I remember back when as a child, when I had strong impulses to write but not as much practical knowledge or exercise of the craft, I first noted that some people seemed to often come back to the same ideas or even tropes in their stories again and again, particularly as their bodies of work … Continue reading The ideas I keep coming back to
I like to say I try not to be an art snob. I'm sure people have laughed at me for that, as unfortunately I have a problem with coming off as snobby in life in general. But what I mean by that is that I try to judge art by its own merits, rather than … Continue reading On art snobbery
I want to journal again. I hate that I've written so little recently, and I want to get back to my previous five or so times a week. And not just about my writing, though I want to talk a lot about that. I want to get my life and my thoughts back in here. … Continue reading Counting my fan chickens before they’re hatched
In my rare free moments in the last few weeks, I've been checking out TV Tropes. It's a really addictive website, easy to get lost on, but I always find myself most drawn to reading not the pages about in-story tropes, but rather the ones about the creative process. I've always been fascinated by process, … Continue reading Two fans, these opinions
So this weekend has been full of surprises for me. I will speak about each on them in turn soon, but I've been meaning to post about this since I got it the other day, so I'll start with that. I got a message in the inbox of my Tumblr. I was confused at first … Continue reading A moving and humbling message
I don’t write about sex much. I don’t know if those of you who have read much of my work have noticed that, but I tend not to deal with it very often. To be frank, I think there’s something approaching a prudishness in a lot of my writing— not a lot of exploration of … Continue reading Sex in my writing
It’s residency week for my grad school, and as alums are allowed to attend certain seminars, I’ve been back a bit. I also wanted to be there to hear the readings of some of my colleagues’ plays. I was particularly struck this time around by “The Deep Purple,” by Andy Landis, because even without any … Continue reading Strengths and weaknesses as a writer
I could talk for ages about the woman who was my mother. Things you probably already know. Her kindness, her grace, her intelligence, her talents. I could go on forever. But standing up here now at her memorial, you know what I can’t get out of my head? This isn’t fair. We shouldn’t have to … Continue reading The eulogy I gave for my mother
I remember when I ran the plot of my latest full-length play by Morethings5. His response was, "That's such a Phoebe story." And the reason for that was that it prominently dealt with issues around babies. I write a lot of things that have babies in them. Pregnancies, new babies, lost babies. Babies that change … Continue reading I write about babies a lot
