 And we're going to do it next week and then we're going to take a hiatus on there this summer. We're coming back to the door just to let you know that we're away. I know you guys are here. We'll see. We'll have another conference. But next week might well be the last week for a little while before we come back in the fall or first week or things like that. But anyway, here we are doing this today, which is also the pre-right class. And we're going to do the dialogue, the second end of work and the action part first. Let me say that again, we're going to do the action part first and then the dialogue second. And the action part is going to be 45 minutes of us working. And then the dialogue is going to be talking where you guys ask me questions about your creative process. So the Watch Me Work and Me was for you. But if you are out there in the interwebs and you want to tweet us a question, Patti will tell us how to do that. And you can put your questions to appwatchmeworkslp with hashtag newflakes. Watch Me Work? At? No. At Watch Me Work? At Watch Me Work with hashtag newflakes. And it's always the same every week. It was different, it was different than it was before. So, you want to say it? At Watch Me Work with hashtag newflakes. Excellent. Alright. So we're going to work for 45 minutes and we're going to set our timer. And it might be right in the long end outside there. 242. What do you think? I think so. Change the level of people on your toes. Here we go. Great. I was charging my battery. Oh, oh, oh. I see. And I didn't want to interfere with the filming. Oh, I see. Action, art, movie shows. You shouldn't notice. We were all working. Questions about their work and their creative process. Hi. I mean, Crystal, this is Lauren. I'm singing. So, um, yeah. Anybody have a name? Yeah. Answers? Could I pick a name? Yeah. One of the things I'm working on, that I've actually been working on almost a year, I have no names for them. And I try to play with it as far as, like, maybe it could work without them having names. Maybe they're just nouns. But then it goes into a whole kind of experimental kind of thing. And I think they need names. But I feel like names are so heavy, you know? They're, they can be who you are. How people view you and perception and all that. Yeah. So what about, you heard what she said. What about names? I mean, there are plenty of wonderful plays that just name their characters. Not he, she, it. You know, one, two, five. All that kind of stuff. Plenty of wonderful plays to do that, which I'm sure you're aware of. Um, it sounds like, from your question, that you're, because you said, well, names are so heavy, and then that's how the people will be identified by their names and it means something. Right? Is that what you said? Yes. I'm not fair for you, but yeah. So for me to hide that to you, it sounds like I'm concerned about making a decision about who they are. Are you, you know what I'm saying? I mean, I, I think so. I think, um, because the play is pretty much written. They just haven't been named. And so, yeah. You know, I pretty much know who my characters are. They know each other well. The stories, the plot, and all of that. They just, um, I guess they don't have a label. Right. Well, one and two is a label, as you know. Because it appears into that experimental kind of thing. Yes. So, okay. So what might their names be? You want some ideas? Yeah. For one of them, I was thinking something either along the lines of, like, Ashley or Sidney or something with the shh. Okay, a shh in a Y. Or, or, yeah. Okay, okay. Ashley or Sidney, and what is the other person or the other, who are the others? The other one, um, the father figure, uh, like Keith or Kenneth. But I don't know, again, if that, you know how sometimes the name kind of just settles in and sinks in and these are just kind of like, God, I guess if I had to, maybe one of these. So Ashley and Keith, Sidney and Kenneth. That's the best I got. That's fine. Okay. Why don't you try the, right? See how it feels. And Kenneth's there. That'll work. Yeah. I mean, you have kids. Crystal, you tell me. Yeah. You named them, did you? Yes, but I had that pre-planned. I'm sorry. I had that pre-planned. 100 years ago, you were like, I want to name them. Yeah. Okay. At least one of them. Okay. One of them, I did. Okay, so that's okay. Have you noticed that they kind of like, wow, they really fit their name? Yes. Even though I thought about it before, I thought about them specifically. Yes. It's great, isn't it? They kind of grew into it. Or it was just divine and it kind of worked out. Amazing. Same thing as your writing. Make a decision. It'll be okay. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. So you got some good names. Ashley, Sidney, Kenneth, Keith, whatever. You know? Yeah. Those are great names. Those, those are one of those. And if you don't like them, you can change them. But I think that sounds good to me. How long do you wait before you change them? I mean, how long in the process, as far as when you're trying to put it up or, or pitch it, before you can have to have it steady, stable? Yeah. No, you can publish the play. Until you publish it. You can change your names. I mean, they can even change their names halfway through the play. I mean, I do that all the time. My character is, you know, moves becomes three-card. They're over how many you're listening to. They change their names all the time. People like the channel. Now I'm going to show it to them. Maybe they're changing the name. Maybe Sidney becomes Ashley. And maybe Keith becomes Kenneth. Maybe they changed their names halfway through. You can do that too. Yeah. I'm so glad you came and asked my question. Me too. It was a great question. Anybody else? You want to roll, yes? Story running through my mind that I thought it would be a play. Yes. Interesting life. Yes. And difficulties and changes in it. Yes. And I, every now and then, I start to write in a different way. Right. I