 All right, we're going to start, sorry about being late, I was just up the mountain for the state of my heart. This is Washington, where we do what we do every week, here in the log in the public theater. And with folks who watch us online streaming, which is cool that you're watching us, we're going to work for, today we're only going to work for 40 minutes, because we're trying to be late, so we're going to work for 14 minutes towards the log in, and then we will do some conversation about your work and your creative process. And for those of you who don't know, this is a play, and the first thing we do is create the action together by working, and then we create the dialogue together by talking. I know, it's so easy. I'll just play right in this event, simple. So Patty is going to tell us if you guys are online and want to tweet us a question. Patty will tell us how to do that. You can tweet your questions to appwatchmeworkslp with the hashtag newplay. At watchmeworkslp hashtag newplay. Okay, so Patty is going to set her timer for us, and we'll all get some work done. Hopefully my phone won't ring, or maybe it won't. Yeah, it's working. We got to do that. So this is the part where we do the dialogue, and it's your questions about your work and your creative process. I want to rephrase the question I asked last week. Oh, I like it so much last week. Thank you so much. How do I keep my bills paid? How do you keep your bills paid with money? Understood. And right at the same time. No one pays you to sit and write and work on phone projects. So no one pays you to sit and write. That's not true. What's your question really? Seriously, how do I focus on my writing projects? I keep the lights turned on and the rent paid, and not get distracted by my checking account going negative every time a rent check appears. It interferes with sleep and my creative process. It's very distracting. What is very distracting? The constant worry about money. Right. So Karen's got a really good question. How do I keep writing? How do I keep my creative thing going while keeping my bills paid and being responsible? And I'm not talking about extravagant living at all. Like I said, I think since we can all say the same thing again, that you find time to do your work. Yeah, understood. That's not my problem. I work on the train. I work into the wee hours of the night on my creative stuff. Right? But my cell phone gets turned off, cable gets turned off. I mean, and I'm working as much as I can without interfering with this, which is of the utmost importance. I'm wearing shoes to one of my jobs that are falling apart. Right. Because I don't, because I really live less than paycheck to paycheck. I mean, that goes into like a personal area. You know, you can choose different jobs. I mean, it's all about choices. Every single thing we do as adults, and it's kids too, but as adults, we come face to face with choices. You know, the things you want to do, the things you can't do, the things you can afford to do. And if you have a situation now where you're working your jobs and you're having time to do your writing, that's good, that sounds good, but it sounds like your several jobs which aren't quite making everything meet up together are producing a lot of worry and concern. And I would say then maybe we need to get some different jobs. Because it sounds like you've really figured out how to have a day job and do your work, which is major. Okay? But your day job isn't providing you with your rent money. Okay? So I think you need to get a different day job. I mean, you know, I think that's what it is. I think you need to get a different day job. You know, you might look at getting a day job in addition to whatever. I mean, that's kind of what we all do now. I mean, I teach at NYU and Yale. I think training can be a big one. All of the training you think is not seven to train. Anybody's written that down in their name. Not if you train a new car. You know, there's new cars when you plug in your stuff, which is really kind of swanky. I think double level. No, they're not double level, but they're just completely in it. Right? Yeah, they're nice. That's not why I do a job. So we all make choices and we all have to say, okay, this is what I'm doing right now. But this is what I'll do for a while so I can get the money to do whatever. You know, you have to get smart about that. And that's something that I can obviously not do for you. It's not what you're asking me. Understood. But what you figured out is how to work the day job and the creative stuff together. That's good. That's great. So you're happy with it. One and a half billion dollars. Yeah, one and a half billion dollars. I guess I was going to start with a question about your policies. And I go on to mine. Okay. When you write, do you write because you want to write the characters or do you write because you want to work on a certain theme? Because if I do my work, I can write an entire draft very, very easily, as long as I want to in a very short space of time. And then when I start rereading it, I sort into what I was trying to say. And I don't know if I can keep the longest version of it because it feels like it's unnecessary. I can still go down to this one thing. You're talking about writing and rewriting. Yes. And you write your first draft and you can just feel like it goes to go. I can, yeah. It's fine. Go and get it done. Right? And I read it. And I find what I seem to be trying to say or what these people are trying to say. And then I never feel confident enough to rework because I feel like I said it in that way and I don't know how to make the characters still natural or still work within this world while not just completely actively pursuing this idea. It's like, I don't quite know how else to put it. No, I understand this. I just, it was hard for me to focus and hear you. You write first from, like, character and clue about what they're doing where