now one of the cats is hacking in the next room. I bet it's Shadow.
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i'm back! [Feb. 11th, 2011|01:29 pm]
[mood |creativetrying this again]
[music |Supernanny]

I'm back! And experimenting with a new font size. Seeing how this whole "small" size looks. Trying to not be as afraid of seeing my writing in "print," which was the reasoning for using such a tiny font in the past. I have to get over it someday if I ever want to write. Don't expect anything clever or witty or anything right now because I'm just getting back into this whole "blogging" thing.

So, lots of changes since my last pathetic attempt at an update. There's an Allan now! He is awesome. yay for match.com. I was only on the site for about a week before getting an email from him.

And I'm done with school! MFA, bitches. hehe. I remember my old entries when I used to obsess over not being able to write or to get an application writing sample together. It feels unreal to actually be blogging about being done. I'm still copyediting, still from home. I'm hoping to move out of the family's house soon... and in with Allan. Well, Allan and his other roommate Mike. We're waiting on the current third roommate to move out.

I spent Christmas and New Year this year in Arkansas with Allan's family. It was a part of the country I'd never seen before. It was like a different country in some ways. Even little things like how they called turkey stuffing "dressing" and at first I was confused and thinking that they dipped their turkey in salad dressing. I also got to see Graceland in Memphis. And the Mississippi River.

And I got a ten-minute play into the Kenendy Center regionals this year! That was pretty awesome. I'm really happy though that two of my classmates were there with me, because I couldn't have handled the stress and the craziness without them there. And my play went on to the semifinals!!! I've never gotten selected for anything writing-related before, so this whole thing has felt new and different. I had to send my revise in earlier this week, and it wll be about a month or so before I hear if it makes it to DC. So, we'll see. Even just getting to go to Fitchburg was amazing. God, I can't believe I just typed that going to Fitchburg was amazing. Sorry, Fitchburg.

So there's been lots of good lately. It's weird. I want to try to blog again now that I'm not psychotically busy with school. I keep wondering though if I should move to another site that isn't livejournal. Livejournal makes me feel like a teenager, even though I didn't even use it until I was almost 22. But I'd want someplace where I could easily migrate my whole archive over. Even the crazy teeniefont anxiety-ridden "cutespelling" entries.

Also, if anyone's reading this for the first time, just know that that "pictures" link to my flickr account is totally outdated. I don't have the pro account anymore so all that's visible is the most recent 200 photos, which are all from the Disney cruise.

I once again have a Marmalade on me taking up all the space between me and my computer. I think that means it's time to stop writing. But yeah, I'm here again, at least for this one entry, yay! 

The font size feels gigantic to me, by the way.

 


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where i've been [Jun. 7th, 2010|10:39 pm]
[mood |stressedoverworked.]
[music |Sunday in the Park with George]

It's been forever since I updated here, I know. Grad school plus work has been really tough at times. Quick updates: the spring semester is over, the four writing workshop classes are over, my staged reading of my thesis play is over, and I'm currently enrolled in a summer class on Pulitzer Prize-Winning Plays. 

Mostly everyone knows this anyway, but I've been blogging for Holy Cross since the start of the spring semester. So all my updates from the past few months are located over there. So if you haven't already, check out the new more-suitable-for-public-consumption me. 

I'll be back to update this blog for real soon I hope. Emily from school (BU school, not HC school) got me inspired to head back over here when she posted a link to her blog on facebook. But I have a paper to get written for Wednesday. blaaah.
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managing the stress and NaPlWriMo '09 [Oct. 30th, 2009|09:40 am]
[mood |sleepysooo tired.]
[music |same song as last time because I reread that entry before posting :)]

Quick update. The stress is a bit more manageable now. I missed the set strike last Sunday because I wasn't feeling well (see previous entry about how I stress myself into feeling sick :P). I wrote a new ten-minute play last week and got some good feedback on it. It still needs a better ending before Sunday, but I should be submitting that one to the Kennedy Center competition. I also decided to just submit my "hospital" play in ten-minute form even though it will be better as a one-act. The one-act version won't be ready in time, so I'll submit it in one-act form next year. And last Sunday (when I was missing the strike), I also got some revisions done on my full-length for class last Monday. They went well, but I still need to find what exactly that play is about so that it feels like it's moving forward rather than just a handful of (hopefully) entertaining scenes. Today is Friday, and I have my first free weekend in a month. It's very nice knowing that I don't have to run out to the theater right after work and do the box office. But I do need to get my ten-minute plays together and submitted before Sunday. And I decided to do NaPlWriMo again even though I won't get to "win" because I don't have a new play to start. I also volunteered to be one of their bloggers on the website. Should be fun. I'm hoping the community there helps me keep going on my full-length play since I really need to develop it this month.
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stress wall. [Oct. 20th, 2009|04:59 pm]
[mood |busy?!!???!!??!]
[music |Four Squirrels - Mighty KC]

