 And here comes everyone. Yeah. Weeple. Oh my goodness. I'm just fixing that. Okay. Hey. It's something. It's the 20. What is it? What is the date? It's the 22nd of January. And it's Watch Me Work and I'm SLP and we've been doing this show now for a million years. No, I'm exaggerating. But we've been doing this show for a long time. Law since maybe 09 or 10, that's not even a year. Anyway, we're back. We're here. We do what we always do. We work together and then I take questions about your work and your creative process and it's really designed to be a time for you to see you as a creative person and to respect that and honor that and lift that up and cheer it on. And we have been recently in the last, I don't know what four months, we've been embraced by the New Work Development Department and Amritha is the head of the New Work Development Department. Do you want to say anything? I would love to SLP. Thank you. Hi everyone. I'm Amritha Remanen. I'm the director of New Work Development and so happy to be with all of you and with SLP. Hey, I'm Zoe. I'm also the New Work Department. Happy to see everyone. Yay. And we're here. So Zoe, do you want to explain to people how, should they, after the 20 minute work session, should they have a question, how to ask it? Yeah. Thank you. Once our 20 minute work session is over, if you have a question, please go ahead and use the raise your hand function on Zoom and then we will make a nice little queue of questions and then we will ask you to please unmute and we'll go about it that way. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. What else? I wanted to say something. I wanted to say hi. I wanted to say, it's good to see Chris. It's good to see Ace. Ace, where you been? It's good to see you. Hi. Hi. I was like, where did these go? I'm glad to see that you're back. Okay. So without, you know, I'm going to say hi to everybody. Anybody who ever watched that show where they said hello to people back in like the 60s, we're not going to go there. We're going to go here. We're going to go into our work. Okay. For 20 minutes. Here we go. Hey. Okay. Alrighty. That's 20 minutes of work and we're back ready to take your questions about your work and your creative process. Operators are standing by. Yes. Let's go out and use your raise the hand function and we will call on you to ask a question. Mikayla, please go on mute. Howdy. Hi. Hello everyone. I'm Mikayla. This is my second time coming here. Lovely to see you all. My question is I got inspired to write a show about grief and grief is something that I haven't personally been super close to, thankfully. And so my initial concern was how do I write about something that I don't understand. And then I thought, well, I have an imagination. And I started writing a story and it's a two-hander and one of the characters is based off of one of my dear friends and that character is dead. And I find myself struggling whenever I start writing because I'm picturing my friend in my head and I'm wondering how to separate the person from the character. Right. It's a great question. How to separate the person from the character. Let me just rewind it back a little bit. So let me just see if I'm hearing you correctly. Mikayla, you were inspired to write something about grief. Is that correct? Okay. And so how exciting, you were excited and then you became concerned because you said you don't have much experience with the subject. Okay. And then you began to realize that you're writing a two-hander and one of the characters is a friend of yours who is dead. Not in real life. Not in real life. She's based off of a living person, but in the story she's dead. Okay. So you have trouble separating the character from the living person. I would suggest that you do not put a living person in a play as a dead person if you have no experience with grief. That's a very strong suggestion, but I don't think you're out of respect for the actual person who is living. I think we don't want to put a living person in a play or a script that's a two-hander as a dead person if we have no experience with grief. I would say choose a person, maybe a historical person who's actually dead. I just think we run the risk of being disrespectful in the worst kind of way because you're saying it all up front that you don't know. You're going into a territory where you don't know. I would just make up a character. Just make up somebody. The person is a totally made-up person. Use your imagination to fuel that made-up person. Does that do you understand? I think you're very fortunate to not have much of an understanding about grief. That's amazing. You're very fortunate. You're very fortunate to be inspired to write something about grief. Yes, you can use your imagination to get you there. For me, the sticking point is you're using a real person and you're making them dead. Yeah, it's not like this is my friend. This is my friend in this story. I created a character, a completely different name. The way that I keep envisioning this character in my head as I'm picturing and writing, it's this person, this real person. I think I did that out of the fear of I need to know what this feels like, so I need to imagine this in real life, what this experience would be. Turn up the fire on your imagination then and just start really imagine this person as different from the person you know. She lives in a different city. She looks completely different. She's from a different country. Really use your imagination to make her as different as possible from this person that you actually know. I think that is a place to start. Yeah, yeah. And you've never lost anything, Michaela. Even your phone. That's my phone before. Okay. Good. You've never lost it. You never had a pet that passed away. I've had some dead dogs in my life. That's a start. You know, that's