Elaine Smith Writes

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Everything is a learning experience…

Tuesday’s Travel Tips

I thought I was late with today’s post, but it turns out it’s only Monday as I’m writing this.  Not Tuesday, as I thought.  (Although it is Tuesday as you are reading it.  Or possibly Wednesday.  [Still having trouble with that email feed being a day late.  Going to fix it soon, though.  I hope.])

Chalk my confusion up to an entire Sunday spent zig-zagging up and down the east coast, trying to get back from Maine, eight solid hours of which were spent just sitting in airports.

(So the first of this Tuesday’s tips is “Don’t do that.”)

And then there was a tropical storm and a late night drive home through a deluge.

I slept in this morning.

Then I had to/wanted to email everybody involved in the Northern Writes New Works Festival to thank them for all their hard work and talent and for including me and my play.

But now I am able to turn my attention to other things, and–aha!–I remember I have a blog post to do!

It seems like the best thing I can do is tell you a little bit about what I learned on my recent travels.

  1. The Kia Soul is not a bad little car!  And that weird lime green means you won’t lose it in a parking lot.  (If you can find one in Maine.)  Thanks, Avis!
  2. It’s kind of a good idea to bring an empty plastic water bottle to the airport. It weighs nothing, you have no problem with security, because it’s empty–and then you can fill it with water at a water fountain inside.  You stay hydrated without spending a fortune on airport beverages.
  3. Speaking of airport food. . .if you happen to be at Reagan International and decide to buy a burger at Five Guys, be aware that a burger to them is actually two burgers on one bun.  If you want a normal burger, you have to order a Little Hamburger.  (Maybe it’s like that at all Five Guys.  I don’t know.  I don’t eat there much, but I ended up with more than I wanted to eat this time.)
  4. My best travel accessory is my jacket with all the pockets!  So easy to slip the mp3 player in one, the Kindle in another, the ID in a third and so on.  Plus, it keeps you warm.  (See tip # 5.)  I may even bring my fishing vest next time, although that wouldn’t help with the warmth issue.
  5. The row immediately behind the emergency exit row is kind of cold.  There’s a little gap and a big draft around that exit panel, and it’s freezing at 30,000 feet.
  6. Row 4 on the US Airways shuttle from DC to La Guardia has extra leg room–but you’ve got to stow all your carry-on stuff (including your laptop) in the overhead bin for take-off and landing.
  7. Hoot Suiteis great for keeping you connected to social media when you can’t find a free WiFi connection for your laptop.  It works well even on a tiny Blackberry!and, the most important travel tip of all…
  8. Try to hang on to your sense of humor.

Anybody else got any good travel tips?  Comments welcome!

Oops!

Sorry Sunday

Traveling today!

Not enough thinking ahead!

No substantive blog post.  Ooops.

Use this time to write something of your own!

Summer Days

Friday Finds

Here’s a little known secret!

(Actually, it is probably well known to everybody, but I now have first hand knowledge.)

Maine might be a great place to spend the summer.

Now, I admit my acquaintance with the great state of Maine is only 5 days old, but I left 90 degree weather and 90% humidity back in Florida, and it might get up to 87 today here in Maine.  I’m not sure they know what humidity is.

It’s absolutely beautiful, and it’s June.  (It is, in fact, the kind of day June brides dream about.)

I’m thinking I may have to come back here some time without the all-absorbing obligations of play festivals.

It could be good.

The stuff that’s going well!

Thankful Thursdays

On Thursdays, I think it might be good to talk about what’s going well.  Since it’s all too easy to focus on problems and challenges.

Today, I am thankful for all the people who have done so much to support and encourage my play.  Right now, I am grateful to the latest cast who are working so hard:  Julie Lisnet, Katie Toole, Randy Hunt and Arthur Morrison, directed by Marcia Douglas.  And Mary (whose last name I cannot remember — oh, no! — but I will find out).  Mary is doing a fine job with the stage directions.  [Update:  Mary’s last name is Clark.  Mary Clark!]

Don’t let anybody ever tell you that reading the stage directions is no big deal.

It’s a huge deal!

And, of course, I am grateful to the Penobscot Theatre Company.  Artistic Director Bari Newport, Managing Director Marcie Bramucci, and the indefatigable and unfailingly cheerful Jasmine Ireland who is the Director of Education and Outreach and the curator of this Northern Writes New Works Festival.

We’re having a blast here in Bangor!

Are we in a time warp?

Tuesday Tips

Here’s a tip for you on this lovely Tuesday morning: You probably want to avoid launching a blog in the middle of a business trip. Especially if you are using all of the wonderful but somewhat wacky free software that is available to make your life a living hell easier.