I am so out-of-my-mind beyond frazzled right now. I've totally hit one of my metaphorical stress walls and all my nerves are shot and I have zero patience or coping capabilities. I had set out to email one of my professors with some play questions and realized there was no way I was going to make coherent sense in anything I tried to write at this point. I had been juggling everything just fine and then it all sort of came crashing down at once. I have to work nine hours per day for the rest of this week. I have to work the box office on Friday night and Saturday afternoon and night. Probably see the Saturday afternoon show because I haven't seen it yet and it would look bad if I didn't even go see my own professor's show. Sunday I have to spend all day tearing the set down. Monday I have to workshop revisions of the start of my full-length. AND I'm supposed to have two polished ten-minutes and ideally a polished one-act to submit for the Kennedy Center festival by the end of the month. Which is like next week. And it just all piled up and I'm mentally exhausted every day and I feel like there's just not enough time to get everything done. Waking up for work at 8 rather than at 9 has been killing me... for some reason that one extra hour is a lot harder for me. And since I wake up earlier I'm too dead tired at night to get the writing I'd like done. Now I have all these thoughts like "I don't know how to write ten-minute plays" and "how the hell can I do revisions when I'm not even entirely sure where the goddamn play is going yet???" running through my head. And Oskar wriggled out of his collar and Marmalade is tearing about the room like a maniac and everything is just exploding everywhere. I knew there would be times like this during the program. I was fully prepared for it. And I try to stay focused on the longterm and to tell myself that this is only a year and looking back it will feel like nothing. But right now I'm just feeling panicked and totally pressed for time and completely burned out even though I haven't really DONE anything yet. Anyway. yeah. I think it is time for shower to try to calm my nerves somewhat. Then I'll read some more August: Osage County because it's supposed to help me figure out how to structure my current piece-o-crap full-length. Then when I'm mentally stable enough again I can try to get some actual writing accomplished. Or something. 
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a good play and a bad play [Oct. 2nd, 2009|09:32 am]
[mood |contemplativethinking about the full-length]
[music |that song with "everything keeps happening in the most peculiar way" from tv]


I'm having such a hard time getting my full-length play started. Which is really bad because I have to workshop a good 20 pages or so in class on Monday (it's currently Friday). I really need to get going on it.

Tuesday's class this past week was one of those days that I'll have to remember when I inevitably have really awful reviews at some point this semester/year. I presented a new 10-minute play that I was really worried about. I thought it was really rough and at times told too much (as in "show, don't tell") but at other times failed to get its point across. But everyone loved it. It was a really sad little piece, and when the reading was over the professor said "well, that was just horrible!" but he said it in a way that you knew he meant the emotion was so affecting because the play was good. It got lots of positive feedback. And it was nice because moments like that help me feel like I really do belong in the program and didn't just somehow make it past the admissions committee because all their other writing samples were burned up or something. :P

I also earlier this week got a nicely worded "no thank you" from a 10-minute festival that I submitted to back in August. It was a very encouraging and nice letter though, plus I didn't feel hurt at all because I wasn't expecting my play to make it in... I was more just sending something for the experience of getting used to sending work out. I hadn't been able to get a new 10-minute play together in time, so I shortened one I'd written for my MFA applications that was originally about 20 minutes. The 20 minute version got weak towards the end, but I had to cut so much to fit it into 10 minutes that it probably felt choppy.

So that's where I am writing-wise now. Desperately need to get going on the full-length. I won't have time to write a new 10-minute for Tuesday, but I do want to get one more together so I can workshop it before the end of the month when Kennedy Center submissions are due. And I start my work on the box office for the Playwrights' Theatre production of Little Black Dress (my professor's play) tonight. I can't believe it's already October. The year is going to go by so fast.
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family updates and stuff [Sep. 23rd, 2009|12:53 pm]
[mood |drainedmentally drained.]
[music |I have something stuck in my head but can't quite figure out what it is.]