that's a start. Okay, well, I mean, it's a wonderful thing to explore, you know, because it's a it's a very strong emotion and it's just it's a difficult emotion to wrestle with and to embrace. But I think this project is going to give you an opportunity to do that. So that's really great. Just use your imagination to make it a different, you know, you know, so you're not imagine someone you know that to serve your purposes as a writer. Thank you. Thank you. Great question. Lisa, please go ahead and unmute. Hey, Lisa, how's it going? Hey, it's going pretty well. How are you? Yay. Good, good. Hi, everybody. This question, I feel like it's not a worthy follow up to a question about how do you write grief, but guess this is a much more logistical question. But as I mentioned in our last session, that I'd started writing a play based on a real person based on a piece of creative nonfiction I had written. And I was telling somebody that and they said, Oh, great. What kind of play is it? I said, it's like a play. And like, is it two acts? And I'm going and I wanted to say because I didn't because it was kind of rude. I went to go. How the hell do I know? I don't know where it's going to go. And then of course, that's sort of me dismissing something as I tend to do. And I started thinking like, Well, I have an idea in my head where it's going to go. But maybe do I need more of a roadmap? Maybe I should consider a roadmap. I don't normally write from outlines. I have the outline in my head and I kind of have an ABC and sometimes I go to D and sometimes I stay on C. So I guess my question is, is there an advantage to working from an outline or a structure? I haven't written a play in a long, long time since I was like 12, I think. So new territory when I write fiction, I don't feel the need for it. But since this is a new format, a new genre, should I consider it? What's the advantage? Yeah, that's a great question. The advantage is that you're going to have a map. You walk out of the house. You've got your GPS or they used to have in Los Angeles, Thomas Guide. You kind of have a sense of where you might be going. So there's nothing wrong with it. You don't have to get too detailed with it. It won't, you know, hold you back. I'm more interested in the people you hang out with. Okay, so now we've got somebody who's going like, what's it about? And you're like, I don't want to talk about it. Is it two acts and you're like, you want to say something, but you're cold that in your mouth and then you're like, oh shit, it's putting you into a thing. You know, I'm curious about those people in your life. But, you know, because the other answer is how do we talk about our work to people who ask us weird, maybe unhelpful questions and expect us to answer them? And you're allowed to be, yeah, you're allowed to be like, well, I don't know yet. I'm just writing. Well, what's it about? I prefer to keep the lid on it, you know, water boils best when you keep the lid on, you know, unless you want to talk about it. But I find it's good to just keep quiet about things as we're writing them. I don't think an outline is bad. If you're not, if you have written fiction successfully and you haven't used an outline, an outline could be like three bullet points. You know, this happens, this happens, and then this happens. You know, think of one of your maybe favorite plays like, oh, I don't know. What's what's one of your favorite, let's think of one of your favorite plays. What's a play that you like? Or story that you like? I love Antigone, the Jean-Anne Wies. Jean-Anne Wies, Antigone. Okay, so what would the outline for that be? Like three bullet points. Right. It would be Antigone defies authority, buries your brother, pays for it. Right. That's an outline. That might be all you need. Do you know what I mean? You might want to put in a few more points in there in between, you know, to give it a little bit more structure, but that's all you need. And that could be helpful. You know, write an Antigone style outline. Three bullet points. You know, like if you were going, I don't know where you, where do you live right now, Lisa? I live in Los Angeles. Okay, great. So I live in New York. Okay, so we're going. So here's my outline for like coming to visit you. I go outside and get in my car. I drive to Los Angeles. I get out of the car at your house. That's an outline. You know? And that's, and that's good enough. That'll get you there. Okay. I guess that's an interesting way of looking at outlines. It should work for you. You know, it's something that should be working for you, not something that adheres to some like, you know, how we should make outlines in some class or some outline school or some Roman numeral academy of outlining, you know, if it doesn't work for you, then it's not working. You know. Thank you very much for your question, Lisa. Thank you. Sharon, please don't meet yourself. Sharon. Hi, nice to meet you. Sharon. First of all, I love that this exists so much. It's my first time here. I love a habit that feels like it's both a gift and a curse in my process, which feels that I'm, it's that I constantly reinvent the wheel. And sometimes I like that because I love when I set out to tell story A and then story B occurs to me and C and D and E and E is so much more interesting than a. But I'm finding right now, for example, I'm trying to get a project started. And I keep going, oh no, it's this. Oh no, it's this. Oh no, it's this. And that happens to me also with projects where and I have a full draft. Every time I rewrite, it feels like I want to pursue entirely new ideas. So I, I wonder how you balance that reinvention with committing to an idea and the discipline of letting something be what you intended it to be. That's a great question, Sharon, or you could say letting something be what it intends