 So, Watch Me Work is a show, right, where we talk about your work and your creative process. That part is very, very important. So, you guys might know, I'm a writer and I write a lot, a lot, a lot of different things. We have been doing this show from live from the lobby of the Public Theater for 11 years. And now because of the whole coronavirus thing, we're doing it live. I'm doing it live from my apartment and HowlRound, who has been helping us live stream for many, many years, is kind enough with the Public Theater. Big thanks to HowlRound and the Public Theater for helping make this live stream thing happen. We're going to be doing Watch Me Work five days a week, Monday through Friday at 5 p.m. So, five days in a row every week at 5 p.m. Because what else could we do except get together and talk with each other and give each other good, positive, supportive, loving energy. So, that's why I'm here and I hope that's why you all are here. This is how Watch Me Work works, okay? It's my timer. Yeah, I know. Now I'm at home. I have so many of these timers. It's kind of sad. Uh-oh, something happened. Something, something, something happened. Oh, well, whatever. So, here's my timer. We're going to work together for 20 minutes and you're going to work on whatever it is that you work on. You know what I'm saying? So, it can be a writing project. Again, as you guys know, I'm most versed in talking about writing stuff. But it can be anything you need to work on to get your work done. The timer is going to go off. And after we've, I'm seeing someone's calendar here. This is kind of weird. We're working on it. Okay, great. I'm doing a screen share with somebody. I don't even know. Okay, but after we work together for 20 minutes, the timer goes off. And for the remainder of the time, which is going to be 40 minutes, we're going to be talking, giving love to Elaine. I'm giving love to Elaine Avila. You know what? I'm looking at you and I'm like, I know you. And these people I've known for like a hundred years and now here they are. But after we work for 20 minutes, I'm going to be talking, you're going to be asking me questions about your writing process and I'll be offering answers. Okay, we don't have time for people to actually read from something they've written. You know what I mean? It's not like offering a critique about a specific piece of writing. We're talking more about process questions like, I don't know how to start or my characters aren't talking to me or how do I know what I'm done or how do I keep going or how do I set up a schedule, especially in these crazy times or whatever. Okay, we'll be talking about your writing process, your work process. All right, anything else? And so Audrey's going to help, to Audrey, one of our awesome moderators is going to help with the nuts and bolts. Take it away. Hi, everybody. Thank you so, so much for joining us. This is so cool. So as usual, you'll be able to ask questions during our question portion after we write for or work for 20 minutes. You'll be able to ask questions in four different ways. One is you'll be able to raise your hand. There should be a raise your hand button, I think in the bottom of your screen. Let me know in the chat if you can't see it and I'll help you figure out where it is. And if you're watching the stream online, you can also tweet at us at the Public Theater Twitter or into our Instagram messages. And then the final way is that you can tweet at us at Watch Me Work SLP with the hashtag HowlRound, which is H-O-W-L-R-O-U-N-D. And that is that. And when you raise your hand on the Zoom, if you're in the Zoom portion, I will unmute you when we're able to answer your question. I'm laughing because my husband was just dancing off-camera, off-camera. OK, so yeah, I'm sorry I'm leaning over to get my notebook. It's all very organized over here. How many of you are homeschooling? Yeah, I. OK, it's a real challenge. It's all a challenge. And then those of you who are not, it's still a challenge. OK, so we're going to we're going to get ready. Everybody got something to write with and on and all that. I'm going to use a notebook today. Usually use a typewriter, but good. You got something to write on. There you go. OK, ready? So we're going to start. I'm going to turn it up so we can all hear it. OK, here we go and go. Yay. All right. So funny. There was 20. That was that was 20 minutes. It's good. It's good. So now we've done the the writing part. Or as I say, when we do it live, that was because this is like a show. So now we've done. Now we've done the action together of the show or of the play. And now we're going to do the dialogue together, which means that you're going to ask me questions about your creative process. So. Audrey and Miranda, you guys are ready with the OK. He's got a question. All right, Kiki, we got you. Yay. OK, so my question is how. Do