July 30, 2003 A bit of a catch up, this one. You know, things that don’t really make a whole entry unto themselves. I know I already posted this over on Fractious Times, but I like this guy's music so much, I'm gonna plug him here too. Hey, whaddya want? It's my journal. Sue me. Anyway, if you're looking for something new in the music department, check out Bob Hillman. When I went to see Dave Alvin a couple weeks ago, he was the opening act. Dave was great, of course (I love me some Dave Alvin), but Bob was a surprise. He's sort of folky, on the old school John Wesley Harding tip, which is great because I miss the old school Wes so much. At the show, I bought his second CD, "Welcome to My Century" and it's been in constant rotation in my CD player. Then I went on his website and bought his first CD, "Playing God". It's quite bit rougher than "Century", but it's still clever and interesting. And he's got a great voice. Besides, how can I not love a guy who wrote a song (a nice one) about a witch? The last one who did that was Billy Bragg and he won my heart as well. She has friends who don't understand a word she says. And she has friends who lie in wait and secret every word away. She's a witchcraft lover And she'll never give a damn either way. No she'll never give a damn either way. It's called "Witchcraft Lover" and I think you can listen to an MP3 of it on the site. It's the kind of song I'd like to have written about me. Anyway, if you like folky, guitar-driven music, check out Bob. ~*~ Psycho Hansel and Gretel goes up tonight at 7. Just keep your fingers crossed for me, will ya? ~*~ A few weeks ago, I went to this dopey writer’s conference. I convinced University C to pay for my registration so I could disseminate information about our new MFA in Creative Writing. That wasn’t the dopey part. That part actually worked pretty well. I dropped off information on the information table and it was gone by the end of the second day. I also networked with potential students and workshop instructors who could send us potential students. I was very proactive. I know, I know, that’s hard to believe, isn’t it? But other than the chance to network about the MFA, the conference was pretty much a waste of time. (For me as a writer, not as a recruiter.) I mean, they didn’t send me to Yaddo; they sent me to a low-level writer’s conference where the workshop instructors were community college professors and the keynote speaker was a radio psychologist who likes to write fiction in his spare time. And the attendees: sad, sad, sad. Most of them were these little old ladies who sat very straight in their chairs and asked questions like: "How do you come up with names for your characters?" One of the instructors gave a talk on treatments and how he’s read some really good stories that were completely undermined because the authors couldn’t write good treatments: The problem with the treatments is that many authors tend to go for the cliché, the stereotype, in trying to sum up their characters. Don’t do it. You’ve created a multi-faceted, complicated character; why would you sum him or her up as the "quintessential bad boy" or the "classic girl next door?" You wouldn’t write a stereotype so why would you sell your character as one? Or so he thought. The following are indicative of the response he got: I’m writing a novel and my protagonist is your stereotypical Tony Soprano type character. So how would you write a treatment for a story about a beautiful high school cheerleader who falls in love with the boy from the wrong side of the tracks? ‘Cause that’s what my novel is about. I’m working on a young adult novel about five friends: One is Caucasian, one is African-American, one is Japanese, and one is Hispanic. Do you think I should make the fifth character disabled? Would that work better for the treatment. Well now, maybe I shouldn’t have abandoned my novel about the hard-boiled private dick who’s really a marshmallow inside and the prostitute with a heart of gold. A friend of mine is really involved with the group that sponsors this conference. She’s a smart woman. I spent most of my time there, trying to puzzle out what she was doing with these people. Not to come across as a total intellectual snob, but these people were asking questions that my seventh grade English teacher covered in our unit on creative writing. Ah, who in the hell am I kidding? I am an intellectual snob. Which made it a little disconcerting, at first, when several of my friend’s writing colleagues (and I use the term loosely) came up to greet her and presented her with copies of their novels. My friend took them all and graciously exclaimed over the quality of the printing and the cover art and how exciting was it to see your words in print?! Meanwhile, I stood there, thinking, Okay, let me get this straight: I have an MA in creative writing. I teach creative writing. Yet, I have yet to have more than a couple of one-step-up-from-basement-zine journal publications to my name. This guy right here just asked the workshop instructor if publishers appreciate it when you put ‘The End’ at the end of your piece, just so they’ll know the story is over, and he’s standing here with a hardback copy of his novel? What the fuck? Now, if this had been an episode of The Facts of Life, I would have learned a very valuable lesson about being an arrogant, intellectual snob through being taken down a couple of pegs by all of these people that I thought were morons having publishing contracts. Luckily for me, this was reality. See, after the third time this happened, I started actually listening to what my friend was saying to these people: Oh, how lovely. Did they ask you how you wanted it typeset? Which press did you go with? How much did the run cost you? And it hit me. These people didn’t have publishing contracts! They were all self publishing! Funny how one little realization can make you feel immensely better about yourself while at the same time making you want to go home and slit your wrists. God, those poor, deluded people, writing these clichéd novels and then paying to publish them. And, damn, I felt so bad, I couldn’t even battle the boredom of being at this conference by enjoying feeling superior to them. Although, something good did come out of the three days I spent half-sleeping in the back of the makeshift classroom set up in the Ben Franklin room of the Old City Holiday