go big or go bust
Ever hear that line: "Don't leave home without it?" Well guess who left home without her external hard drives? (My video files are stored on external hard drives.) So the highlights reel and all the Go Big or Go Bust videos in the works will be cooling their heels til Sunday...
SEE YOU ON FACEBOOK!
Area Woman Avoids Life and Work Claiming To Be 'on Facebook'
I'm impulsive. In fact, I don't think I have any impulse control whatsoever. As a child I spent most of my time eating, sleeping or in a frenzy of activity. Where's Anne? Oh she's either tearing down the (steep, gravel) driveway on her bike, walking on her hands or running around in circles. You don't break your nose three times before the age of sixteen reading in a comfortable chair.
So to counteract this tendency to a headlong assault (in no particular direction) on life, I've become a maniac for lists and a schedule. Not that this comes easily... just last night as I sat down to try and plan out the next few weeks, a familiar wave of panic overwhelmed me. Every job on my list looks urgent. Every job is SCREAMING to get scheduled tomorrow. Trying to prioritize feels like what I imagine it's like to be strangled. Cursing as I went, I blacked out travel days on the wall calendar. There's no time for travel with all I have to get done!
And then, this morning, something very surprising happened. Blacking out the travel days indeed limited my time but it also brought things more into focus. Rage gave way to relief. And rejoicing in this sense of relief, I realized that the guilt I've been suppressing, for not getting around to a job for a friend, can be a tool too. That job for the friend went to the top of the list if only so I can get rid of the guilt. Suddenly the dizzyingly capacious void of time stretching out ahead of me has been chopped down to a much more manageable number of days. Who could imagine that paying attention to feelings could help to schedule your life? Here that's what I thought was my downfall!
I can't tell you how happy I am to have been able to finally upload the video of my trip to see Dr. Rakesh Kumar, Vedic Astrologer. (I think I went to see him in January.) The satisfaction of crossing a job off the list is enormous. BUT. I shudder to see what's still on the list. 50 million more jobs.
So here I am today (standing on a stool) wiping January --> March off the wall calendar in preparation to make the plans for what's-left-of-April --> June. Deciding what the priorities are is very challenging. Very challenging. (Tips, anybody?)
The one thing I know for sure is that if I don't have a schedule, if I don't attach things to times and dates, they don't get done. Master procrastinator here.
Dr Rakesh Kumar, Vedic Astrologer, gave me his rundown.
It doesn't happen often that I stumble on something as entertaining and inspiring as Ned Van Zandt's staged reading of his new play "Del Valle" at the Atlantic Theatre Company. I won't even try to summarize what this, his first play, is about but will say that It draws at least in part on material from Van Zandt's life. It's beautifully shaped, it's moving and it's hilarious. Van Zandt's performance of every character in the script (and there are many) is breathtaking.
I generally avoid 'the theatre' as my literal mind seems to only see the sets wobbling when the doors slam. But I thoroughly enjoy listening to a good story. And what Ned Van Zandt does in "Del Valle" is tell a wickedly good story while acting out all the parts. What's so inspiring about it to me as an artist is that it's so simple: the production consisted of one man, one plastic chair and his willingness to put himself on the line.
If you've been following me for any time at all, you're probably aware that I've got a little issue with an addiction to work. But hey, if you have to go crazy with a compulsion, let's agree that 'work' might just be one of the better choices. At least for me. (Looking at you, 70% dark chocolate.)
But today, feeling successful, feeling acknowledged and absolutely buoyed by the loving reaction over on facebook, I'm a changed person. I'm relaxed. I love the pilot script Mark and Bill and I pulled together in the past two weeks. And even those two hard-boiled characters seem to feel really good about it.
And most exciting of all is that even if we aren't picked to be finalists for Sundance's Episodic Story Lab, we've already grabbed the brass ring. If things go as planned, by early Fall, whether we're invited to the Lab or not, we'll have a half-hour comedy series to pitch to television or to shoot as six seasons of a comedy web series.