you start your 10 minute plays? Ah, my 10 minute plays. You mean I don't know if they're 10 minutes. How do I start like a short play? You mean? Yeah. OK, how do I start a short play? What do you like to write on, Kiki? Um, mostly feminist work. I feel like. That's great. I meant like pencil. Oh, oh, um, usually pencil journal. Great. Great. OK, great pencil journal. OK, so and you have your topics that you love, feminist topics. Sometimes mostly cool, cool. Yeah. So you just like pick it up and put it down. You can what what what what's what seems to be, you know, it sounds like there's something to keep it all holding you back, slowing you down. What's what's the trouble? Um, well, I guess once I start writing, I just hard to explain, like I I have a. I have an action that I see in my head. Uh huh. Yeah. And I. When I'm writing, I'm either overwriting it to where it becomes something totally different and it doesn't make any sense anymore. Right. Or it becomes what I want, but it's too short for like, it's not that. Ten minute. It's not. I don't know. It's OK. Yeah, it's hard. I mean, that's the cool thing about like. Writing it's it's it's hard. It can be difficult, right? And that's OK. That doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. It just means that it actually is difficult. Like, have you ever run a marathon? No, yes. Yes. Country. Me too. Cross country. Have you ever climbed Mount Everest? Never. OK, well, that's hard, too. Right. It doesn't mean like because it's your experience and difficulty that you're doing it incorrectly. Right. OK, so the first thing you do, she said you start writing and you find that your your writing is not expressing the thing that you wanted to express, right? But you do get to an end point. Is that correct? Yeah. OK. And then you find that correct me for my you find that it's not long enough. Is that correct? Yes. OK. So first of all. You when you write it down. It's great. Pat yourself on the back. You did it, right? OK. That's writing. Now you can do your rewriting, which is bringing it, making it make sense and making it make better sense. You see what I mean? So oftentimes the first time we write something, it doesn't say the things that we wanted to say. So we have to do some rewriting. You understand? OK. And the thing about it not being long enough. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. So you time it, you read it with actors, and it comes out to nine minutes and 12 seconds. Darn, I didn't make it a timid thing. I don't think I've ever consciously written a 10 minute play. I don't think. Maybe I have. Maybe I'm just. But I write plays of varying lengths. Yeah. Sam Shepard, you know, the great writer playwright Sam Shepard, he has his essay on time and he says time doesn't matter. Don't worry about it. OK, so if you have at the end of your writing period, a short play and you rewrite it and make it kind of address the things and the themes that you're interested in, you've done a great job. If it's seven minutes and 12 seconds, if someone holds that against you, I haven't come on here and we'll have a conversation. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, that makes sense to everybody. I mean, a 10 minute play, usually when people say 10 minute play, they just mean not an hour long or a 30 minute. You know, they mean short, you know, like 20. Like submitting, though. So, like, like when theaters want to do the 10 minute play festival and they think you're playing, they are going to reject your play because it's seven minutes and 12 seconds. Definitely shorter than that. It's weird because usually my like when I do 10 minute plays, they're around 10 to 15 pages, I guess. And this time my play was eight pages and it was three minutes long when we read it. And I was like, so read it slower. No. Give, give, throw a long speech in there. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, bring a soap box. You know, if your play is too short, bring a soap box into the middle of your play, you know, a soap box, like a box or a pallet of toilet paper in our times. Bring a pallet of toilet paper, have a character, stand on it and just start shooting some shit. OK, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, great. OK. But the main thing is you keep writing, Kiki, OK? Yeah. OK. Anybody else? All right. Amara has her hand up. I'm going to unmute Amara. Thank you. Hello. Hi, Mara. Hi, Susan Louie. So I'm working on something it's called Manic Pixie Dream Girls Aren't Black. And I don't want it to be a musical, but I think it's a musical. Can you talk a little bit about the difference between plays with music and musicals or what you think they are? So you don't want to be you don't want to be a musical, Amara, but you but it has music in it. So on the stuff, great. Well, I think the difference in the play with music in it and a musical is