started at the last time I tried to write it from the end of his life. Right. And so I'm just beginning it. Right. And Justin seems to like map it out. Right. See what the, what's turning out. So I don't know what to do. The question is, is this an approach that... It's a question. So Carol has a question specifically. It's about someone she knows. And, and he has an interesting life. And she thinks it will make a really cool play. And so she's writing it. One day she might start at the end and write it. The other day she might start at the beginning of his life and write it. And ask the question in a different way. What do we do when we don't know what we're doing? Exactly. What do you do... And you know that there's some story that's consistently for the years, which is its weight. Right. When you have the time. Right. But what do you do when you don't know what you're doing? There's a lot of a start in the middle of something for, you know, Dante. Not most of. But Dante, the Italian guy. Whatever he was when I was 35, I found myself in a great state. Those were his exact words. But he got lost. What do you do when you don't know what you're doing when you're writing about a copy of it? Pretty good. That's not bad. That's not bad? Not bad? So sometimes it's okay to get lost. So what do you do when you do something? You know, it keeps coming back, right? Very good. Just throw down something. And don't worry about Kenneth and Ashley and Sydney and Kent. You know what I mean? Just, I would say, who keeps going back and forth? Throw down something. Not force yourself to do it or not like that, but just say, oh, hey, or what I do is I just tell myself that I actually do know what I'm doing. That's what people are talking about. About this book. Right, this uncle. Yeah, elderly uncle of mine. So I thought this time I'd just start telling it to myself. That's a good way of telling it. That sounds good. It's just like you have an area. An area, you know? Like, I'm gonna tell you this story of my uncle. Just repeat what you said. Right, W-R-I-T-E. I'm just repeating it. I'm just saying it. You can switch back to... Could do whatever you want. It's America. Well, it's a free country so far. You know? Yeah, so you can, yeah, you can do whatever you want. An area is good. A lot of great things about an area is like the glass manager. We're not an area, but you know what I'm talking about. Tom was like, yo, yo, there's not a fan. You guys have this around you. This is exciting. Oh, we can't stop next week. We have to contend. Maybe we'll stop in August of tonight. Maybe we'll go through the summer and talk about it. But you guys have to come. I mean, I get my work done in a way but it's nice to have, you know, anything. Well, being here. Maybe we'll stop in August. There's so much to come. There's so much to come. There's so much to come. There's so much to come. There's so much to come. But hey, Christy. Christy? Yes. Hi, hi. I have a question about stage direction. Yes. I like it when I read Far away, to read Far away. Oh, great. You read Far away. Yeah, some plays are just so sparse. Yeah. I think a lot of just dialogue. Yeah. And then, you know, in some plays have more... I think I could get really heavy-handed with it myself. I know how it's to hit. And I'm just wondering what your thoughts I would say anything that's necessary for the, you know, the success of the play, you know, put it in there, don't be coy. Oh, I'm not going to tell them that there's a big boulder in the middle of the stage. You know what I'm saying? But it's a kind of, it is a stylistic thing. Like in the end, last time, actually, at Rod, it was receding. What, what, what about you? That's a, I mean, it's kind of, maybe not in fashion these days for writers, but there are still writers who write lots and lots of stage jerks. And lots of those parenthetical thingies that tell a lot of people how to say their lines. You know what I'm saying? Joville Lee. Way too concerned. It's a style thing. I tend not to do that, but, you know, a lot of really great writers do that. I would say give, you know, the bullet, you know, the essence of what they're saying. You know what I mean? Stage of the big pyramid in the center of the stage. A slave in the last break. God, I need a vacation. But, you know, does that help? If you need more, add more. And if you feel like that's too much, take some more. I think you can always take it out, you know, because it's too much. And I have another question, if I'll mention something else. Stay here. How are you doing? I'm great. Thank you. Are you okay? Yeah. You're here. I'm here, absolutely. I'm dating my ex. I've been dating her ex for a while. It's a weird thing. When it started when we sat down, we started our show. It's not true. But we named it up today. Oh, I love that. No, we need to get together and work it. Up there you go. Okay, there you go. There you go. I think it's the same thing. Oh, what a wonderful thing that is. Are we filming the Beyonce scene in the elevator? Are we filming the Beyonce scene in the elevator? It went away. It went away, right? I think they put out some videos to make us think that everything's all right. Right? And our attention was turned to other things. Oh, yeah. How that happens. It's kind of a question and a thank you. About two weeks ago you said, well, why don't you take index cards and do it like, you know, and I did. Wow. And I found maybe a different way to go. And it was really, I don't like go, ooh, I hear what I wrote now. It's just sort of like, it's a process, isn't it? I mean, it's sort of so interesting to me. It's just a process. It's just a process. Wow. I realize, you know, all your own shit, you impose on your process instead of just letting the process do its thing. And so I started to work on it again, which is really interesting. Thank you. So thank you. Really helped to outline like, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, you know. Yeah, sometimes