to be. Yes, but then sometimes that gets me into trouble because I think it wants to be this now this now this now this. Then you think it wants to be something. Maybe. Yeah, we got to let it be what it is. Do you. Do you where do you live in New York, New York. Is there a place in your neighborhood where you can go walking like. Yeah, and I walk often. Great. Take your projects for a walk. What I'm saying is get it in your body. Yeah, you do you walk around and think about what you're writing, you go for walks often do you do that. Yeah, well I work in audio so I also do a lot of recording while I walk, but it's, I'll take this advice for like tomorrow, I need to go on a walk. So you're walking, I mean, I'm exaggerating, right, but you're walking, right, and you're you're not recording. You're just in your body without a device or anything, you're just in your body, and you're telling yourself the story. Once upon a time, as if you were talking to a seven year old. They still listen when they're seven. Once upon a time there was a that he did that he did that he did that he did that. And then she did this and then she does tell yourself the story a little bit of the story just tell over and over and over, like get into the groove. You need to I feel like you need to allow yourself like a like a in the olden days or there's vinyl, you know and vinyl had grooves vinyl records, right. And the grooves are made and there you can you can stay in the groove your your grooves aren't quite deep enough so they're skipping all around. So you go for a walk and talk to yourself. Get it in your body get in your body as much as possible and encourage yourself to stick with the whatever idea that seems most appealing to you when you start your walk. Okay, I really like that. And tell yourself, this is the right idea. This is one. The other ones are like, you know, have you ever seen that plant that's called like, I think it's called the mother of a million. Anyway, it's a succulent and it continues to grow with all the leaves. They have little things on them and they drop to the ground and they make other little plants, right. You have a mind like that it's amazing it's very fertile there's a lot going on, and yet you need to focus on the plant. One plant at a time. And not to worry your other plants will will flower and take root and all that. But talk to yourself. This is the right story. This is how it goes. I'm going to stick with this character. This is what she does or this is what they're doing. You know, yeah. And when you're walking, you know, try to do in this my maybe I'm not exaggerating I'm thinking just move your move your body, you know, a lot of times we sit and we're thinking we're thinking we're so amazing. Right. Okay, try that see see what it feels like to take your, your story for a while is it a play is that a novel isn't it what is it. That's a good question I usually work in radio drama, the radio drama form, but that's part of the thing also I'm like having trouble. I know it's going to be audio but I'm having trouble committing even if it's going to be a radio drama like usual or not. That's interesting. So, so it's not maybe not the group, it's the signal, you're turning the dial. You need to just lock in on the one, whatever station, I can on one station, that's the signal. Don't keep changing the signal right lock in on the station use your body to strengthen your communication with the station. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Great question. That was fun. Now I want to go for a walk. Hi, how are you? How are you doing? Well, so to me, thanks for coming. Thanks for showing up. Yes, very excited to be here. My question. I think it may be more of a spiritual question. I think it may be more of a spiritual question. But in terms of writing, I'm writing my first kind of full length since graduating school and it's been around five years. And in those five years, I've kind of worked in theater in different ways of acting, directing, producing, but I haven't kind of written and this is the first time I'm writing where I know it won't like be for sure read out loud or be produced in some way at least in like a university setting. So I'm having a hard time and I've been working on this for a few months now in writing something where I know where I don't know what's going to happen to it. And I know I, I feel like I do need to write this play, but sometimes I have these moments where I'm like, what am I doing this for? Is this ever even going to be seen? So I don't know how people kind of, you know, work with that and struggle with that and kind of push it out when you don't know what's going to happen to it. Right, right, right. I mean, it's like we said put you said push it out it's like having a baby. That's what happens you push it out you don't know what's going to happen to it. You become a parent and you know what's going on right. Well, you can give yourself more than half a chance. Right. Like two or three times and what you just said, you were sure that it wasn't going to get read out loud. Sorry rewind the tape. You know, start hypnotizing yourself like I'm writing this play I have to write this play. It's going to find a place it's going to find a home. Start on yourself that it's going to find some people I'm going to find some wonderful actors to read it out loud. I've got connections in this field. I've been worse since I graduated I've been working for X number of years right. I know people I know people who are going to want to read this. We have friends. You, we have to we need to recognize how much our self talk creates our day to day. Yeah, you know what I mean if I sat around going, nobody's coming to watch me work. Nobody's gonna be here. I don't know. I mean, it would be a totally different vibe right instead of like yeah people are