like, I don't know. I mean, all I know are examples for my own work or or no, much better. Like there's some Shakespeare plays with music in them, right? So, OK, there's some Brecht plays, you know, like Mother Courage. You know, you're familiar with, you know, some of his three penny opera, you know, I wouldn't call those musicals. But I would call them plays with music, you know, where the characters sing, you know. Yeah. So I do you know the difference between a play with I'm asking you, do you know the difference when you play with music and musical? I have a theory. Uh huh. What is your theory? My theory is that like musicals, the songs must serve the plot. Like they must move the structure forward, but plays with music. It doesn't have to serve the plot in the same way. Like what I'm writing into the thing now is a bunch of smaller performances, open mic sessions that where the music doesn't necessarily move the plot forward, but it might tell us something about where the character is, which is kind of why the lines are blurring about whether or not this is a musical or not. But that's my theory. There's a whole bunch of conversations about what's a play and what's not a play, you know. I think I think or you know, I mean, we live in the age. Hello, everybody. We're like gender is fluid and you're worried about this. Yeah, it's OK, you know what? Write, write your thing, you know what I'm saying? One, if a producer loves it and they call it a musical, then it's a musical. Who the fuck cares? Right. I don't care if you think it's a play with music. I think you're I would agree with you because you're writing it. You know what I'm saying? But I wouldn't get too hung up on the label of it. Especially if the label is keeping you from writing it. It's not. It's just that I was commissioned to write a play and I'm scared that if I come in with a musical, they'll be like, what the fuck did you just do with your time? Well, musicals are plays and plays are musicals. They're it's the same thing. Yes, I understand. Yeah, like people are humans or whatever that that relationship is. But yeah, does that make sense? I don't think you're going to get again. I don't think you're going to get slapped on the wrist for writing a musical when you were commissioned to write a play. Cool. You will get in trouble if you wrote a laundry list or a grocery list. Fair enough. Right. Right. I think I think you're going to be happy. I think they're going to be happy. You did your writing. Fabulous. It sounds like it's a great show. They're going to love it. Thank you. And if they don't again, come on here. We'll have more people who will have in the comments question, you know, all those people over there. Fair enough. She didn't write a play. She wrote a musical. Mm hmm. Thank you. Good to see you. Good to see you. Who else we got? Sina, I'm so sorry if I'm singing you wrong. Has a question. I'm going to unmute you. Oh, maybe not. Try it again. Oh, there we go. Hi. Hi. Yeah, it's it's Sina, but thank you. Sorry. Hi, Sina. Hi. Where are you, Sina? Where are you, Sina? I'm I'm in Virginia. I grew up in Virginia. I'm in my backyard in Virginia. Oh, very, very nice. Yeah, it is. It's awfully gorgeous. Yeah, it is. It's I'm lucky. I'm glad to be here. Get some fresh air. I guess this is a question more about maybe your process. But do you. So I guess maybe this is a little bit a little bit about me. I'm in grad school for acting at Columbia. And I'm working on this play right now. And and when we were just writing, I kind of I kind of found this thing of like, maybe it's like the actor part of my brain can't really turn off, but like of maybe like meandering. And I was wondering you yourself, do you go into a scene that you're about to write? And do you know like what these what? Let's say it's a two person scene. What these two people want from each other and then write? Or do you figure that out while you're writing? Or is this even something to think about when you're first just getting it on the page and just kind of like splurging it out there. So so you're excited to make you're an actor, studying acting at Columbia, but you're writing your. Yeah, yeah, I'm just writing myself a nice part, but it's also just a story that's like a nice. Yeah, it's like a personal story that I've always wanted to write. I've always written stuff. And so I would say at this point, I mean, you're working on it right now. Yeah, and it's like a first draft. And I'm kind of like, I'm not even writing it linearly. I'm kind of just like, just thoughts that come into my head. I'm just like, oh, this is a scene and just writing it. But I have like the structure of it in my head, like the beginning of the end and kind of what happens throughout. Well, I mean, there are different tactics for different times, you know? So right now I would say, Sina, if you're enjoying, I