 Hello. Hi everyone. You changed your background. It's okay you're muted but yeah, I did because I'm visiting some friends and so I didn't want the bridge behind me this time. Good to see you all. It's good to see you too. You all too. It's almost five o'clock. Oh, let's just say it's five o'clock because. Yeah, it is because it is. Hey, it's watch me work where we're going to get some work done and we're going to talk with you about your work and your creative process we've been doing this class show thing for like a long time. We first started out in the lobby of the public theater and then when COVID hit we went online on zoom and we're still on zoom because it's the place to be an SLP. And what we're going to do is we're going to work for 20 minutes on our own work and then we're going to invite you to ask me questions about your work and your creative process. While we don't have time to actually share our work like read our work a lot or anything like that. We do have lots of time to talk about process, and it can be any kind of work, painting, dancing, songwriting, novel writing, whatever. If you have any questions lolly is going to tell you how to get in touch go lolly. Yeah, you have questions and you're here in the zoom with us, you can just use the reactions tab. You can use your hand function, the reactions tab will likely be at the bottom of your screen so if you have any trouble accessing that you can just let me know in the chat and I can help you out. And if you're watching live with us on how round, you can ask your questions via the public leaders Twitter or Instagram account or via the watch me work with Twitter account which is at watch me work SLP with the hashtag how round that's hashtag howl r o u and fantastic and yeah before we get started of course we have to thank both the public theater and how around for hosting us and making this world. A little better. Okay, so we're going to start working 20 minutes. Here we go. Okay, okay. Time questions. Anybody's got some looks like we have a question from a. Can you be able to unmute yourself now. How's that. Yeah, I just want to thank this group, because I was so stuck on some of it. Some of it was stuff that I didn't even know it was happening but I was able to start writing songs. Yeah. That was huge for me. Yeah, so I just wanted to let you know that that last session was killer. And, and I really appreciated everybody's questions and your responses and it feels really good to get back on the get back on the path so thanks all please so please for you. Well done you're doing it. Doing it. So glad. So glad. So you have like things to tell yourself, you know, to keep yourself on the path, you have things. Dilla work in progress, but yeah. I don't want to go into all the mind fucks that I do to myself. But, um, you know one of the things that I've been dealing with is I've got all sorts of. I have like, I've died like a professional Dilla time is like something that's always in my head because I'm doing good turning and I'm doing the textile work and I'm doing all these things and I'm feeling like well you really should be a writer. This is what you're supposed to be doing. So I've got all these little side. they're just things that I do to try to loosen myself up, but sometimes to the detriment of not doing what I think I'm supposed to be doing. So, you know, when I'm talking about MindFox, that's, you know, one of the things that I do is like, well, yay, I'm doing this and that, and the other thing, but still, so I'm, like I said, it's a work in progress. So, no, I don't, I do need mantras, I do need to develop some and work on them and actually repeat them and use them. So, that's the next step. Congratulations, really. Thanks very much. We're all very happy for you. Thank you. Welcome. Thanks so much. We are going to move to Larry. Larry, you should be able to unmute me. I can unmute you. I am working on, first of all, hi. Hi, everyone. Thanks for being here. I am working on editing and I'm just, I'm curious about, like, what your editing process is like. I'm finding myself getting a little bit in rabbit holes and in the weeds and all those metaphors where the task at hand is to, you know, I've kind of created a, you know, I think you may remember I have tons and tons of material. I have a new outline. I'm trying not to write more and just plug what I have into the outline. But of course, that takes some rewiring and MacGyvering and things like that. And I enjoy it. Like, I'm enjoying it. But what I find is that I'm, like, I feel like I've been working on this, like, opening five pages for a week. And just wondering if you have, like, you know, thoughts about the process of editing and kind of keeping yourself on track. Or should I just follow the enjoyment and if it's taking me a week to work on five pages, should I not care? Right, right, right, right. Well, I think both. It's going to be something both. Because, you know, so should you, if it takes you a week and you've been working on five pages, should you not care? Yes. And it sounds like you've done that already. Yeah. Yeah. So now, because you're asking the question of, you know, do we have any tips to help you keep on track? Then yes. So you've enjoyed yourself for a week. And now you can say, good job. I'll come back to it in the next three, right? You know what I mean? Next draft. And I'm going to go forward now. And keeping yourself to that kind of schedule. Some kind of schedule. So, and you can make it up, you know, you can say, I'm going to spend three days on each, you know, section, if you will, or just make something up for yourself. But