(title of play)

Last night I saw Julie and Julia with my mom, and Andrea and her mom. Great movie, especially Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci, or course, but it got me thinking about a number of things. One, that I’m super lucky that I get to go to the movies with my mom, and that I really need to do that more. Two, it made me think about blogging. The woman who wrote the story was a wanna-be unpublished writer who decided to cook her way through the Julia Child French cookbook, and blog about the experience. It paralleled the story of Julia Child attempting to get that very recipe book published. I loved what it said about the growing pains of the creative process, and about the disappointments and bumps along the road that you need to manage and reflect upon in order to meet a goal.

I have an angel and a devil on my shoulder when it comes to writing in general and blogging in particular. I feel like I want to, and that I have stuff to say and some amusing experiences to relate, and then I feel like it’s totally self-serving and ego-driven and just really one of those things that people know about me and secretly think is incredibly obnoxious and egotistical. I often think about that – that my friends actually are highly irritated by my habits and behaviors much of the time and don’t tell me. I suppose everyone does in a way, and that everyone is a tiny bit right to worry about that, as a matter of fact.

So…blogging. Julie, the blogger, had all of these conflicts about not saying too much about her private life while being true to her “real” life. I worry about that as well. It’s all well and good to share funny vignettes about Mom and Auntie drunk at the gay bar (stay tuned for that one this weekend) and stories about saving real-live baby swans. But how do I express my frustrations about parenting and wife-ing and teaching and pms-ing without telling far too much?

I suppose I’ve said all of this before. Which leads me to my other challenge in this format…I still need to journal, and every once in a while what starts out to be a blog is forced to become only a journal entry because geeeez…I can’t say that to anyone. Or I start to journal about something tickling my consciousness and I think…maybe someone else has felt this way, too. Maybe it would make them feel somehow better to hear about it. But that morphing often makes me forget what I said aloud and what I only said in my journal.

It is my intention to become more focused on this. I’m about to start writing a play for my winter production at the high school I direct at, and I’m feeling really pumped about it. Since this blog was started in order to be a testing ground for what it feels like to be a writer, I’m going to take this new play and let it make me a writer. And I’m going to write about how it feels and how it goes. And maybe three people will be interested in all of it, and you know what? That’s totally enough.

“I’d rather be nine people’s favorite thing than a hundred people’s ninth favorite thing.” My new favorite musical is called (title of show) which is a musical about a couple of guys writing a musical about a couple of guys writing a musical. I love it . Try it. I’m finding it very inspirational right now.

The working title of my play is Wherefore Art Thou? It's a modern two-act comedy set in a high school. That’s all I’m going to say about that right now. More to come.

Thanks for reading. If I could, I'd totally give you a cookie or a mini disco ball to hang from your rear-view mirror or one of those cute little troll dolls with pink hair. 'Cause I like you that much.