Now, to be fair, I launched this website last week. But I didn’t try to incorporate an email feed until—oh, somewhere around Wednesday. And guess what? Everything worked fine.

Except the part where it’s supposed to email blog posts on the day they post.

Because the email part of the blog is a day late and a dollar short. (Well, no dollars are changing hands—so that part’s not true. But it is a day late.)

That means that if you are reading this blog via email, you are wondering why I haven’t realized that it’s actually Wednesday and not Tuesday. The thing is, I know that it’s probably Wednesday where you are. Over here in blog land, however, it’s been Tuesday since Monday.

See, I wrote the Monday post on Sunday. And I scheduled it to go out on Monday. And, if you are reading this on my website or via RSS feed, all is well. But if you subscribed to get the posts by email, you are getting things the day after they post.

I don’t know why.

I’m using free software. Free software has a hidden cost. No help. Anywhere. All kinds of forums where well-meaning and sometimes surprisingly knowledgeable users try to help you, yes, with extraordinary generosity. But no actual tech support. And, for me, that rarely works. Because I am an odd mixture. I have a great deal of knowledge about a wide range of software applications—and pockets of ignorance that would swallow Montana. So, when I run into a problem, it’s usually something totally bizarre. If it were not, I’d have solved it.

So, please bear with me while I try to solve this problem (which might be easier if I were not in airports and hotels and play readings). In the meantime, if you’re getting this by email, the space-time continuum has not slipped its leash.

It really is Wednesday where you are.

Probably.

Finding your voice

The secret to originality

If there’s only one plot, as we discussed yesterday, where does originality come into play?

In your voice.

The way you string your words together.  The tone.  The vocabulary.  The choices.

This blog has—so far—a light and breezy tone.  I speak to you here in my playful voice—mostly because I can’t imagine posting day after day in total newscaster-reporting-a-disaster seriousness.  If we can’t have fun, what’s the point of being here?

But I have other voices.  I do have the newscaster-reporting-a-disaster voice.  I just don’t like it much.  I definitely have the Eeyore-voice wherein everything is gloomy, and I anticipate disaster at every turn.  I could give you melodrama or sweet sunshine or. . . .any one of thousands of voices.

We all could.

Some will come easier than others, but you’ve got to figure out what your writing project is about and what’s appropriate.

Some voices don’t work for some things.  Like when you were a kid and your mom would say, “Use your indoor voice.”

Next up:  How do you find your voice?  (Hint:  It’s probably not your ‘indoor voice.’)

The One Plot

Da-da-da-dah!         (Beethoven’s Fifth, remember?

Yesterday, I talked a little bit about my search for the 8 Plots, those mysterious archetypes, paradigms that I had been hearing teachers and fellow writers reference over the years without ever actually listing them.   I went searching and re-discovered something I have long known.  Humanity has a passion for lists!  Maybe we’re overwhelmed by the vast array of knowledge and feel like if we can just reduce portions of it to a definitive list, we would be able to master it.  (Ain’t gonna happen, but that’s another story.)

In the course of this, I found list after list of plots — The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations, and 20 Master Plots (and How to Build Them), for example.*  Lots of lists and lots of numbers.  But, for some reason, I couldn’t come up with the more ubiquitously cited eight.

Having a pencil and paper at hand, I sat down to noodle and doodle, and I scribbled away furiously, until it suddenly came to me.  All these variations I was devising could be boiled down into one.

Every plot, at its essence, is the Quest for Salvation.  (Surprisingly, or maybe not so surprisingly, this turns out to be very similar to Joseph Campbell’s research.  Check out “The Hero With a Thousand Faces” or “The Power of Myth.”)

Test it.  Think of a book, a movie, a play.  Once you strip away the details (the mere bagatelles of setting, location, psychology, time period and so forth) and you figure out exactly how “salvation” is defined in this particular world, I think you’ll find that it works.

In all romantic comedies, Salvation = Happily Ever After.

In murder mysteries, Salvation = Solve the Crime, Catch the Murderer

In many sci-fi stories (“Independence Day,” The Terminator series), Salvation = (literally) Saving the World

The difference between a comedy and a tragedy is whether or not salvation is attained in the end.

I think that our entire body of literature can be distilled down to this one plot.

So, the good news is, you can’t come up with an original plot.  All you can do is come up with an original voice in which to write about some variation of recognizable circumstances.

And we can all do that.

 

* Lists of plots

Hasn’t everything already been said?

Why even start.

One of the big fears in starting a blog—or any other piece of writing—is that you won’t have anything original to say.  Hasn’t everything already been said?  You’d think so, wouldn’t you?  There are those billion other blogs.  And 147 million items in the Library of Congress with 10,000 more being added each day.  Seneca tells us we lost an estimated 40,000 works when the Library of Alexandria burnt.  Nobody’s quite sure, but that could have been in 48 B.C.  48 B. C., and there were already 40,000 books on the shelves!