mean, which would you, which tactic would be more enjoyable to you right now? Would it be, I know what the characters want from each other and then you write the scene or would it be kind of just enjoying the process of writing, which is, which would be more enjoyable for you right now? Oh, that's, it's kind of hard to say, I guess without trying both, I think, I think, I think it's pretty like there's some catharsis I find with just like, like pen to paper, just writing. And what you were talking about earlier, expressing the thing is that we want to be expressing and like exploring them. I think, I think I'm dealing with that. Great. Great. Yeah. And if it, so just, I mean, you're, you're, you're trying out writing, you've always been writing stuff. Right now it sounds like it might be helpful if it's an enjoyable process. So if you find that that is very cathartic and you're enjoying it, stick with that. But if you find that, gosh, I'm having, I might be having a hard time right now, you know? Then ask yourself, what does character A want from character B? Or maybe more specifically, what does character A want more than anything? And what are they doing in this scene to get it? Okay. It might not be something they want specifically from character B. Interesting. Yeah. Okay. And that might, a lot of times when we, you just kind of narrow your field of focus a little bit, that kind of narrows the field of focus. So you're not just writing anything. You're getting a little more focused. And sometimes that helps. It actually moves the distractions out of the way. Okay. You're still in writing mode. You know, I tell people that students or myself too, that there are two kinds of, there are two curages in writing. There's writing and there's rewriting, right? And in writing, it's anything goes, everything grows. Doing your thing, right? Yeah. And in rewriting, it's, you take the sword of discrimination, you all know what that sword is, right? It's like, it's not, it's just like, you know what is and you know what ain't. Yeah. So with that discrimination, and you're cutting everything that does not fit. So that's a second kind of curse. That's a curse of rewriting. They both take incredible amounts of courage. So, you know, you're going to be doing the writing, you're just letting it flow, but sometimes it's more helpful to narrow our focus. Like for you, Kiki, you ran cross country, right? Kiki ran cross country. So cross country, long distance runners, there's a path, right? There's a track. I mean, if you're a track runner, you run like the two mile race, you run those laps, right? You're not just running anywhere, right? You're running on a track on a path. And so narrowing your focus, Sina, sometimes helps doing that, getting in that flow. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So it could help, but if it doesn't feel good, right now, you might just want to feel good and feel that catharsis you get. So just write anything, put a couple of characters in a scene and just go. Right. The most important thing is that you are creating situations where you are welcoming your process and you're feeling welcomed by your process. So at the end of the day, you can say, yeah, I did a little bit of something and I feel, I feel okay. I feel better, you know? Yeah. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. All right, Jo-Ann has her hand up. If you, and just as a reminder for everybody, in the participant tab, there's a little button. You can click to raise your hand. It'll put a little blue hand on my screen. So I see you guys. You're doing a great job. This is fantastic. Thank you. I can't believe it. Oh my God. I know, I'm like in shock. Now I've lost Jo-Ann after all that. Oh, here she is. There we go. On you. Go ahead, Jo-Ann. There she is. Hey, you can hear me? Yes, we can hear you. My question is, is that how do you, cause I see you just writing, you're writing, you're writing, but how do you keep, make your characters round? That they don't, that they're not flat. What do you mean? What's the difference to Jo-Ann between round and flat? What's the difference? Me, there's more depth to them and how to create that and make that happen within the character. So it's not, they're more interesting. And I find is sometimes I may get one character but I feel that it's interesting and then the others are not. Really, to, trying to, to make the play more alive for me, you know? So when you, how do you, how do you, how do you get a play? How do you start that? Yeah, that's a great question. That's a great question. Cause sort of creating your characters and how, how do we create characters? One thing I do is I dig deep. Okay, that's one thing I sort of, and I'm not just interested in the characters who one might say are like me. I'm interested in every single character in the play or the novel or whatever it is, the