Inn. The conference brought in agents and attendees could sign up for a five-minute interview with one of them to discuss treatments and see if the agent might be interested in seeing their work. Now, being the ambitious, go-getting girl that I am, I naturally did not have a treatment for my stand-up comedy novel. Frankly, I don’t even have a novel, just an idea for one. But I signed up for an appointment as a lark, just to get the experience of talking to an agent and maybe to find out if it was even worth my time trying to write this book. I mean, who wants to spend the better part of two years slaving away over a novel only to find out that it will never sell? James Joyce, I ain’t, kids. Anyway, I sat down with this agent and gave her my pitch: "Okay, I’ve never done this before, so forgive me if I screw it up." (I figured a little self-deprecation was a good icebreaker.) "Anyway, I’m working on a novel about low-level stand-up comedians. It’s really an ensemble piece that centers around a group of regulars that perform at an open mic night. I want to show how unfunny these people’s lives really are, which in a way actually turns out to be kind of funny." How something can be unfunny but turn out to be funny is beyond me, but it sounded good in my head in the five minutes before the interview when I was planning out my pitch. It must have sounded good to the agent too because she started asking me questions about the storyline, characters, plot points, and then she said, "How much of this do you have written? How close are you to being finished?" "Ummmmm...three-quarters? Yeah, that’s right, I’ve got three-quarters of it done." Actually I have thirty pages of it done and that thirty pages is actually the short story this whole idea grew out of. "Well, when you finish it, I would like it very much if you sent it to me first before shopping it around elsewhere. Sounds like it has great potential. You don’t even need to query me, you can just send the whole thing along." I would have remained sitting at her table with a stunned look on my face but for the fact that she had another appointment waiting. So, Kate, how much of the novel have you written since then? How much? Er, well, a bit. A bit? And how much is a bit? Thirty more pages? Actually, a bit less than that. Twenty more pages? Bit less. Ten more pages More like ten more lines. Yup, that agent is getting that book. ~*~ Thankfully, Sabrina and Sammy are a bit more motivated. Our company is in talks with the Sydney Opera House to do a residency with our show Witch. Yes, Sydney, as in Sydney, AUSTRALIA! I’m trying not to get my hopes up, but Sabrina submitted a proposal to them and they liked it so much that they asked for a video of our New York run. We’re sending it over with a friend who has contacts at the Opera House just to make sure it gets to the right people. If we get it, it could mean that we get to spend at least a month in Australia, maybe more, depending on whether they want us to mount the production here and then just bring the whole thing over, lock, stock, and neurotic American actors; or if they want us to use Australian actors in the production. All in all, things are looking pretty rosy for Rose Theatre. Now if we can just get through Psycho Hansel and Gretel tonight without any of us having nervous breakdowns. ~*~ So Teddy’s doing alright these days. Brooklyn seems to agree with him. He just got a consulting gig so that’s a big load off of his and my mother’s minds. And he’s been going to some stand-up workshop. The leader of the group seems to think he could be the next Robin Williams. Hopefully he means the Mork and Mindy-stand-up-even-Disney’s-Aladdin Robins Williams and not the Patch-Adams-What-Dreams-May-Come-Bicentennial-Man Robin Williams. He’s got a new girlfriend, as well. And this one doesn’t seem to be a married crack whore. I like her already. Although, I could have told you he had a girlfriend three weeks before he actually told me. When he stopped calling me every single day to complain about how I wouldn’t come to visit him every weekend, I had an inkling there was a girlfriend on the scene. Actually, I haven’t seen him for a while. Not since the evening of Eddie Izzard stalking. Frankly, he kind of pissed me off that night. He was being a jackass and he ate all my food. Thankfully, rehearsing Psycho Hansel and Gretel has kept me out of his general vicinity; I’ve gotten a bit of a buffer period and things are back to being cool. I’m actually even missing him a little bit. It’s hard not to. The boy may be impossibly frustrating sometimes, but there’s just something about him. Perhaps it’s his striking similarity to Robin Williams ~*~ Oh, and I had all of my hair cut off. And dyed red and black. Go me.

7 Deadly Sins and Other, Less Fatal Diversions Pride: If tonight goes well, we will have much to be proud of. If it doesn't, I wouldn't suggest talking to any member of Rose Theatre for a while. Envy: Still got those Little Match Girl issues going on. Wrath: We had the cops at our dress rehearsal on Sunday. Not for us, but for the neighborhood toughs who are pissed that we're taking up their stickball court. So they went and broke some old lady's window. Ah, South Philly. Sloth: Thank God the Department of Health doesn't routinely inspect living quarters. Avarice: Now we just need to raise the plane fare to Australia. Before that, I need to raise plane fare for JournalCon. Gluttony: Giardelli Mint Chocolate Lust: Penn. In Psycho Hansel and Gretel, Peter is playing Helmut, Siegfried's original partner: Exactly, that's how far I go back. Before there was Siegfried and Roy, there was Siegfried and Ray. And before Siegfried and Ray, there was Siegfried and Helmut! I've been petitioning Sabrina to have him changed to Penn's original partner (Before there was Penn and Teller, there was Penn and Helmut!), but so far, she's ignored me. Book: After tonight, I will be able to finish my second read of Book 5. Tune: Actually, Bob Hillman also has another witch-related song -- "Salem". It's really good, despite the fact that he's a little sketchy on the details of the Salem Witch Trials. There's no use diving for pearls In the shallow part of the world. Task at Hand: Stage managing. Sound tech. Woo. Quest for Publication: Got two more rejections. But I did send something out this week. Total Submissions: 52 Rejections: 28 Acceptances: 1 Withdrawals: 7