they're, sort of, where they're going with their story is, sort of, right? And then you pull back and say, okay, now I want to get to the theme. Is that something? Yes. Like I'm on the track. I want to get to the theme or what the thing is really about. Yeah. And so I do a lot of cuttings. You do a lot of cuttings. You've got to think a lot of those lines. And I feel like I lose those characters. You lose and you lose the characters when you pick up the threads of the theme. Yeah. That's interesting. I, yeah, it's funny. I rarely write the theme. I mostly write the story, if you will, which is maybe an in-between shift. So I don't, like, have pages and pages and pages of character, what do they call, bio. You know, you know, somewhere I just say, right, 80 pages of character bio. I don't know everything about my character, they say. But none of it's in the play. Amazing. You know? Or they say, I pull the theme. I pull the theme. I draw the research on the theme. And it just sounds like the play or the movie. It sounds like someone's shaking their fist at you. So I kind of drop down in the middle and write about story. And so I say, what is the story that I'm telling? Once upon a time there was, you see what I'm saying? Which is kind of a combination of character and theme. But more, I can tell you what the character's doing, but I rarely can tell you, like, the theme. You know, the meaning or what I'm trying to say. I really don't get into that too much of my writing. So if you're cutting all those lines, think of what's the story? What's the story? There's a story is where character meets theme. I would say. That's how I think of it right now. You see, it's the intersection of character biography and what you want to say. So that's where they come together. That's the crossroads. And that's where we want to write from that point. What's the story? So you walk around saying, what's the story? What's the story? What's my character doing that I've never seen before? How am I following you? Well, I've written something that I think that I initially wanted to shoot something and have a scene. And when you start showing it to other people, they're like, hey, that was great, but you can't end it there. You got to have, like, five more pages or ten more pages. And you know what your person is like. Right. Did you feel like you were done? I thought I was. Right. What's your name? Brandeis. Brandeis. Yeah, you can do it. I remember you. Yeah. Yeah, you thought you were. Yeah, well, that's the trick. How do you know when you're done? Brandeis wants to know how do you know when you're done? And a lot of times you think you're done because we think you're done. And if someone comes along, a leprechaun leaps out of the woods and says, brandeis, brandeis, brandeis, brandeis, brandeis, brandeis. Transylvanian accent, that's very bad. You know, yeah. So the thing about being done is it's a skill that you develop over time and you get a mission that's your work. And I say, if you feel like you're done and you're done, if someone comes along that you really care about and whose opinion you really value and says, if you need more here, you might consider it. If you sit down and bane your head against the wall and nothing comes, then you're done for now. I'd say shoot it. You know, you want to shoot a scene or stage something or whatever and put it up as it is. And maybe the rest will come later. But if you're feeling like you're done, then you're done. Okay? You can always add more to it in the future. One of the problems I've discovered with me just in the process of writing a lot of this last year is that I have too much attachment to my work. I think there must be a certain level of detachment in order for you to move forward through the editing process and all that. You're not feeling like the words I'm saying are reflection of who you are. And I'm just getting to the point where I can do that and it's diamonds me still in screenwriting but not as bad as I was having before. But it's like I'll sit and I'll stare at the blank page and I'll, you know, I hear your voice in my head saying it's okay to write a fuck up first draft and then I can just go ahead and do it. But it's really a process. So if you could talk a little bit about, because I know just from watching, I think you have a good healthy level of detachment from what you write. I don't think you find a lot of assets. You know, I don't think that it means, not that it's meaningless, but I think it's not the attachment that I have to my work. So how does that come? So you're just talking about detachment and then you write something and you're attached to it and then it's hard to edit. You know, kind of it's difficult to do a rewrite because you're really attached to what you're written. And that's a really good thing to think about and talk about. Again, it's a practice thing in your music. It's a practice thing. So when you write something that you talk about, there's something here at the other end where you put it in the drawer and let it cool off. Anyway, did that. Put it in the drawer and let it cool off. Like a timeline, you know, or a cape that it cooled down so you get some distance from it so you can pick it up and read it as if someone else wrote it. But it's also a practice. It's a skill set. It's a craft thing. You know what I mean? How do you know what you've done? How do you let it, how do you know if you're going to cut? And you know, I mean, it's a practice thing. So you just have to keep working on that and knowing that you might be a little overlaid, holding on to things and just say, hey, okay, I'm holding this a little too tightly, you know? And just know that and just keep thinking, okay, I'm going to rewrite it. I'm going to let it go. You can think of the, when you cut things, you know, they fall to the ground and they grow into something else if they should. They're not good. They're just, they like cuttings. They're like a, think of