 But if anybody had any questions about your work and your creative process, I will pretend to know the answer. I'll wear my glasses, which are actually a leftover from my Halloween costumes. You know, really. My son went into the Halloween store over there on Broadway and 11th Street, and he was like, I don't want to be Spider-Man. My husband said, we want to be something too. So we just got some glasses off our shelf, and we were in there for a while. So, I know. They can have real faith in things that I'm going to say to you. Wow! So anybody have any questions about your work or your creative process? So I tend to, like, immediately come up with the story first. Right. And then after I have the story, then I think about the dialogue, and then so on and so forth. But I always get really hung up on the story, in which then it becomes more of a novel than an actual play. And yeah, I just wanted to know what ways can I go about, like, I guess. Not doing that, but more of having the dialogue in my head as I'm going on with the depth of the story. Okay. Do you ordinarily have the dialogue in your head at any point? When is the dialogue in here? When I realized that I have just full on story, and then there's no dialogue. And so by the end I was like, okay, I love this work. The first scene, and then I go, wait, there's no dialogue. It's just a story. It's just a story. I mean, but what's great is that you're so wrong, right? She's right, everybody heard her right. She does school things. There are different ways, as you know, there are different ways to approach everything, right? And there's no right way, and there's no, on this project, might be less effective on the next project, and you might have to do a combination of the two on the next project. So you don't want to, you want to remain flexible at all times, right? Okay. There are two things. It's interesting. You want to cultivate your flexibility. At least you want to try different ways to do it, which is great. So you're here wondering how you might change it up. And you also want to encourage a form of discipline, which might seem like rigidity. Seeing in both, right? I don't know if anybody's talking about the police or some kind. But we don't know where he is, or she. But anyway, so you wanted to do both, right? Yeah. You wanted to do both. So you want to, one thing that you can do to encourage that rigidity or that discipline is you want to show up every day and spend at least 20 minutes writing. I don't know why 20 minutes is the optimal thing. But I will get into your subject then. For 20 minutes seems to be a wonderful, sort of small, effective unit of time. If you don't have any time during the day, 20 minutes, you got 20 minutes somewhere, right? Okay. Absolutely. Exactly. Okay. So, okay. But that's great. So if you don't have like a 20 minute, big, 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there. You want to keep showing up for it. I mean, my son plays soccer and his coach said, 20 minutes with the ball every day. And I was like, 20 minutes? Oh my God, it must be an absolute thing. So the soccer coach says it. The writing coach says it. The meditation teacher says it. It's a small unit of time, but it's totally possible. Think about where you waste 20 minutes of time, right? Okay. And you look like over there, which means like you surf the internet. Okay. It's that silent. Okay. So here you go. So you have your, you think of your story like the plot, and then you're writing it and you go, whoa, where are the characters? Where's the dialogue? Right? Okay. So how can you, I think it's a great way to start working. Think about the big story, beginning, middle and end, maybe, or at least beginning and end. You know where it ends. Great. Okay. So now to get into the characters, do they have names? I'm sure they do. Right. And so can you feel like maybe what their bodies feel like? So when you think of your character, like character, maybe her name is character A, how far away from you are you? How far away from her are you? Distant-wise. Character-wise? No, just like in terms of feet. Actual. Yeah, I know. See, I'm very little. Like when you see her in your mind's eye, where is she? She's a little distant. Right. That's what I'm thinking. Because you probably are seeing the whole story. And you're leaning back and you're going, wow, I can see the whole story, right? So what I want you to do is decrease the distance. Get really close. How close do you have to be to write somebody? You have to be really close. Maybe this close, right? Or maybe so close you're going to walk around your shoes. And then suddenly you're seeing the story from here, right? And you're a character in the play. See what I'm saying? Do you have to go inside if you're a lot closer to the character? Right now you're seeing it from a distance, right? I want you to get inside of your character. So you want to walk around like one of your characters, character A. You want to talk like