encourage yourself to leave it and go to the next, the next beat, because you're going to have a rewrite after this one, you know? Do you keep like, I think a lot of it also is I have a fear like I'm going to lose. I'm not going to retain or remember what I think it is I want to do. And then I can, you know, then I can get, you know, then I can, you know, spent losing our just like trying to write down the notes of the things that I want to come back to and address. Like I just have this always way of just making the work expand faster than I can execute it. You know, like my to-do list, which is part of what the play is about, of course, but my to-do list is always getting bigger as I write. How do you write, so when you stop to write out the list of things that you think you're going to forget, how do you notate those things? I have just these like Apple notes that I have where you type them and with your like, yeah, yeah. On a piece of like on the screen. Yes. Great. How about using, you know, can't show you that one. Let's see, you know, handwritten, small, you know, so you're allowed to play a game. I'm allowed to write, remind myself of something. I'm going to write it by hand on a post-it note. I can have a notebook, you know, like you can get yourself a notebook. Look at all, I have like a million of these, you know, I can get myself a notebook, you know, and put these post-its in them so they can stay organized. But if I have something that I think I need to remember, I'm going to write it by hand on a post-it note. So learn, train yourself to think, you know, Jane has a dog. I got to remember that for the next draft. You know, Jane has a dog. It's a Labradoodle. That's deaf. I'm laughing, I'm laughing because one of my characters is a compulsive list taker and her costume is actually all post-it notes. So yeah, right? Okay, got you. Do you see how that's going to just limit yourself? You know what I mean? It's like, you know, for those of us who like coffee, you know, I love drinking coffee. Well, I'm not going to drink like 27 million cups of coffee, you know, because that's not going to be helpful, right? I'll, if I, you know, I'll limit myself, drink too. That's, that's good, because that's going to keep me on the track of what I really want to do, which is I want to get my work done. I'm supposed to eat using small plates. So this metaphor is pretty consistent in my life. So, but how does, how did, was that effect? I mean, does that make, did that make sense? Totally, totally, because digitally it's very easy to, yeah, I'm with you. Yeah, yeah. And if you have a little post-it, then you just, and plus you, you also, the underline, maybe the underline issue, if you will, is the fear factor. You know, it's, it's not so much the importance of your note that you're making, but it's a fear. I'm afraid that I might not remember what I want to remember to put in. That's very important, you know? And you're, it's the, so you have to build your confidence. I'm, you can also say to yourself, I'm confident that I'm going to remember the things that are important. I mean, because can you remember everything that happened since you were, you know, first born? No. No. Okay. Okay. But, but my, my guess is that you, you remember important things, like, you know, your name and where your parents, you know, who your parents are, you know, you remember the important things to keep you on track, right? Yeah. Like, you know, so we were, I'm confident that I'm going to remember the important things for my novel. And these post-it notes in a notebook are going to get to help me, you know? And I mean, so you just change, so give yourself a new mantra or add this to your, your list of positive things that you're going to start telling yourself. I'm confident that I'm going to remember the important things for my novel. These post-its are going to help me get a color that you like, you know, look, these are fun, these are colors that I like, you know? Yay! You don't have to get the yellow, basic yellow, and the black note. But again, if you, unless you love yellow and black, but hooray! Yeah, there's MC, hooray! That's a hooray color. For me, you know, I like that color. You know what I mean? So it's like, I post it, okay? Is that helpful? There you go. Thank you. Great question, great question. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Larry. You should be able to unmute yourself. Cool. Hello. Hey, everybody. How you doing? How are you, SLP? All right. See you. Quick, more on a technical question. When you're trying to, when you're trying to shape a story, when you're trying to shape a play, do you try to, do you try to fit the characters to the plot, or the plot to the characters, or neither? Or both? Both. The answer, it's like it's going to both. It's a both day. That's great. Yeah, light is a particle and a wave. You know, I mean, that's physics, you know. Oh, that's it. That's all I know about physics. No, but, you know, character is plot, and plot is character, and it's the same. So your plot's going to tell you who the character is, and your character is going to tell you who the plot is, you know? I mean, think of like, I don't know, let's think of a play that we both, Hamlet, you know, Hamlet? I mean, you don't know, but you know. Okay, if he had been a really, like, decisive guy, like the Scottish guy, if we wouldn't have Hamlet, because he'd be like, oh, I'm going to kill him. I'm going to get revenge. Boom, end of play. Oh, okay. Well, that's it, right? But because he was like, yeah, I'm not sure. Right? So then we get the whole play, right? So then I am not sure as part of