Raison D'etre...Mmmm...Raisins...

So I've gotta own up to you, dear readers. I started this blog in a fit of envy and jealousy.

I will explain, in that order.

For a very long time, I've been envious of my writer friends. Characters, scenarios, plot twists, all seemed to flow from them like CO2. Even though I know that's as false as anything, it still seemed that way to me. Blogging has always come to me that easily, but not so much "real writing." You know, things I could put in a portfolio, or list on a resume. Exactly one complete, original story has emerged from my brain.

It was a one-act, back in college. It was terrible. It also took me almost all four years to finish the damn thing.

So now I have this blog, and I even know, however loosely, what I want it to be. Thanks to that, I know the writing will come more easily. I have direction, and a format with which I am familiar. I no longer have an excuse to be envious of my friends who proclaim themselves "writers."

So then, there is the jealousy.

Ever since I met my boyfriend and the coworkers he was with that night, I have been aware of how little I have accomplished in the two-and-a-half years since I got my degree. (Yes, my fellow graduates of The Class of 2004...it's been that long.)

Merely hanging out with people in publishing is one thing. When you're single, you're still treated as an individual when new people are introduced to the group. This becomes, shall we say, less true when you become So-and-so's Girlfriend. As such, I have become extremely jealous of that which is me.

I can be witty. I can be charming. I can even be knowledgeable about the corner of the publishing world my boyfriend and his corworkers inhabit. However, at the end of the day, after the meet-ups, the hang-outs, and the cocktail parties, I am still, ultimately, So-and-so's Girlfriend.

So now, I also proclaim myself Red Stapler.

Here. Have some raisins.

Writerly Musings

Where does a story stop being masturbatory and start being fiction?

Is it actually *fun* to read the works or watch the plays of people you know and play "spot the story she always tells when drunk"?

Does my enjoyment of a piece grow or wane when I know the source material? I saw a one-act in college that was a very thinly veiled autobiography. It was uncomfortable to watch because I knew pieces of the story, and had been in a show with one of the "characters" at the time. I knew "something" was up, but I never knew the details. Two years later, there were the details out for everyone to see.

Should she have written the piece? Absolutely. I will never say someone should not write something. Should she have entered into the school's One Act Festival? Absolutely not. It was entirely too obvious who the characters were supposed to be, and what events the script chronicled. In short, I didn't want to know.

Hell, I feel the same way about Scarlett Johansson's character in "Lost in Translation." I read somewhere that her character and the husband were really supposed to be Sofia Coppola and her soon-after ex husband, Spike Jonze. I found myself unable to enjoy the movie as thoroughly after that. The veil of fiction was gone.

Even worse, after reading Neil Gaiman's blog for a year and a half, I wasn't as enthralled with Anansi Boys as I wanted to be, simply because I was SO USED to his writing. He's very good about including the blog as part of his writing process. And as a reader of his blog, I felt like a part of that process. That's awesome. I wish it wasn't until I started to read Anansi Boys for a second time that I realised what a wonderful book it actually is.

I've been writing recently, in an attempt to both get some stuff out of my head and on to paper, and simply the fact that the situation I want to write about is extraordinarily dramatic as it is. I want to take it and make it my own now.

I am aware that I have to pick my beta readers carefully. I want them to know who the players are, but I'd rather it not be the people whose ears I've been bending. Moreover, I'd love to show it to a total stranger and have them pick apart the mechanics without getting hung up on the fact that so-and-so is a jerk and I need to "break the wrist and walk away."

No one needs to be told to write what they know. Even if someone is writing about Space Nazis, the individual characters will be made up of pieces of that person's friends and acquaintances. It's how characters are real.

But can they only be real to strangers? Is that distance required?

Discuss.

Meh.

Lately, I've been very frustrated with myself and my complete lack of creative output.

The last creative thing I did was my friend's wedding present. I have ideas in the same vein to use for other projects, but they require time, money, and materials I do not have at present.

This morning, I was looking for some images to make icons out of. Icons which I've had the plans for for about two years. ::facepalm::

I got sucked into the story, as it's a wonderful, complex, and funny one. And then I remembered that I've broken bread with the author. He bought me drinks. In person, he's as funny and cool and twisted as you'd imagine.

And then it struck me, what my problem is:

I feel like my brain is too small. So many writers I know have characters walking through their heads all the freaking time. It drives them batty, so many people in their minds, begging for their stories to be told.

I just don't have that.

Every once in a while, I'll get a flash of an idea, or a bare skeleton of a character. I'll write it down, sometimes as little as a patch of dialogue, sometimes as much as a full biography from which to work. But with the exception of very few projects, nothing happens.

I lose the thread, the line of story that I was following. Next thing I know, it's been six months, and the text file has been sitting, unloved and unwanted on my hard drive.

A friend of mine who edits an indie comic asked if I wanted to write a story for her. Sure, I'd love to--I just don't know what. I have *an* idea...but it's so literally from life that it would betray too much privacy.

I can bend reality in 32 flavors, but I have a devil of a time creating my own.

Fuck You! - or - Why I Gave Up On the Theatre World

I don't know why, but I was looking at the Theatre Dept website for my alma mater.

Jesus Christ, that shit still makes me angry. The stuff they're doing now is the kind of thing I was clamoring for, but couldn't get because I wasn't one of the Art Director's Chosen Ones.

I'm very happy with my life and where it is, and I try not to think about Wild Might-Have-Beens, but I can't help but be angry about that. I was ready to dedicate my life to theatre, and I was deemed Unworthy by an asshat, and as such, was never taught the skills I needed to survive in the professional theatre world. I got tired of busting my ass and doing it wrong and getting a bad rep, so I eventually gave up and tried other things that I was better at.

But damn.

Everything I tried to wrestle from the hands and mind of that Simon Cowell-Wannabe is up on that website, laid out like a goddamn buffet.

Fuck you.