screenplay, whatever it is I'm writing. I'm deeply interested in what some people might call background characters or what some people might call secondary characters or tertiary characters, the less important characters, right? Right. And that comes from, I mean, and I like, I'm not the first right. I mean, that comes from like, you know, Shakespeare's playbook, you know? That mofo was deeply interested in all the characters, deeply. You felt like Shakespeare was listening in. What do you have to say, you know? That's why all the characters are like, wow, they're all remarkable and interesting, right? It's not just the main person, woman or man, whatever. Okay, so for us when we write, a lot of times the main character can be like, I'm just gonna do it up to my screen. It's hard to do it, I'm just gonna, you know, right? They're like, and you can't really see around them, right? Yeah. They just taken up all the view, okay? But you really have to start looking, who's that? Who are you? Get into a conversation with these characters. Get to know them, right? Get interested in them. I mean, like when you go out, well, we don't go out much anymore, but, but when you do have to go out or how, okay. Well, when you go out to the store, on that one day you go out to the store to get you two weeks of groceries or when the kind and very generous delivery person brings things to your doorstep. Take a look at them. I mean, you don't wanna be too weird because they might think you're crazy, you know what I'm saying? But think about them. Spend some time, Joanne, thinking about them, taking them in. Not necessarily into your home, but into your heart. What would it be like to walk around in, say you go to the grocery store and there's a woman who's the cashier, you know? What would it be like to walk around in her shoes? Think about it. You see what I mean? I am constantly taking people in, you know, right? I want to know, I mean, I want to know how people are doing. I'm empathetic. And I think empathy, feeling for others, right? Makes for good writing, I think. Even if you don't have to get all into their business, you know what I'm saying? But just consider the lives of others. Okay. And the last question, go ahead. Do you, because I always hear, you have to know where you're starting and where you're ending to write a play. Is that law? It's a suggestion that has helped many. Okay. But I would say it is helpful. Like if I'm saying, you know, well, we can't travel anymore either if you're in New York, but look, I'm in New York, but I'm saying, if I were to get in the car right now and say, I'm going driving, right? And I just drive and drive and drive and shit, I ain't got much anywhere. I'm just going around in circles. Okay, great. But if I say, I'm going to drive to Virginia to visit Sina. I'm going to get in my car and I'm going to have a map. It does give my project a kind of energetic motion. Do you see what I'm saying? Okay. So what I offer you, Joanne, is you don't have to know for sure where you're going. Okay. You don't have to throw some shit up at the wall and say, maybe I'm going to go over here. Okay. You see what I'm saying? Yes. So you can say the end of your play might be, and they live happily ever after. That's the end. And they live in a yurt happily ever after the end. You know? Okay. But by the time you get there, it might have changed. Okay. And that's okay. But that was helpful. I'm glad. Thank you. That's why I'm here. No, really. Thank you. Thanks, Joanne. Okay. All right. We've got Brianda has a question. Hey, Brianda, where you at? Yes. And you pronounce my name right. Thank you. You're welcome. So I'm really interested because I love diving deep and I'm really interested in your process, whether you have a process for determining whether research is a distraction or whether it's like fear and disguise, whether it's no longer serving the process, like whether you have like a litmus test to decide whether you keep diving into research or whether you just go back to just writing and rewriting. Right. That's great question, Brianda. When you say, I mean, you know, one could say research is a distraction or a fear after a certain amount of time, right? One could say not wanting to research is a distraction or a fear because what you're afraid of finding out something that you didn't know before. So it can go either way, right? So I would suggest if it's a topic that you know less about, you know, and you feel like I got to research because, you know, right? Like when I started writing this thing about Aretha Franklin, I didn't know anything about Aretha Franklin, so I did some research. But there came a time when I said, okay, you feel a feeling, you feel kind of filled up, like you're eating dinner and you go, I'm full at that moment, stop, right? You want to stop and start writing, okay? Because you can, and this is the