she talks, you know? Act it out. Do you, you know, that feels weird. That feels okay, right? Yeah, that's normal. It's theater, it's normal. Great, great. So you're going to act her out, right? So you're going to be moving through the story. And then also what you have to do is you have to do it many times. So you have three characters. You do it once for her, then the second time for that one, the third time for that one over there. Tracking the character through the story. You have to do it three different times. And then you move back again and see the big picture again. And then you move back in. So it's a constant back and forth. And then you start to hear the characters, feel the characters, write the characters. And they're not at a distance. Does that make sense to you? It makes sense. Okay, so try that. Just get a lot closer to your characters. Okay? Are you doing it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I know we're laughing. But that's usually, usually, like 100% of the time, if I'm having problems writing or anything, anything, works with anything. If I'm having problems filling the blank. With exercise or relationship or blah, blah, blah, blah. I go, am I putting the time in? And if I'm having a problem with it, usually the answer is no. No, I'm not putting the time in. I'm spending my writing time reading about, no, no, no. Right? Right? You know? And then it's like, well, maybe I can shift that. Maybe I can change that. If I can change that, usually putting the time in yields the kind of results that I'm hoping for. So always, that's the first thing we check, okay? All right. That was a good question though. It was a really good question. And also, nothing wrong with writing the novel. You know, everything. So if they're novels, that's cool too. Yeah. Anybody else? I'm going through, I'm at a point now where I was saying last week that China make a connection. Right. And it came to me, but what I wanted to use, I found it didn't follow. Okay. So I'm going back, but what I'm finding is that I have to wait so I get that sense of, you know, the inspiration to do it. Right, right, right. You know, I can't force myself to do it. But at the same time, I'm always thinking about it. Right, right, right. I'm thinking about it, but I actually sit down and submit. Right. You know, I'm waiting for that breeze to blow in. You're waiting for the breeze that's so beautiful. I'm waiting for the breeze to blow in. Remind me of your name. Philip. Philip. Right, Philip. So is it okay for you to wait for the breeze to blow in or do you want me to tell you what I mean? No. How do you... I'm going to play with it, like I said, as long as I'm thinking about it. Sure, sure, sure. You know, but like, you know, to sit down and ask me to go like this, that's like a certain commitment, even though it may not remain, you know, later on. Right, right, right. You know, but I'm just longing that I realize I'm thinking about it. Right. I'm thinking. Okay. If you had something... Well, I'm going to... Well, I mean, because I'm going to say something... This is the thing. Sometimes our writing time or our time for creativity can only be turned on the timer and kind of sit in front of the page. And that's kind of... That's great, actually. That equals writing for 20 minutes, too. Sometimes that's all we can do. Sometimes the... Like Philip says, the wind is not blowing, right? And all we can do is just sit there, and that actually counts as showing up every day. Right. And there's a famous saying. There's so many famous saying about this. One is inspiration is for amateurs. So, so, you know what I'm saying? So I would say if you want to step on the game, give a try sometimes of leaning, not waiting for the wind to blow, realizing the wind is coming from you. You know, whether the wind is in you, the wind is... Your inspiration is actually inside you. You know, it's like, you know... I mean, whatever people believe in God or not, the spirit is inside. And so you can... And the spirit is actually OK with you writing something that's not, like, perfect and great the first time around. So you can try it. It feels like whether it's, like, not cool, then forget that saying and just show up every day. That's OK, too. So you can... Again, this is our flexibility, right? The discipline is to show up every day. If you work, let's go, just constantly be thinking about it. That's part of the discipline, and you're doing the work. OK? And if you want to maybe take it to the next level, you want to... Or lean into a little bit. You know what I mean? You know, you have to, like, just lean into a little bit. But sometimes the spirit is, like... Come on, Philip. Like, come on. Yeah, there you go. Come on, man, come on. See what I mean? See, the spirit wants you to... You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Reach a little bit. You know what I mean? Reach a little bit like that. And I think that sometimes, all we got to do, we just got