I figured that perhaps I should post some general life updates because I don't think I've gotten to talk to many people lately. hmm. I think pretty much everyone by now has heard about my father's going in for radiation to treat the prostate cancer that was found this summer. That starts next week, I think. I'm not sure I mentioned to anyone though that he had a really serious tooth/gums infection last week. He woke up one morning looking like he'd been punched in the face--it was all swollen and puffy on one side. My family, of course, does not have dental insurance. And my father is already missing lots of his top front teeth from an incident when I was in college that caused all of his caps to fall out. So they were calling around different dentists in the city and finally found one who would see him for a preliminary exam for only a $100 down payment. I helped out with some of that, and he went in and came out with a prescription for antibiotics, a painkiller, and an OTC stomach-settler dealie so that the antibiotics wouldn't make him feel sick. He had to take the antibiotics for a week, and the infection looks a lot better now and isn't swelled up anymore. But at his dentist visit they said it was so bad that they'll have to pull all of his remaining top teeth and give him dentures. And his bottom teeth needed something called "scaling," but I keep forgetting to look that up and see what it actually involves. My mother just now signed up for her dental plan so that the rest of his treatments can be covered, but now he has to wait until October 1, when she'll be officially put in the dental plan's system, to make his next appointment. And it was a really good thing that the infection got so bad that it swelled up so much... he had felt his teeth bothering him for about a week before that and hadn't said anything, and I guess starting radiation with an infection elsewhere in your body = not good. So he has those two big things coming up in October.

I think that's it for the family updates. It is now time to get back to review-issue-ing for work.
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ads? [Sep. 17th, 2009|09:49 pm]
[mood |aggravatedfeel like complaining.]
[music |I think I have Freedom '90 stuck in my head somehow...]

I obviously haven't been posting much for the past few months, but why the hell are there ads on my journal if I go to my page without being logged in? eww. I thought the difference between basic accounts versus sponsored accounts was that sponsored meant you got some of the paid account privileges with the tradeoff of having ads on your journal. Basic account holders like myself would see ads on the homepage if we weren't logged in and on the pages of sponsored account users all the time, and paid account users would be ad free as long as they were logged in. Did I misunderstand that? Did it change at some point? I didn't want ads on my journal, hence the basic account status. It looks all ugly now. 
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first real week of classes [Sep. 17th, 2009|02:38 pm]
[mood |busylots to do.]
[music |Weezer's "Susanne" stuck in my head]

I'm trying to update more regularly even though I don't really have anything of value to say. I've had three class meetings so far for school, and I'm really liking it even though it's still early on. On Monday we had actors read through the ten-minute plays we had to write in the two weeks before the start of school. I was less terrified of hearing my work read out loud than I had been back in college when my thesis play had the staged reading. Which is especially impressive considering that this was a really rough first draft and my thesis had gone through several revisions and had been looked at by several advisors and readers. I actually had more of a meltdown during my initial introduction, where the professor asked each of us about where we were with our writing and who our influences were and all of that. I had this big mental panic where I was afraid I'd made myself sound like a total airhead, and I had cry-in-the-bathroom time shortly afterward when we took a five-minute break. Hearing the play read was easy in comparison. I personally thought it was just all right, nothing special, but at least not painfully worse than the quality of everyone else's work. But when I emailed the professor later that day to double-check the title of a movie he told me to check out, he said my play showed "genuine sophistication." I wanted to write back and be like, "umm, you DO remember which play was mine, right?"

Tuesday we had our second meeting of the class that is going to focus primarily on shorter work--ten-minute plays and one-acts. We are going to have to have two ten-minute plays revised and ready to go by October 31 because the director of the playwriting program wants to submit them all to this annual student writing competition at the Kennedy Center. woo, impending rejection! I might try to develop the ten-minute I wrote for the Monday class (the one with "genuine sophistication") and then write a second one in a totally different style. For Tuesday we were supposed to bring in a short opening scene in which dialogue was pared down to a minimum and it got the audience interested and left them wanting more. I was exhausted Monday night, after 1.5 hours of work, 3 hours of class, and another 2.5 hours of work, and when I went to turn on my laptop that night to get working on this assignment, the monitor was having a breakdown. It's done this a couple times before too. It turns a sickly yellow color instead of the nice light grey and is all scrambled and jumpy like a dirty VHS tape. It's somehow magically fixed itself each time it's done this in the past, but it took about half an hour this most recent time. I was so mentally drained after that. So I decided to cut all but the first two pages out of this long-abandoned partial draft I'd done a few years ago... I'd wanted at some point to see if there was anything at all saveable in it, and I figured what better time to attempt that than in the very beginning of the class. So I had that one read out loud on Tuesday, and I got some good advice on how to rework it. I think I can make a ten-minute play out of it (when I originally attempted writing it I had no idea that the ten-minute format existed). I don't know if it will be a very GOOD ten-minute play, but I'll give it a try anyway.

So that's where I am for classes right now. I have to read Uncle Vanya by Chekhov and then see David Mamet's production of Vanya on 42nd Street and talk about them in next Monday's class... the professor thinks it will help me with this family drama I have floating around in my head. I'm halfway through the play and still need to track down the dvd. And I'm supposed to workshop the start of a full-length (aforementioned family drama) two weeks from Monday, so I really need to get going on that as well because it's not started yet. For Tuesday we're supposed to be working on a ten-minute play, whether it's based on the scene-openers we just did or something completely different. I might like I said try to get some feedback on the one I'd written for the first Monday class because that when it's done can hopefully be one of my Kennedy Center pieces. The craziness just never stops.  