going to come we're going to have a good time. I'm just, and we see what happens, but at least you're going to give yourself a chance. And it's hard to write or create. When you're not when you're not giving yourself a chance. I'm here because I want to give you a chance. I believe that if you write it. People are going to want to hear it. I believe that I don't even know what it's about, but you put the work in. You've got like how many years you said you were working doing stuff in theater. Right. Okay, now it's time for you to write your play. And you got to show up every day and you got to do the work and people will want to hear it. I bet you. I just know that. Okay, okay. And you tell yourself that every day, there are people who want to hear this. And I know there's at least like one person who wants to hear it and that's you. And it's worth it. It's so worth it. Mostly I write for me. I'm like, I want to hear it. Yeah. You know what I mean? And then I'm just, I'm just sort of entertaining myself and other people along the way. Sure. That's where it starts. You're entertaining yourself. You're pleasing yourself. You're singing your song. And when you sing your song, people want to hear it. Yeah. True. It's just true. Just take that for true. Don't listen to, you know, the negative. Right. Mm hmm. Does that makes, does that make sense? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. At least a page a day. Okay. That's true. Yeah. At least a page a day. How many pages is it going to be? How long is it going to be? At 56 right now. Because I'm aiming for 90 or red summer should be 90. That's my number. I think it's great. You're more than halfway. Look at you. You can have a page a day for like, and you can be done by like, I don't know what mid-march, who's good in math, right? Mm hmm. Yeah. Okay. You can reach the end by the middle of March. The I had some marks. That was a big day for somebody. Right. Okay. And then like, yeah. And who's it for? Well, it's for us and why are you keeping us waiting? Okay. Sounds good. Come back to watch me work because we're like, you know, we're your squad. Yeah. I love it. Thank you. Thank you. Great question. Thank you. Crystal. Hi, Crystal. How are you? How are you, darling? How are you doing? I'm doing all right. Not too bad. Not too bad. How's your shoulder? It's, uh, it's, it's functioning. I'm starting with light weights. And so we're on our way. We're on our way to being normal like match. Thank you. Thank you very much. So, um, I have decided to kind of put down the plate that I was working on. Just cause I'm not, I don't think it's ready to be written. Yeah, it's not ready for, for me or I'm not ready for it. The one about your elder, the elderly friend person. Yeah. Yeah. I've just, it's just, it's like wall after wall after wall. And so I said, you know what? Okay. Let's put it down for a while. Okay. So I don't know if you remember, there was another play that I was working on that I, I did put down because I remember specifically saying how like, it's very traumatic. It's very violent. It's very heavy. And you told me to write when I write to write with a candle to, to have that light with me when I write. So I do have a deadline. I have to present a new play by April or May. I think it is. I have to present something. I have to have something new. I was going to do this one. And it's, it's coming along quite well, a little scarily well in a way that it's like, wow, I don't know why this very hard material is coming out. So freely. I don't know if maybe I've just been suppressing it for so long because it's been a very long time. It's been years that I know I should have been writing it. My thing is that it's like, it's, it's a period play, I think, I think. Because it starts off out of sitting. But I'm, I'm having trouble. I don't want, I don't want to. This was something I had with the other one. I don't want to sound like stereotypical as far as like inaccurate as far as dialogue. Right. So I feel like I hear the characters very well, like, or the, the, I can feel their, their vibe, their aura. I have a good right. Right. Both women. When I'm writing, I'm like, it's, it's coming out, but I don't, I feel like I'm writing a little bit with a little bit of ignorance. Because I don't know the, the vernacular of that time that I don't necessarily know exactly which time it is exactly yet. And so I guess asking is, do I just, you know, write and write in all ignorance, just let it all out, write it all out? Or do I form like some sort of discipline in trying to, I don't know, I don't know if there's, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. I want to be as authentic as possible. But again, like, I feel like, you know, there is a roadmap with this story. And so, like, I know where it's going to end. I know how it's going to begin. I know the middle. I know, I know the story very well. I just, I just want to make sure that, you know, I don't come off like a, like a Yankee trying to, you know, write something from another part of the country that may, you know what I mean? I don't know. Yeah, no, I know the gatekeepers are, they wake up early and they go to bed late, don't they? Yeah, I would, I would say, you know, for this one, I mean, every, you know, everything is different and you're such a hardworking and diligent and talented writer. So I would say, for the first draft, we're talking first draft. Yeah. Right. As you said, in all ignorance, you know, so you're not going to get the rhythms of the language, right? Okay. Well, that might be what the second draft is for. You know, you're allowed, you're allowed not to know everything first time around, or even the second time or the third time around. You're allowed to be unknowing, you know, I don't know everything, you know, sometimes we don't know everything