to reach a little bit more. Where my husband always says, he says, oh, you're running another marathon. And here you are at mile 2022. You know, I've never run it. I've run 22 miles, but I've never run, like, a marathon. Right? So, but he has. And he says, you know, you get to that mile, has anybody run a marathon recently? Well, you get to that mile 22. And apparently, like, you have nothing left. Okay? And that's that thing. And you have to just push, you know, you have to just keep going. And somehow continue. You know what I mean? You know what I mean? So try it. But if it feels, like, totally, like... But it's okay. Okay? You can play with that a little bit. But know that sometimes that resistance is the spirit saying, what you got? What you got, Phil? You know, you got... Right? And that's all the spirit's waiting for. Thank you for showing up. Great. That's awesome. Anybody else? Yes. I'm Holly. So it's drama, right? Yes. So I think I'm the total opposite of drama. No, I mean, I'm so close. I think I can write dialogue for hours. Right. Of the character. But I don't think structurally at all. It's just kind of like the space between the characters is what's exciting for me. Oh, great. The back and forth. And sometimes minutiae and details. Like I don't know what's important in the play for a long time. I don't know what the center of it is. So I mean, I've done different things to play the structure. Like put cue cards of different things up. But I'm just wondering if you have any habits or practices that you do if you have a bunch of material in terms of playing with structure. Right, right. And this is... So you name it? Holly. Holly. So Holly, that's really... It's great. Because it's like, yeah. You guys could just... I know. Yeah, you could make the other. But it's really cool because, yeah. I mean, and this is not what Holly's saying, but I've had students over at the wonderful school. And why do you do the wonderful school? Say, oh, I thought of some great characters and now I got to think of a plot. Hmm. I think it was maybe yours. It was not Chris Barlow. But I think it's a people... They moaned that they had to think of a structure to go along with it. It's not what you're saying. But I am... A ginormous fan of structure. Like, it's ginormous. But also, I'm a ginormous fan of, like, oh, the human body, which is a structure. And this building is a structure. And it's all... Everything's a structure. And sunrise and sunset, that's a structure. And the way a flower opens is a structure and everything is a structure. And I love seeing patterns and design. And, you know, grand design, little design, poetry, structure, right? So, if you're looking for, like... I love my characters, but what's the story? Right? Is that kind of weird? It's like I... It's like I have this story. Uh-huh. Just not... It's like all the pieces, but just not how they all fit together. Right, right. So you can... So maybe you're close like this and you're going, oh, wow, she said that. And he said that. You're like in the couple of parties. So now you do the opposite. You step back. Not too far. You don't want to follow this thing. Right, but you step back and you go... What's the story? You want to see... You want to see this. And you can't see that. You can't see the forest for the trees. You can't see the trees for the forest. And you can't see the forest for the trees, right? So you want to step back and take a look at it. And see if you can ask the characters, what's the story? You know, why are you here? Maybe spitball a few stories. Once upon a time there was a character named, maybe, well, A, and she did that at the time, and in the end she did that. You know? You can ask the character, what's the story? What story are you in? You know, if we asked Cinderella, she would tell us. You know, instead of getting all into, like the dialogue between her and her sisters. You see what I mean? So the characters often know. Or you can actually step back and just, look at the shape of it. Figure out what happens in the beginning. Figure out what happens in the end. Figure out what happens in the middle. Yeah. Does it kind of sense? Yeah, but I love... Oh gosh, I can go on and on. I love that. No, really, it's a... And I learned a long time ago that character is structure. Structure is character. They're all of the same piece. It's not like you have to do one than the other. You're constantly doing both at once. Hi. Hi. My name is Wallace. Hi, Wallace. So, I've never had any normal training as a playwright. Right. I'm taking a class here, but not like a degree or anything. Sure, sure. Me neither. So one of the things that I noticed with my particular play is how willing am I to let the characters say be honest with each other. You know, instead of like saying what I need them to say in order to get to the next thing. So, I mean, I'm wondering about when you're creating a play and you have the characters in the room and you notice maybe the characters