10/4/14, Day 14,032 (Mercena Day 50): Taina and Marvin First Draft Complete
Yesterday was a good day: Mercena turned fifty days old, and I finished the first draft of my next full-length play, currently titled Taina and Marvin.
There’s a lot I’m happy about with this play: The characters, the structure, the self-inflicted political heartbreak it describes. However, there’s a lot of work to do, and even some significant structural changes that may need to happen. The play was inspired by the structure and expert wistfulness of 4000 Miles, but I don’t have Amy Herzog’s gift for subtle gestures, and the heart of the play may be pushing somewhere more jagged and uncertain. There’s always something exciting about writing away from your strengths, but it’s hard to resist the gravity of your natural impulses as an artist for very long…
Anyway, this means I’ve finished two full-length plays since September, which puts me on a much faster track for dreaming the impossible Play A Month Club dream.
Mercena had a good day, with a fussy-ish morning but a very good night’s sleep, waking up only at 2:37am and 5:40am. We’re getting there, and Heather is exploring whether or not we want to put her on a stricter schedule than the more flexible pattern we have her on now. It’s tricky, because she’s doing so well, but of course we’re shooting for the holy grail of sleeping through the night, so it might be worth it.
She’s also learned the trick of crying simply because she wants to be rocked to sleep, not because anything is wrong. We’re figuring out the balance of helping her sleep in the short term versus her long-term need to figure out how to self-sooth.
Yesterday was also the first time I participated in cold-calls for a political candidate’s campaign, in this case Paul Clements in Michigan (there’s a slate of progressive candidates an organization makes available, and he was the candidate during the time I was available). It’s not easy to be hung up on over and over again, but I had one long fascinating conversation with an undecided voter, and helped at least three voters who were on the fence come over the Clements side.
Technique never stands still: it only advances or retreats…
Writing: 157 out of 200 days (Taina and Marvin)
Spanish: 133 out of 200 days
Music: 60 out of 106 days
What small things did I do the past two days to help build the Honeycomb?
(And what does it mean to “Help build the honeycomb?”)
- Ate and cooked local, organic, vegetarian food, and used cloth diapers for Mercena;
- Made phone calls on behalf of the Paul Clements Congressional campaign;
- Signed a petition for nine steps that can be taken to heal the country after Ferguson;
- Asked Secretary Vilsack to not participate in Idaho’s plan to reduce the wolf population by 80%;
- Signed a different petition in support of ending the use of chemicals that are killing bees.
Corinna Schulenburg 