it as gardening. Yeah. Rather than sort of like, I don't know, what a limb. And I think of this gardening and that you're cutting, you know, cutting, they're cutting inspection. You know, like you're, you're, you're not cutting into anything. Destiny, and I've got several questions, but this one is, how do you let go of narrative writing and start grouping together descriptive writing as four scripts to hide? Art of writing and start grouping together and writing for, I'm not sure what narrative writing is. What's it named, Destiny? Oh, justine. Justine, I'm not sure what narrative writing is. Maybe journal writing, just talking about. Just trying to guess. I would say, governor talking about Hunter, if it is kind of journal writing. Think of characters that you might want to focus on, that you see this seat popping up with their versions of you. Oh, the girl who likes to buy, you know, fancy knock-off bags in the West African finger on the street. That's a character. Oh, the girl who likes, you know, whatever, whatever your characters are. And start thinking of what story they're going to be in. What is their story? Who are your characters and what is their story? And I think if you're journaling, you start thinking of scene themes. I mean, scene recurring themes that you're writing about. That's a good way. If you could, if you want to, next we'll text with a two-disk back and explain to us what narrative writing is important to you. Because I'm not really sure about that, so we'll just back up if you want to. Could we just text more? I'm sorry. That's great. Did you hear what Carol said? She found a story in her bag that she'd started writing several years ago. And she just found it. And I'm like, wow, I guess I could not have finished this. So I had been pooling you for a long time. She asked me to pick it up on my mind. And she said she wouldn't cut anything. So I mean, I have to say, for what we want to do, I mean, making mistakes doesn't have that kind of time and what, you know, what it feels like. I think that becomes my problem a lot is the timeline I'm with now. It may not be a problem after school to put things away, but they're like deadlines and then it's hard to kind of, it's intriguing. Well, it's over, but it's going to be, when you're in the profession, they're going to be deadlines. Yeah. So that's probably why maybe we get a lot to explain. We're preparing for the real and the outside. We're lock up and preparing for the outside. So, you might as well develop a skill now of being able to put it away and maybe put it, imagine it going into like the deep freeze. You know, it's not just going to draw, it's in work on something else or work on nothing and then come back to it. You know, try different ways of reading it, maybe a lab, maybe, you know, some ways of looking at it just to make you feel like yeah, it's that stuff. We're talking about attachments. Yeah. It's really simple. I make it, I keep a version of all my drafts. So when I print out the next one, I don't care. Like, I might be attached to that and I'm so meaningful, but it doesn't matter because I know that it's there. Like, I can always go back to, it's like, everything, and I didn't used to do that and I didn't edit as much. And now I just keep every draft because you can. Because you know there's something. Yeah, it's like, because that pearl that I wrote, I will leave it selling to you. I usually don't, but I know it's there. It's accessible so that I can work everything else out. Yeah. That's helpful. If you don't have time. No, true. True. Yeah. That's actually what I do. That's actually, that's helping me, that's helping me write. Yeah. That's not what I do. That's not what I do. Right. There's a whole piece of advice that you maybe developed yourself or maybe a mentor, of course, that's given you way back when, that when you come up against a problem or you run up against the wall, you repeat it to yourself and it keeps you going. Do you have anything like that? Like a mantra. Yeah. Or something like, it'll be okay. It's just, I can throw away a first draft or something like, yeah. No, no, the best ones are the ones that think, you know, they come first. They come first. You're looking for one. It'll be okay. Just, that's just the first draft. That's a good one. Keep going. That's a good one. Sit down, keep going. That's a good one. Put the time in. Just sit down for the time. That's a good one. See if you've got it. Because he's in charge of the whole universe. He's in charge of me. He's in charge of me. But those kinds of things. You know, just keep going. Put the time in. A lot of times, think, why are I so nervous outside? Well, we haven't put the time in. You know, we haven't put in, whatever, two hours a day or three minutes a day. Yeah. I put the worrying in, but not the doing. Yeah. He puts the worrying in, but not the doing. Right. The worrying is, yeah. And you get a lot of worrying. Yeah, you get a lot of worrying. And you get no pages. Yeah, lots of worrying, no pages. Right. Lots of worrying. Yeah. And you know, there's a lot of frustration. Right. Of tens of thousands of people. And fight problems. Okay. I'm just kind of, whatever you were going to get a break, he would just kind of creep it in. Right. And that taught me how to steal. To steal from the other. What I saw formed my cell calls. Right. So, we're sitting in a time. I mean, anything you can think of is just as important as what I'm telling you, in terms of, what you need to keep going. I"). Oh, yeah, Because you have your own set of circumstances in your own life, you know what you're up against every day. The way that I know. And those types of people come to you and you're so out of your way. The smallest filled voice within you, right? Now within me. So within you, that's what we're talking about. The smallest filled voice within you. That's what adds a lot of knowledge that you're going to find. So keep going. I'm showing up.