his character, but it also is part of the plot, the is and the same, and what are we doing here? And should we be here at all? That kind of thing, right? Right. I had a teacher once who said, if Hamlet goes back to law school, you don't have a play. Wittenberg, right? Yeah, right. Yeah. Like, if he goes back to law school, right, right, then you don't have a play, right? You don't have a play. And it's like, can I folks, you know, or you have another play and it's like, ah, he's a lawyer. And it's like, oh, shit, right? Right. Right. But there, but there, that's exactly it. Okay. So, so I find it helpful to think of what does my character want? Or what do my characters want? What do they want? What are they trying to get? You know, what are they, what are they, and what are their problems? Like, you know, characters, we love characters that have like, problems. I mean, they're, I mean, we're, Hamlet, we're perfect. He's the golden boy. He does everything right. Oh, so boring. But because he has all these problems, you know, we're interested in them. So what are your character's problems? And what do they want? And what do they think they need that's going to fix their problems? You know, you see what I mean? That's the plot, you know, so I think they need chocolate cake to fix their problems. They're probably going to, your story, your play is probably going to involve a bakery or something, right? Gotcha. Yep. Yep. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. But what the character wants is really helpful. Yeah. Cool. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good question, Timothy. Thanks. MCB, hello. Hello. Hey, MC. Hey, good to see you all. I heard somebody say, when you're writing a story, the writer is having a conversation with the reader. And I'm wondering whether that is, I know there's no writer wrong answer, but it is, is it helpful when you're generating? And, you know, I'm paraphrasing someone, it might be Carmen Maria Machado, but the writer haunts the story. The story haunts the reader, and then the writer and reader have haunt each other. So it's, I mean, do you think that's helpful? There's a whole lot of haunting going on. If it's helpful to you, if it's helpful to you, if it's helpful to the person who said it, you know, right? It's totally helpful and a great thing to say. I personally don't understand it, so I'm kind of going, you know, but I mean, if someone said that to me, I'd have to sit there and try to figure out what they meant. So just hearing it like that, I'd go, huh? So, so, but my, maybe more to the point was, is it helpful to you and how is it helpful to you? If I knew you turned it off. Good girlfriend. I don't know. I mean, sometimes I think, oh, I don't really want to be haunted by the reader because there's so many people out there and they're all different from me and they could just stifle what I'm trying to write because then I'm afraid of all those things where you take a wrong step and it's a landmine and then, you know, you've even insulted someone, probably rightfully, you get canceled, you know, am I entitled? Am I allowed to write this even though, you know, so then I kind of want the potential reader or the person who's protesting but hasn't really read the book to just like shut up and get out. Yeah. Okay. So let's put that, let's put that wonderful piece of advice aside. Okay. And it's awesome. It's helpful, but it's not working for us. Right now. Okay. So what, how else do, how, what's another way to say that? What's another way to understand the process that would be helpful to you? I'm going to call everyone out there to help me with this, please. I'm just, I'm just going to say sometimes I feel like I'm haunted by the characters. I, I, I mean, we, we, what I, what I miss about that, again, I'll be, you know, paraphrased quotation is, I've, we're the characters, you know, or the story of the characters, the characters, it's like, there's people who are hanging around my apartment, you know, or, or outside in the hallway waiting to get in, wanting to be, if it's a play on stage, if it's a novel in a book, you know, if it's a film, you know, on screen, you know, in a script that's going to be on screen, you know, or a TV show. Yeah. When I saw your plays for the plague year and you wanted to call on the elders and then James Baldwin showed up and then everyone showed up. And so actually I think that's more useful to me to think about that. I'm just like, okay, I'm stuck here, I'm going to call and I'm going to ask, you know, the fucking last Empress with the bound feet to come on here and give me some advice about what was going on and how to be the, the boss lady in like 1800s or something. Yeah, yeah. Do you know her name? I mean, you don't have to tell us, but you, do you know her name? Yeah, Susie. Okay. Bad accent, I think. No, perfect. No, I'm not, I'm not judging your accent. Well, the thing is, it's great if you, because if you know her name, you can call her. She'll show, she's already showing up. She's showing up for you. Yeah. Just let her talk. She's got a lot to say. It, you know, it might not all fit on, keep you on track. It's okay if it's a first draft or a second draft or whatever, let it, let her be expansive, you know, and then you can, you can sort of shape it in the second draft or the third draft or whatever. Let her talk, let her haunt. I like for characters to hang around or you can say visited or possessed hang out. You entertain them, entertain her. What does she, might she like some, I don't know, we were talking about coffee earlier or raspberry sorbet or something. Coffee would be for