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new furniture and classes starting [Sep. 9th, 2009|12:08 pm]
[mood |busybusy]
[music |Full House in the background]

09/09/09... I enjoy symmetrical dates, and there's not many of them left for a long time. The good thing is that hopefully those stupid New Year sunglasses will be a thing of the past.

I've gotten a lot done since my last update. I am moved back into Somerville in my little attic space. I picked out a new bedroom set (bed, bureau, nightstand, and a really nice desk with a hutch over it for lots of storage) at Bernie and Phyl's and qualified for a free tv because I spent so much. :P  Getting all the new things up here was ridiculous though. Attempt 1 involved the boxspring, mattress, bureau, nightstand and desk... the bed itself and the hutch weren't in stock and would arrive later. But first the full-size boxspring wouldn't fit up the attic steps, and then the delivery guys couldn't even get the bureau up my grandmother's steps to the second floor. I was really surprised and wanted to tell them to try harder, but I didn't want to sound like an elitist jerk so I trusted them. He also said there was no way the desk was going to fit and didn't even try it. And I was home by myself and didn't know what to do so I just had them take everything back until I could figure it out. My mother called my uncle who had helped my grandmother move in furniture in the past and my other aunt and uncle who had lived up in the attic for a few years, and they all thought that my stuff should fit. And we measured the staircase dimensions and compared them to the furniture dimensions, and I didn't think we'd have any issues (although it is hard to predict how the twist in the staircase will affect everything). We took down the railings in my grandmother's stairs that my uncle had recently installed and asked Bernie and Phyl's to try again. I also went to Sleepy's and special-ordered a split low-profile full boxspring because Bernie and Phyl's didn't carry split fulls. Then in Attempt 2 (mattress sans boxspring, bureau, desk, nightstand) everything went up ok. They actually did things like taking the drawers out of the bureau this time... I swear they were just being lazy the first time. The desk was a really tight squeeze since it's so long and wide, but we got it in.

The timing worked out nicely on the rest of my stuff, and Sleepy's delivered by boxspring last Thursday and Bernie and Phyl's delivered my hutch and bed on Friday. The Sleepy's delivery went fine, but Attempt 3 from Bernie and Phyl's was another horror show. They were late because the truck had broken down, and they were getting lazy and pissy again. The headboard was not fitting up the attic stairs, and we finally told them to just leave it on the second floor so my family could try it alone later. The guy once again tried to tell me that the desk hutch was definitely not going to fit, and I told him that that's what he said about both the bureau and the desk and they fit just fine when they actually tried. :P  And sure enough, when they tried, it went up on the first try with no issues whatsoever. They were just being lazy-asses again. Later that night my brother and mother tried to get the headboard up, and there was literally about one inch less space than we needed. So my brother had to pull back the carpet at the corner of the steps and cut a small square out of the (cheap) floor underneath to give us the extra space we needed. And it finally got up the stairs, yay! So now my room is finally fully set up, aside from my free tv which will be in stock in about two weeks. The only thing is that my attic ceilings are severely sloped, and I only have a full-height ceiling in the center of the room, one wall of which is taken up by a closet and the other by the windows. When the desk hutch arrived, I had to move the desk to where my bookcase had been, blocking the closet, because it was too tall to fit anywhere else. And I had to (hopefully temporarily) stick my bookcase blocking one of the windows right next to my bed, where it looks really stupid. If I can find a way to prop up the shelves I can maybe lean the bookcase on its side and create a makeshift low-but-long bookcase against one of the free low walls. Other than the slope issues (and narrow winding staircase), it's a nice little space that feels almost like a studio without the bathroom and kitchen.

And, in addition to all of that, my classes started yesterday! yay! There's a puppie named Nicolas who comes to work with one of the theater staff guys and wanders around the theater offices... I like him. The workshop yesterday was the one that is going to focus more on shorter pieces, and the one that hasn't met yet will focus on longer plays. We have a short assignment due for the class we haven't had yet that I think is supposed to get us used to the workshop format and giving/receiving feedback before we start the longer pieces. The professor of the class we had yesterday has collaborated with a guy who's written music for Disney movies... that makes me very happy. He's also written songs for the mid-90s PBS show The Puzzle Place.

And now I'm working weird hours on Mondays and Tuesdays when my classes meet and starting early/staying late on the other work days to make up the hours I miss at class. It kind of helps though because when I feel sad there is always stuff I have to get done to distract me. I keep losing my internet connection today, which is really annoying. But lunch is just about over so I should post this and try to finish my figure upload that keeps getting lost when the connection drops.

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