you get bogged down, like you said, sometimes you get bogged down by all the shit that's on our shit. The shit has a lot of shit on it. Yes, it does. You know, there comes out of us, it's like, oh, shit. It can be very debilitating, depressing, overwhelming, and all those words. It stops you. Yes. It stops you. What do you do when you don't know what you're doing? And what do you do when you feel like not doing it? But you know you have to do it. It's female. Dante, you know, I mean, about the sixth ring, I'm sure he said, oh, I'm doing something. Right, exactly. Yeah, he just kept going. Yeah. To address Crystal's question, most of them changed his name from Dante to most, to Yasin Ben. Yep. I'm just keeping it up to date. Exactly. So see, you know, sometimes we hear in the dark wood, you know, Paul and Saul, we're sorry, Paul writing the stories from the old days. My play is it's two friends that were very good friends and had the same kind of a 10 years. Right. And that's just the story and everything. So I'm always struggling with, you know, if I saw you, I would say 10 years and sit down and talk. Right. But, you know, you're a tedious and boring person. You've led through all that stuff, catching up. Okay. And so I'm trying to figure out how to not do that. How to use the new catch-up thing. Right. So Christy has two characters in her that begin to play as their earlier friends, but they haven't seen each other for 10 years. And how to move through, how to move over all that. What was the context of their meeting? It was a surprise. She happened to see her mom on the plane. She didn't know how to find her for 10 years. And it was just like a coincidence. So she was just kind of there, surprised me. She wasn't expecting her. She was there. It's fortuitous. It's good. But it's inconvenient for the character who she's visiting. Right. So it's a surprise. She reads the bill. You know what I mean? She got a call. So she knows she's coming. She got a call from the train station or from the airport? Hi, I'm here. I'm in town. I found you. I love you. She picked up the phone from this person. I mean, what I'm trying to do, I think it is context. Because context is going to cut through a lot of that stuff. Yeah. She picked up the phone. Okay. Come on over. Come on by. Right. Why haven't they taken touch with shingles? Because, oh, I've been here 20 totally different directions. Their lives are completely diverged. And there was a big blowout that happened back 10 years ago. There was an incident. Right. And they went on their way. But they were very, very friends before that incident. Yeah. So you have to really rattle in context. You know what I mean? Because if there was a blowout 10 years ago, you know, and you happened to be in the airport and called. So there was a lot of, there was a conversation that happened on the phone that we don't see. That's about that wall of life. There's, what, Facebook friends or no. She hasn't really been able to find or change her name. So she's, it was, for the character who's arriving, it's like a huge, amazing miracle that she found her. Right. But it's just kind of the reality of the context. You know what I'm trying to talk about? Like, we hadn't seen each other in 10 years. And I was like, man, I've had a lot of times seen each other. Right. There's not going to be a lot of that blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right, right. There's not, there's not. And you come, call me from the airport and you get hit. You don't know that you did offend in here. Like, I just took off. So you offended me. You figure it did. Just get, just get specific about the, I mean, without getting too, get specific about what happened, how they felt about it, get specific about backstory that you don't know how to cut through. Because the chatter, the chit-chat is very specific. The people who do that chit-chat are, you know, establishing something original. You just have to get very specific about what we have. And you know how they encounter each other. And so you think about, like, it's just specific, right? It's going all the time. Is that what you think? Really grounded in the specifics of what happened, what they felt about it, who knew what when, how long is she in town for? Is it a layover? Is it going to Europe? Is it just got to go back to JFK? In an hour? You know, you just want to see her. And think about it, you get a phone call. You answer the phone. It's already like, who does that? I don't know. The number comes up, you know the person. So, you know, you got to you know, you got to call back the phone. Yeah. But you know, there are 100 ways to not invite someone over and get off the phone. So all those things didn't happen. And here she is at her home study. So that's just a lot of the chit chat. You know, plus the airplane airport to the department. You know. Chit chat only happens to I'm not And I do it all the time. And we all do it. I'm like, oh god, I'm so glad I didn't see you. I'm high up high in my head. I do that in this building. Oh right! I need this lens. So I was thinking about I was thinking about class and what it really means to me to come every day at once a weekend here. And why? It's so special. And I was walking down the street and I saw this this quote on a church and I thought you should say community church of New York and it says at times our own light goes out and it is and is rekindled by a spark from another. At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another. That's beautiful. That is exactly it. And also it's almost spark is almost my name. It's funny I talked to someone once on the phone and I said my last name is Parnas and they said funny you know sound to me. Anyway that's beautiful. That's exactly what it is. That's exactly what it is. And we do it for each other and even if you go online you can do this virtually you know when we are we go to church. Boom boom boom. That's good. That's good. Thanks for coming. Thank you.