A great thing about this class is that we have Fridays off because we have occasional night classes. Ideally I shouldn’t be blogging right now–we have a 6-8 page play due on Monday, and I have no idea what I’m going to write about. So far my ideas have included the tale of a man falling in love with a raccoon because his wife is leaving him, a story that upon close inspection is actually just A Christmas Carol but with Abraham Lincoln, and, of course, the old fallback of a young playwright just doing his darndest to write a decent play.
Writing anything more fiction-y than something like this blog has always been tough for me. I need motivation to do something like that, and usually the only motivation that’ll convince my brain to come up with something cool is class-related. I have written some pieces that I’ve been really proud of, but they’ve all been assignments. This brings me to the point of this post: within the next two and a half weeks, my ultimate goal is to find that valve that my brain opens under pressure and map the location so I can come back to it at any time and get something creative to pour out.
That’s really hard to do, though. Mostly because right now I’m on my wonderful, wonderful leather couch, watching the fifth season of Scrubs (season six is where it starts to go downhill quick–I’ve promised myself that I’ll quit the second I question anything Zach Braff says), and drinking coffee. Having the day off at Colorado College is a difficult thing, because really it comes down to getting up at 10 and then just doing the things you normally do after class gets out. A blessing and a curse, because while I won’t be allowed by my friends to sit on my ass all day, I also won’t have the much-needed self-reflection time that will hopefully lead to my finding that valve.
Well, in the span of time that was that paragraph break, I finished season five. It’s time to get writing. I’ve definitely nixed the Abe Lincoln Christmas Carol idea. The raccoon one… That might go places. I’ll never know til I get it out of my head and on paper, though. We’ll see what happens.
Love, Alec
