I Can't Believe It's Not Shakespeare

Virginia Woolf, in her infinite wisdom, said: “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction”. (What do men need, by the way?)

I have a room all of my own, and (some) money. And yet, Mrs.Dalloway is hardly pouring out of my fingers. Especially when I’m working a lot to be able to afford this room of my own with (some) money left over.

I’m definitely in a writing rut. There are no teachers to impress with my latest pages (or actors, for that matter), no meetings with directors or agents to polish up a script for, certainly no plans for productions. There’s just….gulp…me. And, in the immortal words of Andrew Lloyd Webber, “Sometimes it’s very difficult to keep momentum when it’s you that you are following.”***

Anyway, partly for the benefit of the readers of this blog, but mostly for my own, I have compiled a list of ways to keep motivated during what we will some day fondly look back on as our “pre-Pulitzer” days…(after the jump)

***I am aware, that, in general ICBINS is not big on musical theater….but if anyone out in the blogosphere knows what that is from, WITHOUT using google, I will be so impressed….

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Have you seen the Tony Nominations? Can you even believe how INSULTING they are??? It’s supposed to be the most prestigious award for American Theater, and THIS is what they come up with???

Sure, it’s bad that the Tony Nominations consistently favored Hollywood, big-selling, money producing names and shows over their more talented New York counterparts….

Sure, it’s bad that out of the nominees for Best Musical, the only one that is completely original is Next to Normal, and it might not beat out its competition in the form of a farting ogre.

Sure, it’s bad that [title of show] got snubbed.

Sure, it’s bad that Carla Gugino’s overall excellent, wrenching performance in Desire Under The Elms went ignored.

But that’s not really the issue.

The ISSUE, the category in which the Tony Committee REALLY f’d up, the oversight SO unforgivable I cannot even bear to post it on this blog’s main page, is….

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In what is probably a subconscious effort to piss off my parents, I decided at on my chosen path at a very early age. At 18, I enrolled into NYU’s Department of Dramatic Writing, and signed my life over to become an impoverished playwright.

Of course, even impoverished playwrights need to afford their self-indulgent pity binge drinking sessions, so over the past five years I have had a variety of different avenues of income, all with varying degrees of profit, success, and humiliation. In no particular order, I present to you:

Jobs I Have Had, That Weren’t Playwriting… (more…)