Ten: Does she have a sister?

I have issues. I frequently carp about how I'm my own worst critic and am often prone to the belief that people who compliment me don't actually know what they're talking about. It's a really sick form of self-deprecation.

Occasionally, I'm able to admit I did something well. There's no possible way I can count Half-Past as anything less than success. I've written some poems and short stories that I don't think totally suck (in fact, some I really am rather fond of.) But there will always be doubts. Part of me thinks Half-Past was mainly funny because of the amazing cast (I had a delightfully glad-handing drunk conversation with Michael Patricelli about this at the cast party.) Sewerman was never really the all-out gutbuster it was supposed to be, partly due to Eric's artistic aspirations and my immature sci-fi/fantasy/superhero aspirations (really, even at 18 I was too green to know how to execute satire properly most of the time. Yet the Sensational 7 comics were better about it...) and then there's the matter of the new play.

I've made no secret about my difficulty in arranging this motherfucker. My inability as yet to get it done fuels my insecurities in this respect. I spend hours and hours at school and on the train daydreaming about it and here I am cruising the internet and blogging rather than actually writing it. I did write a few pages of the new draft the other day, but I know I want to revise that already anyway. I can see it in my head, why can't I make it work on paper?

I wouldn't call it writer's block. I don't really believe in writer's block, it's a cheap excuse invoked by hack writers to blame their lack of creativity. You can tell they're hacks, because the best they could come up with is writer's block. I'm more inclined to blame my lack of creativity on childhood trauma creating a psychological inability to function until I reach catharsis. Or succubus draining my spirit of inspiration (among other things...) I once heard Dan Shive blame his lack of productivity on "writer's sphere" which he characterized as an overload of ideas and an inability to decide which to pursue. That sounds a lot more writerly... which is amazing, because I've never considered writing to be his strong suit. Okay, that's not fair. The guy has a ton of imagination and his characters are often very memorable, but he be over-explainin' shit, yo. Dude gots no concept of precis.

Anyway. You can tell I am not suffering from writer's block because I am writing right now. It's just not that I want to be writing. Besides, there's been a lot on my mind lately.

October has been a nonstop train of midterms. I guess the profs are in disagreement as to when the actual middle of the term was. In any case, I've got at least one thing to worry about in each class seemingly every week until the end of the semester, which blows, and I suppose is the curse of the half-credit. I should've realized this, but I never attempted a schedule of this scale before.

This week has been dedicated to my Modern Drama group's production of Trifles. We took way longer than we should have in getting around to it, but they were a very dedicated bunch of people and managed to get it organized fairly quickly; three drama majors, and two of us English majors. It was an intense rehearsal process that led to me being dragged out to Toronto on numerous days when I oughtn't have, or in the case of the last two days staying on campus for many, many hours longer than I should have.

I mainly worried about myself and the things that directly affected me. I'm not much of a team player but I'll go along with what is asked of me. I did contribute a few ideas, particularly as it concerned costuming (I had an idea of what I wanted to wear for my character, and based my entire theory on that.) Mostly I sat there and took it as our director pitched outrageous interpretive ideas, like setting the play in Taliban era Afghanistan. (Um, no.) We were able to restrain her on that one, but I had to let it slide on another aspect, which was that the male characters (I was the only biological male in the group, there's maybe four in the class) were to wear shoeboxes on their heads when entering or exiting. I lobbied to get this changed to hoodies, but the idea didn't get traction, and I didn't object vociferously enough to the shoeboxes. The bulk of my time leading up to the presentation was spent thinking "Oh man, I'm gonna have to put a shoe box on my head, it's gonna look retarded." But I did not say this, because I knew that if I allowed myself to voice my objection, I would not relent... I had this problem a few times in High School Drama; I mainly got over it by the end of grade 12, when Emma injected as much wangst as she could into the concept for Night Sessions. In the end, the play was a compromise we could all live with, and was generally remembered as one of the better ones of the night. I think.

There were other interpretive details we could all agree on, particularly the conspicuous partitioning of the stage and organizing of the audience by gender (research the play if you want to know why.) Last night's ultimate rehearsal, during which I finally got something close to my lines memorized, kept me very late and resulted in a blogworthy episode of running for the subway, missing one, and fearing missing the train because I wanted (needed) to go grocery shopping.

