In about two months, I will be onstage preforming a one man show called Cast Away.  The only problem is that I haven’t written it yet.  It’s an amorphous shape in my brain and I have some set bits for it, but I still have to write the thing.  I mean, if I was put…

I’m a big believer in setting goals.  And an important part of setting goals is creating tasks that move you towards those goals.  Instead of having a vague goal that you have no control over like “I want to be a famous playwright”; you create something that you can achieve, like “I will write 2…

There’s a proverb that goes “Fall down seven times, get up eight times”.  I’ve fallen “off” the daily writing habit.  Again.  It’s been over a month since I was writing daily, so I’m going to dust myself off and start the habit again. I know why I fell off.  Usually when I complete a first…

I first came across the word “scrivener” when someone gave me Bartleby the Scrivener to act out in charades.  I didn’t do so well and I always remembered that word.  That darn word.  There is an application called Scrivener by Literature and Latte which is for writers.  It is a mac application, but they’ve developed…

Everyone knows the story of the Tortoise and the Hare, right? If not, where have you been for the last three thousand years?  Basically a rabbit and a turtle decide to have a long distance race and the rabbit is so fast and so far ahead that he takes a nap before reaching the finish…

Okay, so this is the first blog after “publicizing” my goals and what do I have to report?  Uh, I guess it’s a kind of good news/bad news thing.  I like to get the bad news first, so here it is:  I only wrote half a page of script last week.  Half a page?!? I…

Now that we are three weeks into the New Year and the giddy effects of eggnog and champagne are wearing off, I thought I would look soberly at my resolutions for 2011.  I know, resolutions get a bad rap, because we tend to make grandiose resolutions thinking of what we could accomplish in a year,…

Last month, I was at a two day workshop by Yael Farber at Nightwood Theatre.  She’s a writer/director/performer from South Africa.  The workshop was called “Playing With Fire” and was described as: A unique, intensive master class facilitated by Yael Farber for actors and performing artists / creators, writers and directors interested to deepen their…

In the quest to become really good at something, according to Seth Godin’s book The Dip, you need to get past the dip.  No, not the thing you dunk potato chips into.  Hmm.  Dip… The dip that Godin is talking about is that space between being okay at something and becoming a master of something.…

When people find out that I’m a writer, they often ask what I’m working on.  If I’m in the throes of a first draft, I’ll mumble something about not liking to talk about my work.  It’s hard to explain, but I have found from experience that if I talk about a project before a first…