There Will Be Blood

Woke up choking on my own blood yesterday. I've been getting some awful nosebleeds lately. Would be a shame if I died before The Prophecy is fulfilled...

[cue OMEN theme]

I was reading about this hot-shot, "up-and-coming" Asian-American playwrights group that had a show a few months ago. It featured a "chain play", where each writer wrote their own segment of the narrative. To top it all off, the biggest hot-shot writer was going to pen the final segment LIVE AT THE EVENT.

I hate this.

I hate the very chain-play concept. Everyone tries to out-do everyone else, and it NEVER showcases each writer at their best, and I have never seen something like it yield a coherent, compelling narrative. And writing the final segment live at the event reduces the process of writing to a fucking parlor trick!

The whole thing screams, "Aren't we the cream of the cream?!"

"I'm so good, I can finish writing this while you're all sitting there!"

It's fucking retarded. Give just an ounce of respect to the process of writing, why don't you? It's not a fucking magic trick. It's a craft. It's painful. It's laborious. It's SOLITARY. You're gonna charge people to watch you sit there and try to write something? FUCK YOU. How arrogant is that?

This is why I hate these groups. They overestimate themselves. Think that anything they write is going to be worth paying to see. I'm not necessarily talking about all the members of the group; I'm sure some just go along with it just to go along with it. But the underlying idea that these are important people, and you the public should take some time out of your busy lives to come watch their creative exercise. It makes my head spin.

You know what I'm thinking when I write something? Nobody wants to be here. They've been coerced here out of obligation, friendship or professional; they don't know who I am, they don't care who I am. And above all, they can't wait for it to be over. They can't wait until there's a good break for them to walk out without being rude and disruptive.

I take that as the given circumstance, and I try to build a narrative that will make them want to stay till the end. I may not succeed, but that's what I'm trying to do. Because nobody should care who I am or what my credits are. And I don't want them to. I want them to care about the story.