How could there possibly be anything new to say?  Why even start? 

Just because every single person is made up of the same building blocks (ever heard of DNA?), so that we can all be traced back to some common ancestress , none of us look exactly alike.  Our fingerprints are different.  Our brainwaves are different.

You and I can start with the same thought and spin them together with all our other thoughts, and the tapestries we weave aren’t going to be identical.  Similar, maybe.  Identical.  No.  (Unless, of course, you plan on plagiarism.  If you do–don’t.)

But, in many ways, it’s time to stop worrying about originality.  “They” say that there are only 8 plots. 

Actually, there are variations on this.  There are three plots.   Twelve.  Twenty.  Thirty-Six.  Whatever.  But when I was in grad school, I would hear, over and over, that there are only 8 plots.  Many years later, in NY, when I began to write, it finally occurred to me to ask someone what those 8 plots were.  Nobody knew!  I’ve since discovered the origin of the dictum and what the 8 plots actually are.   (A good overview of the usual suspects can be found here.)

But, before I found that overview, I spent a good few hours scribbling lists of plots and trying to arrive at the definitive eight.  Along the way, I made a discovery.

There’s only one plot.

So, yeah.  Everything has already been said.

On the other hand, nobody has said it quite the way I will or you can.  So, it’s okay for us all to go ahead and write our own stories.

Stop worrying if your vision
is new.
Let others make that decision.
They usually do.
Just keep moving on.
 — Stephen Sondheim ‘Sunday in the Park with George’

So, we’ll keep moving on.  And tomorrow, I’ll tell you about the one plot.  (Seems like it should have an organ chord, doesn’t it?  And big Gothic lettering.

Tomorrow.

The One Plot

Da-da-da-dah (imagine Beethoven’s Fifth embedded here.)

Hats

The WIFM Under the Hats

Yesterday, at the very end of the WIFM post, I suggested that what’s in it for you might be under the hats. You’re probably wondering what in the world that means. So, let me try to explain.

I’ve worn a lot of hats.

(Not literally. Hats don’t look too good on me usually. Unlike one of my favorite bloggers, Havi, over at The Fluent Self who appears to be stunningly gorgeous in any hat she puts on.)

But I’ve done a lot of different things in my life. I’ve occasionally been surprisingly successful. Sometimes, I even meant to be. I’ve also stood in my own way with truly astonishing frequency.

You might find some of what I’ve learned helpful in your own journey. There’s a good chance that something in my life might resonate with something in yours. I’ve certainly done enough different things.

I’ve been a cashier and a secretary.

I’ve been a business owner.

I’ve been an actor and a director, an award-winning playwright and an audition coach.

I’ve written fiction and non-fiction—and gotten some of it published. (More to come!)

I’ve done some programming, website design and software training.

I’ve been down the Intercoastal Waterway in a 20 ft boat. (19 days on the water. On a 20 ft boat. With my husband. Still married. Achievement comes in many forms!)

I’ve been on my co-op board for like half of my natural life. (Maybe it just seems that way.)

I’ve been an extra on a Law & Order grand jury, and I’ve actually been the foreperson of a real jury. (Wow! Was that an experience!)

I took up exercise at the ripe old age of 44 (or 45). (Part of that “ripe old age” thing is that you don’t always remember exactly when something happened.) So, I’m not a jock, but I know some things about physical (un)fitness.

I’ve chickened out of lots of opportunities and seized a few. Some of them worked out great! (For example, I once stood at a stage-door and asked one of my favorite actresses in the world to read my play and got so incredibly lucky that she did a reading of it. Talk about taking a fire walk! There’s gonna be a fire walk post. Count on it.)

I’ve met with Broadway producers and Bowery bums.

I’ve lived in Sunnyside in New York City and creekside in Florida.

I’ve been married for 20 years. Or more. (Sometimes, it seems like a lot more. Those of you married any length of time know what I’m talking about.)

The whole thing has been quite an adventure – for someone who is basically a couch potato. Then again — “All serious daring starts from within.” –Eudora Welty

And this blog is another adventure. If you want to come along, we’re just going to set out on the Yellow Brick Road and see where it takes us. It’s probably going to start out in a tiny, tiny spiral pattern, almost turning in on itself. And then it’ll open up and branch out into cornfields and forests and castles with Wicked Witches and Wonderful Wizards along the way. Or head off into some other worlds entirely. You never know what you’ll find!

See you tomorrow! On the road.  Wearing our hats.


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