So today I celebrated. I threw caution to the wind and took the whole day off.
So you think Louise has inner voice issues? I gave her worst-day-ever a run for the money last night and won in a landslide, tossing and turning until 6 AM. Am determined to get into the present tense. Thanks for your amazing support. I mean amazing.
SUBMITTED! Thank you for cheering me on and for all that great energy you sent our way!
Is this life imitating ... The Louise Log? For reasons beyond dispute, neither of my co-writers can even read today’s new draft. And our deadline is TOMORROW.
Thank goodness for friends.
Over the top thanks to Anna Lefler and Mhairi Morrison who read and gave me feedback within an hour, Anna on her cell phone during lunch from her high-pressured gig, Mhairi putting aside the mountain of work generated by her triumph last week with the can can girls. Beyond grateful!
So I made it through the second draft today, in spite of it being a gloriously warm and sunny day and in spite of the neighboring horn player extending his considerable energy onto an electric guitar.
Mr. Green has just now given me his feedback: he feels there are many good elements but that the foundation is weak for almost every character's resentment. (There's a lot of resentment.) I want to rewrite it before sending it on to Mr. Hoffman. Tomorrow.
I'm in the grip of some kind of weird Spring Fever. Excited and anxious about this pilot and unable to sleep before 3 or 4 AM, only a fraction of me is showing up to write. Every hour I'm determined to get back on my usual horse. Listening to this on repeat.
It can be tricky going to MOMA. Sometimes you see something sublime and feel inspired. Sometimes you (meaning I) feel confused and hopeless. Tonight, being recognized by the curators at MOMA looks to me like it just might have more to do with luck and politics than with the quality of your work.
Heading home, I gave the dollar I'd found on the sidewalk to this gentleman playing a harp in the subway. He was playing a lively and joyful song that filled the station, not the usual corny stuff I think of as harp music that screams 'flashback'. I looked for the boombox accompanying him but there was none. He was making this huge and beautiful sound all by himself. He smiled and half-bowed to me in gratitude for the dollar.
So what if I'm in a modified panic about this pilot?
How was I not going to go to see collaborator Ann Imig and some of my favorite humorists from the blogosphere (Alexandra Rosas, Wendi Aarons, Marinka NYC ... more below) who came from as far away as Austin, TX and Wisconsin for this book launch. (Click on the first three links above for more about the phenomenon of Listen To Your Mother which is taking the country by storm.)
Too bad that while I was out we had to have a water main break at 7th and 13th Street. The return from a somewhat-too-long-break turned into a whole evening AWOL from my desk so I will be brief.
(FYI, this book would make a great Mother's Day present... )
Getting up my nerve before going into the standing-room-only celebration of these terrific writers' book party.
l to r: Holly Rosen Fink, Ann Imig Founder/National Director of Listen To Your Mother show
Alexandra Rosas and Neil Kramer (aka Neilochka)
Wendi Aarons
Kathy Kate Mayer
Patty Chang Anker
l to r Helen Brickfield, Kathy Kate Mayer, Barb Patrick and Tara Kortze
For inspiration, William Hoffman suggested that I take a look at the Marx Brothers A Night at the Opera. I always liked Buster Keaton better than the Marx Brothers but oh brother am I glad I took his suggestion. (Watch to the end.)
I'm not sure if you know me well enough to know that I'm willful. I'm headstrong! (all the while giving the impression that I'm submissive and docile... ahem..)
Anyway the really surprising thing about this whole Episodic Lab submission is that I had pretty much decided that I'm very happy with the small scale, home movie-style operation of web series, that I love the (on average) four-minute format. And that you seem to care about The Louise Log encourages me that others will too when we get it in front of them and so who needs the high stakes pressure of a thirty minute television show? Not me.
The only reason I made the initial application to the Lab was because A) this process of getting the word out is so incredibly arduous and B) I knew I'd kick myself if I'd never even tried.
