Fri. Feb. 23, 2024: More Art That Makes My Heart Sing
image courtesy of Bodo Bertuleit via pixabay.comFriday, February 23, 2024
Day Before Full Moon
Snowing
It was supposed to get up to nearly 50 degrees today, but I woke up to snow. I guess I’ll be out and about running errands later than I expected!
Today’s serial episode is from ANGEL HUNT:
Episode 114: Gaston’s Dangerous Former Love
Gaston shares a tragic but fascinating tale from his past with Lianna.
Tomorrow’s serial episode is from DEADLY DRAMATICS:
Episode 64: Good Drugs
Nina wakes up in the hospital. The murderer’s in custody, but Jake’s still missing.
Episode 64 of DEADLY DRAMATICS marks the halfway point of the first season, and the end of the first large arc of the season. If you’ve been waiting to do some binge reading, you can binge on the entire first 64 episodes and have the equivalent of a full novel. Of course, I hope you keep reading with the arc that starts with Episode 65! There are three shorter arcs remaining in this season.
One of the things I haven’t mentioned on the blog, but must, is the murder of Nex Benedict, in Oklahoma, beaten to death by girls in their school bathroom. Well, they died the day after the beating, and the school is trying to pretend there’s a different cause. This is unacceptable, and so is the way the school shrugged it off. No one should be treated this way, and the fact that they were murdered by fellow students, who were taught to hate by their parents and community, is unacceptable. The consequences need to be harsh on both the murderers and those who taught them Nex’s life didn’t matter.
Meditation was good. Charlotte was thrilled to have another Zoom so soon.
I revised, edited, polished, uploaded, and scheduled the next four episodes of LEGERDEMAIN, getting me through the end of March. I’m worried about one of the plotlines. There’s not the necessary chemistry between the characters. I may have found the motivation anyway to pull it off, but I’m not sure. It’s frustrating. There should be fireworks between these two, and there hasn’t been. Yet. I’m hoping I can build on what’s happened in this section in upcoming episodes so that I can get it where I want it.
I did another revision on the short play “The Voices” hoping to get it out the door, but it’s still not quite where it needs to be. I did get another of the full-lengths out the door, submitted to a festival.
I turned around three small coverages. I booked my March yoga classes.
I signed up to bring my infamous devilled eggs to the potluck, and I’ll see if they need/want something else, too, closer to the day.
I got my act together and made it down to Open Studios as MASSMoCA. It was so wonderful! The artists were doing such exciting work, and were so joyful. The conversations were terrific. One woman was experimenting with turning one’s inner goblin into something playful; another man was a scientist trying to connect with people about climate change through visuals and poetry; another artist made her own paper. She was in the studio next to the one I was in last autumn, and we laughed about how we both liked to nest. She’d brought a rug, and studio slippers and decorations and All The Things. Another guy was a novelist, and he’d taped up his latest chapter and challenged visitors to find typos. Another guy created these vivid paintings on the walls of the studio (artists can do that, as long as they paint it back to white when they leave). One of the studio visitors turned out to have been the woman who used that studio as her office when a series of kids’ programs were run out of that building, and her husband (who was also there) was an artist who had originally painted the walls for her (and some of the texture was still visible under the other layers of painting that happened over the years. That couple originally lived in Chicago, visited 28 years ago, and never left. Another woman did stop motion animation, the likes I hadn’t seen since I was a student back at NYU (a long time ago). She was also a crocheter, and we wound up talking about yarn as much as we did about animation! I didn’t get to see what was going on in the studio I inhabited last October, because that artist chose not to participate in Open Studios.
It was a very exciting, joyful evening, and I felt so grateful and delighted that those artists were willing to share their work, their inspirations, their passions, and have conversations with those of us visiting the studios. It made my heart sing.
There’s so much talent out there, and if it’s nurtured, it can really uplift the world and change it for the better.
Came home, was even able to park in my spot, cooked dinner, finished reading Rebecca Thorne’s CAN’T HAVE TREASON WITHOUT TEA, which is just delightful. The print book I have to review arrived, along with a medium sized box from Target containing only the box of pens I ordered. Sigh.
I had planned to run my errands earlier in the day than usual, but if it’s still snowing, I will push it back a bit. I have an early afternoon Zoom call with a Nightwood colleague about the Edinburgh Fringe. I’d like to get some writing done, and I have a couple of script coverages and score sheets to turn around. I also have to finish the reading/scoring for the Scholastic contest, and then that is done.
The weekend is about a lot of hearth-and-home stuff, and I also want to make serious progress on the CAST IRON MURDER edits. I need to get that out on submission in the coming weeks. I’ve kept pushing aside for too long. I also want to finish the two teaching proposals, and get to work on the larger project proposals. The workshop Wednesday night made me see more possibilities in those glimmers of ideas. Next week will be very busy (but, I hope, the good kind of busy), so I want to get a jump on things if I can. I’ve also blocked off a chunk of time for poetry on Sunday.
Amazon has warned us they are changing the royalty/bonus metrics yet again, and I need to look over the long-term plan for the serials and adjust yet again. I also need to run a couple of ads in the coming weeks, and see if that helps the metrics. The Vella group games really only keep the money circulating within Amazon. I’d rather put my time toward something that actually grows audience, rather than keeping things circulating within a small, insulated group.
I have a feeling that’s why I had such resistance to writing REP this week (in addition to needing to do some more research on the science end of this, since I’m writing a SCIENCE fiction theatre comedy). Vella is becoming more and more unviable, and I need to think about where else and how else REP would be best served. Anything on Amazon is always a risk, and gets stacked, over time, more and more against the author, so it’s not surprising; it’s just disappointing that it happened so fast.
Have a great weekend, and I’ll catch you on the other side!
