Keeping the Pen Moving
Episodes from the last season of writing
I was writing this piece passively in my notes app for a while, until my device short-circuited and obliterated basically everything I’d ever created in there. Which was nice because writing fresh is always good, and keeps things from going stale. And I really didn’t even want to keep the planning document for my film festival or the list of books I’ve read over the past few years or the drafts of songs I’ve recorded for my friend richiegetsmoneyy. I hate keeping things around that I’m emotionally invested in and deeply attached to or that I vitally need for planning purposes, all that shit blows.
You guys might think I’m dumb for putting work I care about in such a place as fickle as the product of a tech giant that’s constantly changing and updating its technology just so it can have a constant stream of problems to solve, instead of somewhere more reliable, and you’re probably right. But the iPhone notes app has better vibes than like, Notion (I have started putting my important notes in Notion).
Leading up to the Super Bowl, Kendrick Lamar and Timothee Chalamet were two artists on a generational run, so Apple TV (the TV division of the company that makes the Notes app) sat them down for a conversation. I would say that these two guys linking up Is My Super Bowl if it wasn’t literally for the actual Super Bowl. One sentence from that interview that K-Dot said to Lisan Al-Gaib is that whether or not he’s releasing music at any given time, he’s “always keeping the pen moving.”
This year, I’ve stewed over what keeping the pen moving could possibly look like for me; especially as an actor, the craft of which is pretty dependent on working with other people in pretty intentionally fostered environments. It’s not really like I could wrangle people down for scene study every day of the week (unless I really locked in… the inner monologue inevitably goes) and auditions do not come around like they used to since the industry imploded. I could mount another play like we did last October, but even that requires multiple people to be operating in sync on a level that defies the human law of entropy: which is that it’s hard to get a group of people to do anything the same way twice.
I’ve been reading plays, writing shorts, and got enrolled in acting class, but was ultimately really frustrated with feeling like I was swimming against the current trying to psychically force acting opportunities into existence when they weren’t coming my way. After all, that’s pretty contrary to the job of an actor in general, which is not to force much of anything (unless directed to do so). As it turns out, what freed me from this pressure was to take the message far more literally, and just *choir sings* keep on writing like I’m running out of time.
Here is some of that writing:
(https://arcweave.com/app/project/kWlo8M3Eqd/play)
The first is the choose-your-own-adventure story that I’ve been working on for the last year and a half with my friend Brandon, which I think has been discussed in this newsletter before. REBORN- a prototype- has finally been released out into the world for y’all to play!!!!
The most interesting part of writing this project was to face two contradictory goals: writing a politically inspired story, and writing an interactive narrative. In traditional narrative design of a story being experienced from the third-person perspective, an audience member serves as an observer and not a participant. The protagonist makes active choices that carry them through the plot, as decided by you, the writer. How they respond to obstacles in their path is also decided by you, the writer, according to some perspective you attempt to get across whether consciously or not.
Reading some books on game design before taking on this project taught me early on that when writing a game, all routes must be available to the protagonist, and the option has to be available for them to make choices that you might disagree with. In this story, that was hard for me to reckon with given that we aimed to ask political questions. All art reflects the present politics of the time, in some way, given that art is a reflection of the life that surrounds it, but that’s always been an intentional focus of the work that I make to have a specific point of view. Writing a story that was political in nature but having to leave the option for the character to make choices informed by a different set of politics taught me a huge lesson in releasing control.
In honor of that, I won’t share more of my thoughts on the story or the medium, and will instead let y’all play it out and let me know what you think. Onto the next.
At this show, I read a personal essay I had written on the theme of “Nostalgia.” The show is run by two siblings and incredible comedy writers, Evan and Madeline Walter. They put on a great monthly show where members of our community read personal, comedic essays responding to a theme.
They booked me on the show a few months in advance, so I had a lot of time to write for it. Thank god, because it took me a long time to find a take on the theme. I started with mindlessly rambling in a google document using the voice-to-text function in my phone while riding my stationary bike the night before I was to leave town for about two weeks, then I didn’t touch it again until a few days before the show.
I was stumped because all my thoughts on nostalgia kind of bummed me out, but the conceit of the show is “comedians and other people writing essays,” which to me implied that the piece should be funny- especially because it would be read live. Like, if I’m writing an essay on substack, I don’t really care about writing traditional jokes. I’m diving into ideas, ideally lightly enough to still be engaging, with enough humor to tickle (sorry if you’re ticklish or you’re welcome if you’re into that), but I’m not really trying to hit the laugh button. But live performance is a different beast- as a performer, you’re responsible for keeping the energy alive like you’re batting a balloon that’s falling to the floor, and jokes do that better than anything else, I think.
I was stumped until I realized that the opportunity to write about nostalgia had fallen into my lap at the perfect time in my life, the week that I was about to go back to my hometown for the first time in four years to attend a childhood friend’s wedding. It was awesome, and I’ll end my thoughts there in case you want to watch the video at this link for my “take” on “Nostalgia.”
While I was traveling and taking those weeks off from writing about Nostalgia, I was doing a writing assignment that honestly was some of the most fun I’ve had writing in a long time. It was this piece of fiction that I wrote on a contract for 831 Stories. They’re an E-Book publisher that does mostly romance and erotica. A friend of mine works there and put out a call for writers who would be interested in contributing fanfiction for one of their new releases. Obviously, I was on board, and was tasked with reading “Set Piece” by Lana Schwartz, which you can read here. After reading the book, I had to write a piece inspired by the characters and the world.
Set Piece centers on the romance between two characters, CJ and Jack. CJ is an out-of-work production designer working as a bartender at the start of the story, while Jack is an up-and-coming actor fresh off the release of a Netflix show. They meet at her place of work and have undeniable chemistry. They have sex that night and don’t see each other again until five years later, when they’re both on set for the same movie. There begins a will-they, won’t they, that you can read on your own time, if you’d like.
The story I wrote, published on their website, imagines those characters a few years after the ending of that story. They’re an established movie-industry couple now and have both just signed onto Chistopher Nolan’s new Minotaur movie (my imaginary follow-up to Nolan’s very real Odyssey movie coming out soon). In this story, Jack has been cast in the role of the Minotaur and CJ is designing the maze in which he lives. CJ and Jack both get very invested in their roles on the production. While they’re both nervous about how deep they’re sinking into the work: Jack, blurring the lines between himself and the Minotaur, and CJ designing an increasingly elaborate and dangerous maze, they each encourage each other to go farther in pursuit of the artistic greatness they seek. To see if they achieve it, or the consequences therein, you can read my piece here…
The other writing I’ve been busy with has been for richiegetsmoneyy. He’ll be releasing an 8 song mixtape very soon, but it’s not quite ready to share. But look out for that project from the greatest white rapper of all time…
I wrote a draft of this piece a while ago, but then didn’t publish it because ironically, I got busy with a lot more work performing. As always, a lot of work slips between the tracks when I’m writing this newsletter, but I’m happy to get to select a few projects to share with you all. As one of my friends Madi always says, the fact that we have to make choices is what gives those choices meaning. A lot of the work I’ve had recently has been performance oriented: I had a few auditions and performed for 5 weeks on a character show, and just acted in a play reading. I’m also knee deep in work producing RIFF, my 24-hour film festival. With a lot of acting and production work recently, I’m now very grateful for the season of constant writing that I just exited. Work that I thought was just holding me over ended up providing me with so much perspective on life and craft. I learned about game design, writing something sentimental for live performance, and dabbled in satirical fiction. Now I have the immense privilege of sharing some of that work with some people who might want to read it. Thank you all, as always, for motivating me to keep the pen moving.