And so I latched onto that still small voice which insisted: "If, against all odds, you get in, you're supposed to go this route." This is a victory of a surrender on my part, the unlikelihood of which is hard to overstate.
And so the update of the scramble for having a pilot script ready to submit on April 15:
ON SCHEDULE. (wild clanging of cow bells)
I finished the first rough draft last night. Am making changes from one Co-Writer before sending it to the other Co-Writer this afternoon. I bow to you and thank you for your extremely generous encouragement and for sending your brilliant energy my way. I'm using it in quantities.
It’s a joke in my family that I have something like supersonic hearing. Really good hearing. It’s honestly astonishingly good hearing for certain things. You could call me The Princess and The Pea for sound.
But with great gifts come great burdens. Loose bearing anywhere in the car? My poor husband has to hear about it for months before the mechanic will even agree to work on it.
Woody Allen said about his parents: “They hear like WOLVES.” Maybe we’re related.
There seem to be a few open windows in the large building at the far right.
So with the lovely Spring weather, the streets of Greenwich Village are suddenly alive with life. And as it happens, a musician, a horn player, is on Day 2 of practicing or playing some kind of endless free-style ‘music’ in range of my good ears. I figured he was on the busy corner, busking.
Race walking the sixty feet over, (to try and put a face on the problem so there'd be a chance of a 'compassionate' response ... or a fist-to-cuff), I discovered no musician in sight. The only logical conclusion is that he's near his open window, completely hidden and completely oblivious ... but very close to where I’m desperately trying to concentrate, trying to crank out this high stakes pilot script.
Ready to take out a contract on the guy. It's definitely a guy.
Codependency in overdrive here. I want to be all over FB and twitter thanking everyone for your support. But--
I didn’t want to say anything about this because A) I was in shock and B) hey, it’s an interim step.
But how am I going to carry on and not explain to you why I’m suddenly so busy, why I don't have time to make all the videos I’m chomping at the bit to make, why I’m not pouring my heart out in a long blog every few days-- when you don’t have a clue why I’m, all of a sudden, so darn busy.
Well, so I’ve decided to come clean.
The Sundance Institute is in the second year of offering an Episodic Story Lab, an incubator for writers new to episodic television. It’s very competitive, they invite only about ten projects and there are three rounds.
In the first round, anyone who wants to, submits an overview of a season of ten episodes and the first five pages of a pilot episode. This year there were so many submissions that they delayed announcing who would be invited to submit to the second round by almost a month.
To my shock, Monday night, I got an email inviting me (and my co-writers Mordecai Green and William Hoffman, though only two of us are acknowledged by Sundance) to submit a pilot episode. Here’s the clincher: the pilot is due by April 15th 11:59PM PST.
So with one email, I’ve gone from sleeping a good eight hours a night and having coffee and even lunch with people to being a prisoner (a very excited, and happy if anxious prisoner) chained to my desk. I already chewed my nails off yesterday.
I would love to make it to the third round.
Please send me good vibes, send me your brilliant good energy and good wishes. And I thank you in advance. From my heart!! I'll keep you posted.
I've never been much of a reader and my reading time has plunged since starting to make The Louise Log. Part of the problem is that I'm not a fast reader - I like to read and enjoy every. single. word.
But feeling the need for inspiration, this 567 page book by Jonathan Franzen has been calling to me from the bookshelf. I read it years ago and have very fond memories of its characters who are at least as, if not even more, anxious and tense than Louise. I find it hilarious and deeply felt, actually a work of genius.
I'm not even going to hold it against him that he's close-minded. One of these days, he and Tina Fey are going to realize they're all wrong about twitter.
Since Saturday, I've had two such bizarrely specific and peculiar 'coincidences' that I'm pretty sure they were more than that.
And then today, walking on Grand Street, I saw this hovering above me:
What is that? That upside down 'U' in the middle. Looks like a letter... maybe from another language? Pretty sure it's a message.