barbarians. She's a tea lady. Well, I didn't want to pursue that. Okay. So what might be her favorite kind of tea or an approximation of her favorite tea that you can procure at whatever you buy tea, you can have some tea, you can be having tea with her, and you can entertain her presence and have her talk to you. Yeah, I think in my experience, the audience comes later. Okay. That's in my experience. But again, this wonderful writer who gave you awesome advice, if it works for them, hey, good. Yeah. Oh, yeah, I'm gonna call on. Yeah, she's, this last Empress is pretty busy and she always brings her opium pipe. So now that's my kind of Empress. Thanks for opium pipe. I can't girl. All right. Very cool. I'm busy entertaining. Thank you. There you go. Thank you. Great question. Thanks. Great question. We can do that with any of our characters. And if you don't know their names, call them something that you think is their name. And they can reveal their name, you know, to you at a later date, you know what I mean? They are not there. They I can, in my experience, they I can assure you they are not going to cancel you if you get their name wrong. If you mispronounce their name. If you get their gender wrong, for the jump, you're because they're they're happy, they're thrilled that you are turning your direction, your artistic I, I, I self in their direction and inviting them into the world again, back into the world, which is what we do, we're portals for them. And we'll get it right if we keep working on it, you know, there's so many things that I, you know, I wrote drafts and drafts from drafts of things and I wasn't getting it right. And finally I got it right and it flowed right. So, you know, but in the first couple of drafts, I was getting it all wrong. The character didn't care. They appreciated that I was on the path, you know? So, so yeah, great job. I'm saying sounds like a wonderful thing you're writing. Opium pipe girl. Oh, I think Lynn is doing this. Hi, Lynn. You should be able to unmute. Let me see. I'm going to try again, Lynn. There, okay. Yes. A question about, you know, calling on people. I mean, I'd love to meet the Empress and stuff like, I mean, seriously, seriously. But there's a difference between ghosts and calling on them to appear. You don't want to call on a ghost of something. Am I right? You know what I mean? I know what I mean, but I can't articulate a ghost, meaning someone who has, someone you know who has lived and recently died? Yes. Yes. Somebody who has passed. So, when you call on your characters, the Empress specifically, I mean, she's, you know, you're not calling on a ghost of her. You're calling on the whole of her. I mean, this is the imagination of the, the creator's imagination, in a sense. What's the difference? I don't understand the difference. I mean, say you have a, say, one of someone's parents, one of someone's parents have passed and they want to include them in a story. Right. Right. So, they would call on the parent who passed. Right. Right. And that would that, I mean, ghost, I don't know, they would call on the person. I don't know if I would call them a ghost. You know, I'd just say the person, the person, my grandmother, my, you know, my dad, you know, something. So, yeah, you can do that. I would say, sure. Again, I don't think the people, the entities, the spirits, the characters, the, whatever you call them, the presences that want to be in your work, yes, novels, screenplays, whatever they are. I believe that they are free of the judgments and rules that we in, especially in recent times have been encouraged to embrace. The canceling, the judgment, the, you got my name wrong, the, I don't identify as such. I really feel that people are, there's a lot more, they long to be included in our stories. Yes. So, I just give that to people because there's a lot of, well, I'm, I don't know if I'm, I wasn't born in that neighborhood, so I don't know if I'm right to tell the story. If you're hearing something, talking in your head, respectfully go forward and write it. Okay. Yeah. And if, if later on you feel like, well, okay, I don't want to take it any further because I don't know if I want to bring the, that's fine. But the self-censorship that is going on in the mind of the artists these days is, is very unfortunate. Yes. To, to create, we have to open ourselves up really wide, you know, I mean, maybe to be an accountant, you have to open yourself up really wide too. I don't know, I'm not an accountant, but I know that to be an artist, you have to open up really wide. And so a lot of stuff gets in. And if a lot of that stuff is saying, you're only allowed to do this, like this, you know, you're only allowed to, for example, you're, Susan, SLP, you're only allowed to write plays like top dog, underdog, or, or plays like the first play you wrote back in 1990. You see, that's culture, society, putting me in a box. Well, it's cutting your balls off really. Well, right. And I have very big balls. So that would be a shame. Yeah. And I'm sure that's appropriate in some contexts, but here we are. But that's, that's, that's, that's the, that's exactly it. So I can't blame culture for cutting my balls off because I'm the one who's, who's censoring myself. So at some point, I have to say, you know what, I'm going to let, if I hear the voice of, you know, whomever speaking to me, you know, that guy, what's his name? I was watching a documentary recently on, man, I hope I get his name, or Bill Styron. Anyway, somebody who wrote the confessions of Nat Turner, you know, oh, yes. Oh, how could he write that? I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. Okay. I