holding back or how do you deal with that? Right, right, right. Well, that's great. Everybody heard? Wallace, right. He has his characters in there. It's a difference between what the character is saying, what the playwright wants the character to say and what the character needs to say. Right, there's a two different things. And you can kind of sort of tell a lot when the character is just kind of saying what the playwright needs. You know? Or when the character is saying what they need. So, geometry. Does anybody know anything about geometry? No, I don't. But this is some like, no, this is real geometry as it applies to writing. Two points make a line. That's like a truth in geometry. You're not here. You've been here before. Yes. What's your name? Jasper. Jasper? Yes, I know you were here and then you were back last week and you've been here many years. Jasper, hi. Welcome back. We were different. But you know geometry. Two points make a line. Does that sound familiar? Right. Okay. As it applies to playwriting, two points make a line of dialogue. How good is that? Okay. It's because you take your character A again because she's so busy. She's in three places. Character A, where is she now? Point number one. Where does she want to go? Point number two. You can hear her dialogue if you think of where she is right now in your play and where she wants to end up. Right? Did you understand? Yeah. I know. It's great. I think of school formal training. I learn this shit by making it up outside. But I give it to you free of charge every Monday afternoon. But do you see how it works? So again, we do it wrong. We get inside the character and we see what she wants. I want to... What I'm thinking of, I love what Hamilton, Hamilton's a guy, but it works. I want to figure out what to do about my stepfather. Right? I want to figure... So sometimes he lies. Sometimes he tells the truth. But he's trying to figure out what to do about his stepfather. That's his thing. Okay? So get inside the guts of your character and figure out what they want. What do they want? And that's going to tell you and where are they going? If you know the end, their end point, how do they get there? And that's what their dialogue is doing for you. It's helping them to negotiate that path. Does that make that kind of sense? Yeah. And do... The audience doesn't need to know what they want. Right? Well, sometimes, like in what's their play? Three sisters? They want to go to Moscow. And then they say... You know what I mean? In Blast Menagerie, what's her name? Homegirl, Laura, whatever her name is. She wants a gentleman. She wants some fun. A gentleman caller. She wants somebody in her life. So we... Yes, the audience can know, but they don't have to know. The character has to know. You have to know. You have to have a good idea about what they're going for. You know? Just like when you left your house this afternoon, right? Yeah. Did you... Oh, I didn't know, right? Right? I mean, you still be out there walking around a circle. Or like this. Oh, I don't know. You know what I'm saying? But you know where you want to go, so you're going to make your move there. Okay? I didn't have to know where you're going. But... You see what I'm saying? So... And I would say generally, although people with disabilities, I think less about the audience and more about my characters and the story. Because the audience can change from night to night to night. If we're lucky, our plays get done all over the world. In languages, we might not even speak, and that's great! You know what I mean? We don't know what those audiences want or anything. But if you focus on your characters, focus all so much attention on your character and what they're doing and what they want. Okay? That makes sense? Yeah. Yay! Yay! Oh, yes! I have a question about showing up since we were talking about it earlier. I was just wondering how does one show up even to do 20 minutes a day? Not necessarily if you have writer's block, but if you're sad that day or angry about something or frustrated, how do you still show up when... not, you know, horrible writer's block, I have no idea what to do, stare at the page until my eyes bleed, but just, you know, how do mere mortals show up to write every day when we have things that want to get in the way so badly? That's a great question. That's a question we all have to ask. How do we... I mean, I know there are... I mean, these are champagne problems we have. We know that. And we acknowledge that because we don't... I don't know, you know, we, the simple theory, we don't have to walk five miles a day to get water and things like that. Okay, so we're lucky, we're so lucky that way that we have these kinds of problems all the more reason to commit ourselves to showing up every day. It is really hard to show up every day when you're sad. It is really hard to show up every day when, ooh, you make the mistake of reading the news first thing in the morning. Don't do it! Because