Process: Live and On Stage

One of my primary focuses this year in my classroom is the writing process. I want my students to know and understand that writing is a process not a product. And it's driving many of them crazy. Some don't see the point. Some are just lazy. Some truly believe that they are talented enough writers that they don't need planning or editing or revisions or rewrites. It's the Dunning Kruger Effect come to life. It's vexing. But that's not why I'm writing this. I'm writing this because of what I did over the weekend.

On Saturday night, Kim and I went to see stand-up comedian Sebastian Maniscalco. He was hilarious. My face and gut hurt from laughing so much.




Something you need to know about me if you didn't already know, I love stand-up comedy. I have since I was a kid. My epic ski club novel that I've been planning for years had a character that dreams of being a stand-up comedian. I've been in love with stand-up comedy since the first time I saw Bill Cosby: Himself. I spent hours watching late night comedy specials on HBO and looked forward to the Young Comedian's Specials. I listened to albums and tapes: Eddie Murphy's "Cookout" and "Hamburger" bits were formative. Underrated classics such as Bob Nelson's "All-American Football Team"  and John Fox's hysterical "Archibald Berisol" (which I would do on the ski club bus). I love the routines of Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, George Carlin, pre-disgraced Louis CK, Bill Engvall, etc. Their brilliant writing is clearly an inspiration. (Yes, I've dreamed of becoming a stand-up, but, well, that's for another time.) And you can add Maniscalco to that list.

But the coolest part of the show was the last bit of the night. It was hilarious and some of the biggest belly laughs of the night were during the bit, but that wasn't what made it so cool. What made it cool was that I was watching the writing process live and on stage.

You could tell that the bit wasn't complete. A terrific bit about growing up and how dating was different back then. It was sweet, just the right bit of nostalgia not to be ponderous and without a single taste of "get off my lawn" griping that is so easy to fall into when talking about nostalgia. It was still hilarious but there were some lulls in Maniscalco's manic delivery, as if he wasn't quite sure what he should be doing at that moment, and it was choppy in spots. It needed work and I think he knew it. He was trying it out to see what worked and what didn't work. Kind of like you do in the drafting process. We, the audience, were his beta readers and our reactions were his feedback. It was truly amazing to witness first hand. You always hear stories about how comedians will go to a small, hole-in-the-wall club to try out new material. That's what we were doing, but where the hole-in-the-wall denizens were getting an early draft, we got a more polished but incomplete one that still needed work. I was thrilled having watched it.

Walking back to the car with my wife (we skipped a late dinner downtown to avoid the crowds), I couldn't withhold my excitement over the last bit. She listened, because she's good at that and commented that it was still funny. I agreed, but the writer and writing teacher in my was still thrilled having gotten to witness the writing process live. What he was doing was no different than what I might do (or try to get my students to do) when revising or rewriting.

Sometimes it's finding a different word or reorganizing the words in a different sequence. Sometimes it's taking certain words out or leaving others in. Maybe it's moving entire sections from the beginning to the end or starting in a different place. It might be the need to quicken the pace here while slowing it there. It was the writing process, live and on stage.

Brooding

If you haven't noticed, I haven't been sharing much of my personal writing lately. Who am I kidding, I haven't been doing much personal writing in the last two months. The beginning of the school year can do that to you. Plus, I really haven't had much to say. I've written some things here and there, but it's nothing worth sharing. (There's a post about that in me, I just haven't written it yet.) I've been writing a lot for the last six weeks despite school, but nothing coherent or unified. It's stuff I never thought I could or would write...and no, I'm not telling you. In that time, some of the threads that will make up "The Epic Fantasy I Wasn't Going To Write" came into view along with some new, very different ideas.

I don't have a solid project here, just ideas floating around that need some structure. My MG story is stuck and stalled. I just can't get it moving. It could be the sense of urgency I feel about the story. That should motivate me and it's not. I want to try NANOWRIMO again, but I don't know what project I want to do. But that's not really what I wanted to write about.

I wanted to write about brooding.

Last week was a shit week. Not worth getting into specifics, but it put me in a weird, miserable place. I stopped listening to the book I was listening to and tried to find an appropriate soundtrack to accompany my brooding. I settled on the new album by Tool. It's fantastic (Pink Floyd and Zeppelin had a baby that was raised by Metallica). And it was perfect music for brooding.

When you think about it, brooding is just a quieter, cooler sounding way of saying whining quietly. It's actually kind of considerate when you think about it. I was having a conversation with someone this week and said, "I'm given for dark moods." It was something cool I used to say when I was younger to sound mysterious. ("Why is everything a shade of gray?" was another popular one from me.) There's some truth to it. I get stuck in my own head, letting things roll around like the sand in the oyster until there's a giant pearl rolling around, distracting me from almost all thoughts. It's been like that for a few days now. It can be dangerous, like the Langston Hughes poem "Harlem" says, "Or does it explode?" (I know he was talking about something very different, but it still means something to me.) And somehow,  despite all this brooding, writing is happening.

Yesterday, I was sitting on the porch watching the kids (we call that a motif in the literature business), writing. I had written seven pages in my notebook in the previous day and a half. That was more than I'd written in a long time. Granted most of it is garbage and the meandering ramblings of a maniac, but you know what they say about "Shitty First Drafts."

I wound up writing a few pages of the MG project. Plus I wrote a few pages of the thing that will never see the light of day. Some of the nebulous "epic fantasy" ideas are becoming clearer while I'm developing some ideas of how to fix an old story that had its chances and failed to garner attention. I'm contemplating doing something I didn't think I'd do with something else. It's kind of exciting. Not like "whoo-hoo" exciting...I'm brooding, remember?

Maybe accessing the darkness is what I needed to jump start what I'm doing. I don't write "dark." Sure, GIRL IN THE PICTURE is kind of dark and some of my other work has dark moments, but I wouldn't call anything I write "dark." I've always run from the dark, avoiding it. I've stepped away from writing when I've felt my life was entering a dark place because I didn't want it reflected in what I was doing. Maybe that's been a mistake. Maybe I needed to embrace those dark moods and brood a bit. Let that pearl grow and grow.

Plenty of authors talk about the darkness and how they use it to write. King, Murakami, Pratchett, Gaiman, Whedon, Twain.

Maybe in that darkness and brooding, when quiet and not distracted by all the noise, you can find the things buried deepest in you and bring them out. They aren't always what you want to see, but sometimes they are what you need to see and that's when you can turn that into what you need.