don't know what I think about that. But I do know that later on in his career, he wrote Sophie's Choice. Then it got very, when I heard, oh, right, he wrote Sophie's Choice too. Man, that man went out there, right? Because he was neither Sophie nor Nat, Shakespeare was neither, he could have been Lear or Hamlet, but he wasn't both of them, right? So we got to give ourselves permission and proceed with con, with so much respect. That's the thing. We can't just be given ourselves permission to do whatever. We got to give ourselves permission and be very, very respectful and very mindful. And that's the thing that we often forget when we say, oh, I should just write anything I want. Well, no, no, it's not that. It's a combination of being very respectful and answering the call of the spirit. It's a little more nuanced. You know, I was so glad that you mentioned, no, the audience comes later, because many times people write for an audience rather than for the experience, the creative experience. So just letting, you know, the creative process happen. Yeah. Yeah. I had a writer recently ask me, you know, what trends should I write about for my next work? What trend? And I'm like, what trends should I write about? I'm like, oh, yeah, I don't know if I can answer that, but they were thinking, what does the marketplace want? I'll write about that. I'm thinking, that might be a very valid question. I just, I don't know. I don't know. But again, that's a choice. And we each get our work done in whatever way is going to work for us. I know we don't break up your plays and stuff like that, but I remember seeing the one, I thought, my mind went crazy when I saw a bowling alley on the stage. Wow, I love this woman. She'll put a bowling alley on the stage. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. It's like it flew my mind. It was great. You know, thank you. Thanks, Lynn. We have time for one more question. Looks like we have a question for you, SLP, in the chat, which is have or will you write up some of your writing advice? I'm sorry. What is it? What did you say? I know it's in the chat, but I didn't hear you when you said it in the chat. Have or will you write up some of your writing advice? Will I write up some of my writing advice? Like me? Write it up. Oh, publish. Oh, we're working on getting some of these Watch Me Works transcribed and published. That would be the best way. Yes. And some of my favorite books to read are books about the creative process, which is talking about what's none of them I have. What is it called? Mason Curry, Daily Rituals. That's a good one. It's on the shelf. Really fun just to read about. And then he just came out with one called Daily, not he didn't just come out, came out a couple years ago, Daily Rituals, Women at Work. It's just fun to read about how other people, as he says, get the job done. You know, those are two good books. And there are hundreds of other books, Bird by Bird, Anne-Lene Lamont, Ray Bradbury has a book Zen in the Art of Writing, I think it's called. There's a wonderful collection, Claudia Tate, Black Women Writers at Work. I go on and on. Love reading books about writing and the creative process. And yeah, definitely, I'm compiling these things. Thank you for asking. Thank you. Oh, Free Play. What's Free Play about, I want to click in, about improv, Al? Yeah, it's a book written by a violinist, just about how there used to be a lot of books about improv and golf. The names escaped me, but it's they were all kind of about, you know, the game of golf equals the game of life. But Free Play is just about, it's by a no way. I realized, wait, I, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Go ahead. Tell everybody about it. It's great. It's great. It's been a while since reading it, but it's just stuck in my mind about just being able to, I should, I think what I'm telling myself is that I better reread it because it's one of these great books that really keep you going. And Linda Berry's work, what it is, I mean, she's written a whole bunch of these things. She, she illustrates everything as she goes along, but she makes you feel like you can do anything. Right. And I don't know if anybody's ever heard her speak, but I remember going to hear her at the Strand. Oh, and I think that the very first song, I don't know if she was singing coal miner's daughter, but she sang it loudly and poorly. And she said, now that I've done this, I can talk to you. So it just felt great to know that, you know, when somebody like Linda Berry can also, you know, whether it's making funny faces on a Zoom or, you know, we're singing whatever she was singing, but you know, just, just these amazing ways to loosen yourself up when you're stuck. And interestingly enough, I hadn't, you know, I like deliberately ignored these books that are so good for you. So that's the next project. That's really good. That's really good. Great things to think about. And again, not using these books as a substitute to do in your own work, but as like a just a daily sort of friend to help you and encourage you along, you know, definitely great. Linda Berry Syllabus is one of Linda Berry's. I love her. She's an illustrator. She is an illustrator. Yeah, I love her work. Cool. That's some other book recs in the chat as well. So check them out, folks. Awesome. Any last questions or thoughts? All right. Well, we will be back here every Monday and August. All those sign up sheets are on the website. So please sign up. Please spread the word. We'd love to, to have you all for this month. Thank you. Have a happy rest of your day. See y'all. Thanks, Lolly.