one of your favorite people is going to be caught. They won't stop them with the same thing. It's going to ruin your day. You know what I'm saying? And you really won't want to show up because someone thought it's such as just a Hoosy Whatsy and blah, blah, blah. Right? Okay. So there are things you can do to make sure that... that kind of stuff, you can keep that stuff at bay, like show up before you go online to check your email and your Facebook and your news feed and what not. Okay? So you can organize your day for success. So I would say, I would just personally wake up in the morning, maybe you do your meditation, I do. And then you show up for 20 minutes every day. And you get that done. And then you can go on for the rest of your day. You need a pen. Do you have a pen? You okay? It's... Yeah, it is. There you go. Share. There you go. Boom! Thank you. Okay? But so I would suggest that. Right? Get yourself up for success. And if you're sad, I think all the more reason to show up for yourself. And if you're angry, all the more reason to just... And if all you can do is sit there and you set your timer. And again, I go out all night about how the phone is not such a great timer, get an egg timer, get a timer that's something that if you can, it's something that only counts down the time. Okay? But set the timer and just sit there. And write, I am sad. I am sad. I am sad. That'll work. I am angry. I am angry. That'll work. And then at the end of it when the timer goes off, and I showed up today for myself. I showed up today for myself. You know, that's a great thing, right? It's a know that you're doing it for not just for yourself, which might sound selfish, which is, you know, gets a bad rap. But you're doing it for us because if you can do it, then you can encourage somebody else to do it. And then they can do it and suddenly there's a good feeling going around instead of a shitty feeling. Right? Yeah. Okay? Cool. And thanks for coming back from wherever you were. Where you were? Japan. Thanks for coming back. Hey, Matt. Hey, how you doing? My name is Marcus. I'm not a playwright. It's okay. I'm an actor. That's cool. And if someone like me was interested in dabbling into writing if they started now, would you get that single price that you just gave? Totally. Totally. Marcus is an actor and you said, hey, I want to, you know, do some writing. Totally. You knew what you do. I mean, you get up in the morning, you know, and you sit down. I mean, you know, maybe forget the meditation. Sit down with your notebook and write for 20 minutes. Whatever comes to your mind. Or you can sit down with your computer, you know, if you'd like to type in your computer and just journal entry for 20 minutes a day. See what's there. Because the desire to create something means that there's something there that wants to be created. You know what I mean? There's a character or a tune or a story that you want to tell, you know. And usually that means that there are people out there who want to hear it. Okay. You guys just put in the time. Just put in the time, okay? Thank you. Thank you. Yes. I have a question from online. It's a person named Christy. She's from New Jersey. Christy says that she lost three quarters of a script in the mountains or an attempt to rewrite it. She's wondering if she should completely start over or try to recall and write. Wow. She lost three quarters of a script. How does she maintain another other quarter, the quarter that she didn't lose? I mean, so she lost three quarters of a script in the mountains. I don't know the mountains, the mountains. Wow. Okay, it's okay to be lost in the mountains. And so she could try to recall it or should she completely start over? I would say recall it. I think the starting over smells like something else. It smells like yeah. I would say try to recall it. And I would say give yourself Christy a time limit. You know what I mean? Like give yourself like two weeks to get it out. You know? And get a draft. You know what I mean? I would say that. Yeah. All this also works when you lose a script in a flood, a fire or traveling through outer space. Come on, you have a name. Rebecca. Rebecca. She's been here for three years because she lost a script. Right. Find a Which one was it? There was a follow-up to it. Oh, right. Wow, wow, wow. She lost a script. A fire. A fire. And fire. And fire. So the real lesson is to get out. Yeah. Right. Right. The action is action. But there are psychological, it's always interesting when we lose, we lose something in the mountains or in a fire, you know? And in what we do in response to the loss, I mean that's the... how do we recover from a bag of shit? How do we recover from a loss like that? And what do you do when you've lost something that's very dear to you and how do you recover? and I suggest jump right back in as fast as you can and mourn if you need to but but get that story right right right I remember you because you've been here before