truth about research, you can always go back and do a little bit more. I know, that's where I think I get into, because I nerd out about things. It's like, oh, I find this out, and then I find this out and I find this out. And I think it's all helpful. Like, oh, I have to know the whole story and dive in deep and pretty soon. I'm like researching the book that inspired the, you know, all the source material. And I don't know like when it's too far. So I like the idea of feeling full. You're gone, you've gone too far, Bionda. I'm telling you, you've gone too far. Stop, when you're researching the book that based, that with the book you're researching, when you do that, when you're doing that second level of researching, you've gone too far. Because your job, I mean, I'm not sure what you're specifically, what you're writing, but our job is to weave together. Okay, hi, yeah, okay, goodbye. Sorry, my child play on video games today. So his brain is rotting, but I'm talking to you guys. But our job is to fabricate, right? And to fabricate, we take a strand of what's factual and lay it against the strand of what's fictional. And we weave it together, right? Okay, we're not the, well, not even the history channel is historically accurate, but we're not doing that, we're weaving together the fictional and the historical, okay? In a beautiful fabric. So when I say dive deep, what you need to dive deep in is not the research necessarily because that's your go-to, right? You like research, it makes you feel good. Okay, good, good, stop. Stop, stop, put those, get off the internet, put those articles down. Maybe give yourself a time limit, like I'm only gonna research for three weeks or something like that. And then I'm gonna start to write. And do you do a lot of research first? Sometimes I get ideas and then the research starts and I'm like, oh, maybe I should have just gone in and get the idea and start writing and wait till a problem comes up and then research. Yeah, I mean, like I said, for the Sarita Franklin project, I had to do some kind of research because I didn't know nothing. I knew very little, you know what I'm saying? And I was working for National Geographic Channel and they're fact-based. So I had to do something just so I could have a meeting about her. You know what I'm saying? Because I knew very little. I didn't know enough to have a conversation about her. So I did a lot of research, but I also didn't overdo the research. I did just enough to build, to fabricate, if you will, I'm mixing metaphor, sorry, to fabricate a raft that I could put in the water and start to float on. Yeah. And the other pieces came to me as I needed them. You know what I mean? Just enough to create that raft, okay? Yeah. And so you have to be brave. You have to be brave in your writing and your rewriting. You have to be brave in your research and your fictionalizing or whatever it's called, you know? Just give yourself enough to go on. Just enough to create that first rock to get yourself across the stream. Yeah. You know? Then activate your creative mind. You've got to. Too much research is gonna, you're gonna lose the story that you are supposed to be creating. Yeah. Okay. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. All right, we have about seven minutes left. So Atea, you are up next. There you go. Hi. Hi, Atea. So my question is, I'm right in a play that's based in Jamaica. And of course, characters who live locally on the island, they speak with an accent. So I'm just concerned about how to best represent the everyday vernacular, especially having characters that are of different generation and depending on like when you were born, how old you are, you might say certain terms that a young boy who's in his 20s in Jamaica now, he wouldn't say those things. So I'm just concerned about how to best represent each character using the context of who they are and where they're at in life. And then also making it, I guess, digestible to whoever reads or watches it. That's a great, that's a really great question. So here's a side question I have. Do you know the story that you wanna tell? Do you know the characters? Have you fleshed them out or all those? I think I have about 70% of the characters fleshed out. I've been with them for a long time. The story that I wanna tell, I have it all in my head up until the first act. Now I'm slowly working through the construction of Act Two. Right, I would say, and this is gonna be a radical suggestion, I would say do, sounds weird, do whatever. Cause what I hear behind that question is I'm not sure about what I'm writing about. So maybe this dialect question might be getting in the way of it a little bit. I would say have the 20 year old young man speak as a 20 year old young man would. Spell it however you think is appropriate. You know what I mean? It's not ever, it's not a, what do you call