about the story, you know, and are we supposed to like wait until we have all the pieces together? No, you do what you can to the best of your ability. You do the best you can with the tools you have. And then you do a rewrite, you know? You know, you're probably, after you write the first draft, you're probably, you know, run into somebody who is from that region and is familiar with that time period and they've got that way of talking that you say you need to become more familiar with them. Wow, they can just sit down and talk to you for an hour or so and then you get the knack of it and then maybe they read a draft later. Who knows? Things will fall into place. Right. Go ahead and just write it. You know the story, write it down. Okay. Does that feel comfortable? Does that feel like okay? Yeah, I think, well, you, we know each other a while. I can be a little hard on myself a little bit. Girl, gee, Lord have mercy. Yeah, you're, you're, you're, you're tough critic on yourself, you know, but I don't want, I don't want this, I don't want that to get in the way of you writing, you know, that you don't have, is it a, you know, it's a vernacular kind of thing? Is that, you know, it's okay. That's okay. Okay. Yeah, say you had the vernacular down and you didn't know all the story. Well, then you were just writing all ignorance. You, so. Yeah. Okay, I can do that. Yeah, and tell yourself, I know what is it, who said that there was a beautiful quote, maybe it was Thoreau, maybe it was Emerson, I know by going where I have to go. You know, you gotta, you gotta throw yourself in there. Yeah. Okay, respectfully. You'll, you'll make it better later. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Glad it's coming along so nicely. Yay. Thank you. Me too. And the other one will come around the other the other play will come around. Thanks. And it's, oh my God, so much time for another question from Rebecca, please unmute yourself. Hey, Rebecca. Hey. I'm good. I have an elderly cat that decided she wanted attention right at five, but I just wanted to report in that. And we had a conversation about getting ready for a opportunity to meet and I took, I took your advice and got everything ready and made sure my website was finished and created not a business card, but a postcard. Two-sided postcard that I really like. And then the person had knee surgery, so we haven't had it yet, but I'm ready. Yeah. Great. That's great. I'm glad you're ready. I'm glad you're ready. Yeah. Yeah. And I have little scripts for myself that I read occasionally so I don't, you know, there you go. Going to say. Oh, congratulations. Good for you. You know, you're putting yourself out there. It's going to, it's going to work out really beautifully. Yeah, really right. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, ma'am. Wow. There's actually an opportunity to, I don't usually submit to what I call contests, but, you know, calls for submissions that have money attached to them. But there is a reputable one that's doing a book of essays. And I thought, well, I have about 30 years of essays. Let's see what happens. Well, most of them have been published, but there's a couple that I would like to try to get published. So that's a little motivation to, to finish a couple of other things as well. Fantastic. Good for you. You're really a very hardworking writer, Rebecca. Oh, thank you. I, I try to, I try to make it happen. And, you know, I, I also have a lot of writing for work, which sometimes is really helpful and sometimes really isn't. So kind of balancing that is, is kind of my commitment to myself this year is. How do you separate the two? How do you, how do you separate the two? Well, some of it is how much research is required for the, the work writing is what frequently, you know, you know, an example is I'm, I'm trying to help an organization think about social determinants of health, which is kind of my, my work, my teaching work, but also something I understand is organizing. But it takes that takes a lot of research and I have to like, I have to set up the agreement so that it doesn't take all my time all the time. And I don't always do that, but I'm trying I'm getting clear about how much time. Some of these projects take that, you know, people are paying me to do, which is a really important thing. So it really is there are things I can write, you know, people think will take days and I can write in like three hours and it's like it's done and it's gone, but then there's other things. We won't tell them that you're so fast. Oh, I never do. No, no, no, no. That's the only way it makes it work with these other things that I love and the groups I love and I don't charge them enough so got to balance that out, but and a lot of times, the more complicated ones really inform writing projects I'm a little stuck on so. Yeah. Oh cool. So yeah. So I just wanted to check in. And I'm so happy, you know, we're having time. Thank you. That's great. Likewise. One minute. Kimmy D. Let's go. One minute. Hi, thank you. Sorry. I just want to hide as everybody in the high SLP. Could you tell me is there a way to find out if a title that you want has already been used. Titles aren't copyrighted. Oh, so I can. Okay, thank you. Call your play the grapes of wrath or Hamlet. All right. As far as I know, I mean, that's what I've been that's what I've been told titles are not subject to copyright. Thank you. Mickey Mouse's mouse. Yeah. Perfect question. It's six o'clock. I would have mercy. Are we back next week? I think we're back next week. Are we? Are we so we back? Yes. Okay, we got back next week. Yes. We're back next Monday, January 29 same time. And sending also love to howl round for hosting us. Love again to the new work development department at the public theater. Watch me work. We'll see you next week. Okay. Bye bye.