It's sad how attached I am to my schedule, can't abide by things fucking with it. Hence why I'm not big into extracurriculars. Also, I work now.

I had forgotten how miserable it sometimes is to act, since I haven't done it in about 4 1/2 years. The Breakfast Club, June 2005. (I don't really consider my cameo in the Half-Past movie.) I was good in that, and I enjoyed it, but it's not like I was unfamiliar with the text. I also had a lot of interesting things to say. As County Sherrif in Trifles, I had a few amusing exchanges but a lot of my early lines are cursory dialogue I struggled to say properly. My later lines are along the same theme but are more self-conscious in their perfunctoriness. Meaning, I'm an idiot detective and it's been revealed by this point that I'm not doing my job well, so everything I say is jokes.

But my early lines were a lot of "What did she say, how did she look" and if I said the wrong one it'd mess the other actor up. What I like to be able to do is get a feel for what the actual line is and say it however I feel most comfortable. And yet, if someone had done that during Half-Past (Flaherty...) I might've gone mad. Nah, not really. I love my words, but I'm only married to them as far as they get the point across.

So we did our presentation today, and it all went over well, even the ferkakte shoeboxes. All the girls were good, but I liked Maddie in particular and felt she made a strong lead, and I also liked our little exchange. Afterwards, Prof. Ackerman talked about most of the obvious points. I rambled a bit when he asked me about my character, because a lot of what I had wanted to say had already been covered, and a lot of what I was called on to say felt obvious. He did note that I was the only male character wearing a tie, which I did think a notable point and certainly not an accident; I lobbied hard for my tie.

Anyway. That presentation being over frees up a lot of the stress on my brain. I got my test back, and it was predictably bad. I felt downright embarrased after writing it and the mark reflects that. The essay was okay-not-great, the identifications were pretty epic fail, considering I only got 3 of the required 5, meaning if I aced everything I wrote (which I certainly did not) I could only have gotten an 80. I prefer to think of my mark in terms of double my essay mark, which gives me 12 extra marks.

It's a harsh lesson I keep needing to re-learn, about applying myself and studying. There were a lot of ancillary materials for that class I should have read. Hell, there are a lot of canon texts I should have read, for that matter. I only talked about 4 different plays and really suffered for it.

But I think, assuming I take the lesson offered here, I have escaped the worst of it. I can't see my short story midterm as being worse, although it'll probably still not be up to my standards (again tripped up by identifications of stories I did not read, and some I did, which is sad.) I really did have a good feeling about my essay for that one, though. Well, we'll see.

I also got my Literary Theory paper back. I should've gotten it last week, but I ducked out due to a combination of Big Mac sickness (Yeah, I actually ate a Big Mac, a shocking feat for me, and I remembered why I generally don't) and the need to study for that short story test. For all the good it did me. I am my own worst enemy.

So, for the short paper for Lit Theory, I did okay-not-great, and probably could've gotten a half a letter better if I'd cited the text. Really. Citations are often my downfall, I don't know why I'm so stupid about them. I probably could've added ten marks to my AmLit paper last year just by bothering to cite. I blame Journalism, where everything is assumed to have a source, although that source is usually cited in text, so it really comes back to me being lazy. And I keep re-learning not to be lazy. I'm like Sammy Jankins.

But really, what are marks? Other than an objective ranking system of quality of understanding and mental acumen, not much.

Well anyway. It's after 2 by now, I ought to mosey along to bed. Tonight was not a particularly productive night but this is nothing new.

Not that I suddenly have nothing on my plate (constant papers albeit short ones as well as class and work to consider) but I think I'll be able to get some writing done in the near future. I'm back to my initial thought... writing. Sometimes I doubt my ability as a writer because of my tendency to look at pieces I admire and go "I could never have come up with that." But part of the truth of that is that I have a style, and that whatever I'm admiring isn't quite in the realm of my style. It'd be nice to extend the borders of that style, and I think as years go by, if I keep practicing I can, but for now I know I have limitations.

I just got to keep on rockin'
-Scotto