Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Blog”
My beloved friend TicTac, whom I have served for ten years, died the other day at the age of 15. Actually, we helped her over into the afterlife, since she had an enormous and untreatable tumor. It was very hard. Doing euthanasia at home was a blessing; I highly recommend it if you can arrange it when the time is …
This article is part of my research for my latest play, “Bystanders.” In it, two women are affected by the trauma of a mass shooting. I came across this fascinating article about how traumatic memories are formed, processed and stored. Memories of trauma are unique because of how brains and bodies respond to threat Jacek Debiec, University of Michigan Most …
Over at ScriptLab, they’ve posted a seven-day process to creating a complex and believable main character. (Possibly my favorite exercise is ordering a sandwich – or hot dog, perhaps – as my protagonist.) Check it out: DAY 1 – Describe your main character. Do it as if you were telling someone about some very interesting people you met, someone that …
“Drink plenty of tea.” I came across this flavorful bit of advice for playwrights from Sarah Ruhl, from a 2011 interview on The Days of Yore: “It’s a lonely life. Make friends with other playwrights. They are, after all, the best sort of people as they like to be alone and they also like to be with other people so …
One of my favorite inspirational sayings is: “You don’t have to go fast. You just have to go.” I recently read that poet William Wordsworth composed most of his poems while walking through meadows, moors, and mountains. He rambled in every kind of weather and all over Europe. In fact, a friend calculated that he had walked 180,000 miles in …
I’ve begun reading a paper called “Hamlet’s Blackberry,” by William Powers. In it, Powers tackles the current illusion of importance we all maintain by remaining very busy. He points out the dilemma we face: busyness doesn’t create happiness. “We tend to think of life in outward terms, as a series of events that unfold in the physical world we all …
Need a little inspiration for your writing day? Try this quotation by Pulitzer Prizewinner Suzi-Lori Parks. “The writer has two kinds of faith: actual writing and sitting openly. Have faith in your personal effort or sweat. And faith in God, or whatever you want to call it. Then the voices will come. Faith is the big deal.” ― Suzan-Lori Parks …
I’m thinking of doing an adaptation featuring E.W. Hornung’s characters, Raffles the master jewel thief and Bunny Manders, his sidekick. The stories are clever and elegant, and there’s a sly critique of the class system built into each one. The Raffles stories were written at the same time as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, and were a kind …
The Latin phrase “Solvitur Ambulando” means “It is solved by walking,” and is attributed to Diogenes. Walking? “What problems have ever been solved by walking?” you may ask. Walking is decidedly low-tech and not particularly glamorous. Nothing could be more simple for those of us lucky enough to be ambulatory. Walking is so boring that the word for a person …
Sometimes there are time sucks that get in the way of my playwriting. When this occurs, I feel frustrated at my own lack of productivity. I may sometimes go down the rabbit hole into Twitter (I have quit Facebook), especially on a big news day. Other times, I’m surfing the internet, telling myself I’m doing research. HA! Freedom is a …