Status Report

Classic seawall experience.

Project Screenplay

Another stunning day. And this afternoon Warren will be here for our fourth writing session in a row. He seems bent on coming every day until we finish. We are picking up speed with our revision, moving scenes, changing dialogue and cutting description. Because Uncle Gus' Monkey  was a semi-finalist in the Praxis competition, we've been invited to re-submit for a professional assessment, so I am thrilled that we will be submitting a a far stronger draft (#2).

Project Performer

I haven't told Kim, the artistic director at Presentation House about my voice. First of all, the rehearsals for Trudeau, the Felons and Me don't begin until May, 2015 and I have a lot of speech therapy and many pills to take between now and then. But when I have my first appointment in two weeks, I am going to ask if drastic temporary procedures (Botox; steroids) can get me through the play if my voice is not restored by then. Once I have asked that question, I feel prepared to raise the issue with Kim.

Project Playwright

This project has just been conceived. It is full of firsts.

1. I am not a character.
2. I will not perform in it. 
3. I have absolutely no expectations.

Number three is the big one. All my life I focused on projects with a "guaranteed" financial return. I could not afford to work on anything that did not earn me an income and my sponsor, a fair financial return. I was a freelance producer working in the arts (with a long stint as an art materials marketer in there as well). Writing speculatively was not an option. But it is now.

For the first time, I will write something in the same way many writers write. This I know, largely from my friend Bruce and what I read in the New Yorker when writers are interviewed or profiled. I will start writing and see where it goes and then make decisions about what to do with it—if anything. It is primarily, something to do; an self-determined writing exercise about generational gap and marijuana.

Project Cuisine

I am focused on French and Italian cooking but I am having friends over this weekend and I have decided to cook my version of a Thanksgiving Dinner. I simply want to make comfort food now that the nights are cool, and try something like my mother might have made had she lived at home and cooked. So I picked Shepard's Pie, but I am going to make it Mexican style. I am going to use taco spices with ground turkey as the base, and vegetables from the Mexican cuisine.

Shepard's Pie, or Cottage Pie, is first mentioned in literature in 1791. It became popular when the potato  was introduced in vast quantities for the poor who used it, mashed, to cover left overs.