so right Jack says when you're working on more than one project at once how do you balance it and I was I just thought out of a meeting with somebody and they were like how do you work on certain things looking at me like and I said well I have turntables this is my new analogy not turntables so I have like many turntables right so I mean they're in my mind but you know those of you don't know what a turntable is it's the thing that goes around the records okay so imagine that you have you have two projects one that you're trying to okay so which one is the one you're working on now just just where is it in your brain but where where I'm sorry where is it in space it's right here great okay this is the play you're working on now right and why do you can can you move it up here in your brain great so like this like this great because it's a turntable right just going around right and the second one can be like right here okay they're both spinning right or maybe right here right spinning they're both in motion they're both in play they're both making progress but this one is the main one that's more of in your in your mind side than this one down here and then maybe next week you're gonna have to maybe switch right right right right also what you can do I have but in my apartment a whole like a bookshelf the thing that I got a key of the key and it has these red like Ben probably get some of your student and I can't and each been it has like ten been each been has a different project okay so I have in the bin is all the stuff of the project and it's on top of the pile of stuff is a piece of paper saying what I'm what I'm supposed to do next and I pull it out and go right I'm supposed to call the guy to move right so I at any point I know where I am it's a project if you have to like you remember just know that this one you want to keep rotating if you want to keep it in play right keep it moving know that it's moving while you're focusing on this one over here right okay and then you can also add to that you can add another one here over here over here up here back here you can add them around your mind's eye and they're all revolving you just focusing on one day then the next one maybe tomorrow whatever you want to switch back okay you really have to watch your mind two minutes anybody with a burning question before Thanksgiving night I was trying to correlate the two together with like Jack Prince and Jaspers right yes yeah because like when I whatever I'm feeling that day is like what kind of project I'll work on so like a comedy in a drama like wherever the space I'm in I have a different project almost that I like to work on in that space but if I don't have a project then I'll start a new one from that space I don't know it just allows you to kind of still work but you you don't have to work on the one project at one time space to kind of still feel the way you want to feel but then work as well right right so yeah exactly Ryan was saying you can work on multiple projects depending on your mood I would just want to put a little founder around that because there's a certain point that comes the time when you've got a fucking finish that damn it okay and so you can't say whoa I'm not the mood you know my ears go live you haven't finished that you know so there's certain time you have to press forward like we're talking press lead into a little bit and be a professional and finish it so there's that there's that too but that's for anybody else really quick I wanted to say something to you yeah I don't know if you've heard of spatial sequence synesthesia no but I have synesthesia but I have to grab colors and see yeah anyway it's like about how your mind works and like how you can organize there's this kind of synesthesia where you organize stuff in space and relationship it reminds me a lot of what you're talking about might be interesting it's called spatial sequence synesthesia it's like people place things at different distances from them in their minds I in order to like this is how these people organize their whole thinking right well that's great well that's probably what it is it's a real thing I have it's organized by colors like how my mind but this is like organizing space it's called spatial sequence synesthesia I think I thought it might interest you no that's great that's awesome just a little like there's one there's a form of that where music can turn into color in your head yeah there's a composer named what was a composer named Olivier Messian I think and when he was a child he used to think that they lowered the lights over the orchestra so that the audience could see the colors better yeah if he would conduct his own symphonies and he'd say things like gentlemen please bluer bluer that's what we need and no one understood what he meant Olivier Messian I think I have no idea how to spell that it's French it's French we're going to say happy Thanksgiving there's a lot to be said before yeah and thank you guys