it? What people call a patois, it's not that. It's not a pigeon, it's not that. It's not a lesser than form of another English or another language, it is the English they speak. So write it anyway phonetically or whatever that you feel like is appropriate. You've got different generations, like you said. You've got different classes, different people in different classes speak differently. You've got different, all kinds of differences. Write it anyway you can, okay? I would say for right now, don't sweat it being digestible to whoever might read it. Your job is to write it down, get it done, right? And then if you've got the story flowing along, then you can maybe go, okay, maybe I can modify this dialect or this way of speaking so it can be better digestible. But if you're worrying about that right now, you understand what I'm saying? Write it any way you can, okay? Yeah, I guess my obstacle was getting through the spelling of it, because it's not necessarily something that has like a formal written form. And I'm spelling how I hear it and how I'm used to hearing it as I was raised. So that's really where my hiccup was. Like, how do I even spell this out? Yeah, so how, spell it like you hear it. Yeah. Like death of the last black man in the whole entire world, aka the Negro Book of the Dead. Those are dead people. I wrote a play with all the dead people. I would spell it any fucking way I fucking felt like it. And what I know, I'm sorry, Kiki, I'm scandalized. Sorry, I mean, I thought this was an adult show. If there are any children, put them in their rooms and make them play video games. But, you know, I mean, just write it the way you got to write it. Don't let those hiccups stop you. Don't let nothing stop you. Just write it down. You got to get the story out, okay? All righty, thank you. You're welcome, you're welcome. Great question. We've got about two minutes left. Okay, my answer will be really fast. Okay, the next person we have was Crystal Adams. Hi. Crystal from New Jersey. Yeah. Hi, girl. How are you? Happy to see you. Happy to see you too. Hi, your kids. How are you, kids? They're in a different room, so they didn't hear any of that. Okay, okay. Okay, go ahead. Sorry, your question. Just a quick question, just because just with everything that's been going on, like, I find that there's a huge wall and that it's been very hard to hear any new voices, like a new story, a new something to be inspired by something. So I feel like even writing now, it's like, it's just, sorry, it's dry, it's very dry and I don't know what to do to kind of get into a new place of finding something that brings me passion to keep going, to keep writing, to keep a story. I feel like I don't have a story right now. I hear you. And I think a lot of us are there. How about, I think we have to give ourselves a little space to hear it. Cause we always have a story. You know what I mean? Even my kids are in the other room and my dog just got up on the couch. You know, that's a story. We always have a story. Just, I don't think we always have time or make the time to hear it, okay? So we gotta make the time. We gotta promise each other and this is why I'm doing this five days a week to make the time to do it, okay? Even Crystal, if it's just writing for 20 minutes a day with me and the rest of everybody for five days a week, you're gonna make the time. I know you've got kids. I know it's tricky and you're probably homeschooling and all that, you know? Five days a week, 20 minutes a day, that's a start. Okay? Okay. We can find other times during our day where we can piggyback on that five minutes. I mean, 20 minutes, I'm sorry. So the 20 minutes you do with us at five days a week, maybe you can also find yourself 20 minutes in the morning, right? Or 20 minutes before five o'clock, you know? And then you see what I mean? And just rewrite in your notebook for starters because the process, the practice of just allowing yourself the time to listen to your story is what we all need to be doing for ourselves and for each other right now. Right. Okay? Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Great to see you. So great to see you too. I mean, Avila, great to see you. These people, Molly Murphy, these people I've known, Rob. Some of you I've known from like, you know, real life. It's wonderful, it's wonderful to see you guys. It's wonderful to see all of you guys here and we'll get, five days a week we'll be here, you know? Ryan, is that Ryan in the dark? Yeah, hi. Hi, Ryan in the dark, but you know, we'll be here five days, just keep coming back. We're here, it's free, you know? Just to note, there's a different link every day so make sure you sign up for each day so I'll send you the correct link. Okay. I love you guys. Stay healthy, stay healthy, stay safe, okay? We love you. Carl, come back. Thank you. Okay, okay. Bye. Thank you. Thank you.