In The Dumps: Need a new plan

A friend scored a copy of the Bookscan sales report for my novel, Tornado Siren, last night, which was both helpful (good to be reminded of the reality) and depressing (reality bites). The book got off to a good start when it came out early last year, but since then sales have been slow. I've had a lot of experience marketing plays and play productions, but trying to sell books has been a whole new thing.

I've sold a lot of books just on my own to friends and family, which has been enormously helpuful. But most of those don't show up in Bookscan (which is what editors and agents can look at to see how well my book fared). I'm with a very small publisher, so their marketing and distribution power is tiny, and now that the book has been out for a while, it will be very hard to get additional reviews and press. (We're hitting the hot patch of tornado season, which might help make people interested in Tornado Siren.)

So I felt depressed for a while last night (you know--I suck, no one is ever going to read or buy this book again, I should have been working harder, I waste too much time, what an idiot, I don't know what the hell I'm doing), but I know that I just need to make a plan and get to work.

I'm in the midst of writing a new novel, so time is short. But I think I'm going to shoot for spending 30 minutes every day marketing Tornado Siren, and 30 minutes on screenplay marketing. I'll try this for the next 30 days and see how it's going. (My own little marketing binge.) I haven't spent much time at all on marketing either of these aspects of my work this year, but if I don't do the work, the stuff won't sell (duh).

Odd Audience Reaction at Mike Daisey's Show (at the ART)

This weird thing happened at Mike Daisey's show.

I heard about it from Adam's blog, and now Malachy's has a video of this very weird audience response to Mike Daisey's monologue performance at the ART. A good chunk of the audience leaves, apparently in protest, though it's unclear why. (He uses the "f" word, but to be honest, the content that's on the video seems fairly mild.) On Mike's site, he says they were a Christian group (but I'm not sure how he knows this).

Mr. Daisey handles the whole thing extremely well (the protesters pour water on his desk and script on their way out). I don't know what I would have done. I wondered sometimes during the production of Pieces of Whitey, if we might get angry audience response (it's a comedy about race and well-meaning white people) (but that mostly seemed to happen from the critics) (and they were angry), but nothing every happened.

What's so weird is that this group leaves en masse, but when Mike tries to talk to them about what's happening, they don't answer him. And he's acting calmly and reasonably, really, considering the situation. It seems a strong violation of the unspoken audience/performer contract: he's doing his best to engage and entertain them, and in return expects an honest answer in return. You could say that their leaving is an honest response--they apparently hate it. Pouring out the water on his stuff shows that they really, really hate it. But, especially with the water, they don't take into account that he's a human being (one in a vulnerable position) with feelings. It's not like he was berating the audience or treating them disrespectfully. But they chose to disrupt his performance and the experience of the other members in the audience.

I'm especially disturbed that this happened here in Boston. I've always found audiences here polite, if a little reserved. I just don't get it.

Things I've Done for Money (copying Malachy Walsh)

Malachy Walsh did this on his blog, and it's the kind of list that I love to make. So here goes:

(in no particular order) (also like Malachy's list. I'm a complete copycat.)

Jobs I've Had/Stuff I've done for money:

1-hour photo shop clerk (in a mall in Staten Island. I lasted one week.)

Pet sitter. (mostly for dogs, but I also watched my neighbor’s livestock. Feeding a frisky bull made me find out how fast I can run. Pretty fast.)

Lawn mower

Babysitter

Computer programmer

Janitor (part-time, really it was freelance cleaning, but I like the sound of janitor better).

Turnkey (the guy who has the key and gets paid to open up a place while contractors do work there)

Landlord

Stage hand (without this job, I wouldn't be a playwright today)

TV news cameraman (internship)

Dishwasher

Snack bar worker

Cafeteria server

Brick washer/sealer (one of the most fun summers ever)

Filmmaker (For my first gig, I got paid to make a short film on Super 8 for some international students conference while I was in college.)

Screenwriter

Playwright

Editor (for a play publisher, not for a film)

Theatre producer

Actor

Producer/director for radio dramas

Subject in medical experiments (only little ones. But I did have to give blood for one of them.)

Publisher (of Market Insight for Playwrights, which actually meant doing lots of other jobs in marketing, layout, research, etc.)

Circulation manager for medical journal

Computer network administrator/consultant

Office temp—helped design some of the early catalogs for Dell Computer, worked in law office and other places.

Word processor

Office assistant

Researcher for headhunter company (lots of lying involved)

Community garden coordinator (I didn’t really get paid for this, but it was a job. Rewarding, but lots of work.)

Playwriting instructor

Night watchman

Front desk worker at dormitory

Marketing consultant

Real estate developer (sort of)

Mime

Ski Instructor

Miss Snark has been spying on me

Miss Snark has clearly been spying on me. Otherwise how would she know how good I am at wasting little bits of time (rather than actually writing)?

http://misssnark.blogspot.com/2007/04/stop-wasting-your-time.html

Winnie the Pooh and Missing Pieces from Grown Up Theatre

Yesterday started out wet, for our sixth day of rain. When the sun finally appeared in the sky, we, of course, had tickets to go spend a few hours inside a dark theatre.

My seven-year-old enjoyed the production of Winnie the Pooh at the Wheelock Family Theatre, a fine professional theatre within walking distance of home. The set was colorful and elaborate, with a huge tree filling half the stage. The costumes made for cuddly a Pooh, Piglet, Tigger, etc. And the show was well-miked (some of the actors were children, so this was important) so it was easy to hear what was going on. The actors were energetic and engaging. The bees were a neat effect, and the kids liked it when Pooh flew in to the air with his balloon and (spoiler) Tigger jumped out of the birthday cake at the end.

The adaptation, by Kristin Sergel, seemed a bit odd to me. Kanga is new to town, and everyone is afraid of her because she's a neat-freak, and comes hauling her own bathtub and soap. By mid-show, she's kidnapped Piglet, cleaned him up and won't let him go. Later Roo runs away, and Rabbit and Pooh basically decide to hold him hostage and swap him back for Pooh. Who thinks of this stuff? (I'd better go check the original books, I guess.)

Probably my biggest problem with the show is that it ran about two hours, including intermission. My son, who has definite problems sitting still, ran out of sitting power at around 1:45. Overall, the show served as good practice for kids to get used to going to theatre, which is, I guess, part of what children's theatre is for.

The show reminded me that in many of the small theatres where I tend to work, we just don't get (or don't choose) to spend enough time and effort on the spectacle of theatre. Watching children's theatre reminds you that we need to have something interesting to look at on stage. Something colorful is nice, if you can swing it. I do my fair share of complaining that big theatres spend more on fancy sets than they do on royalties to playwrights, it's not always wasted money. Small theatres could do a lot better and are cheating audiences of an essential part of the theatre experience (yet another reason why people don't go to plays).

Five Days of Rain

This is spring break week for the kids, but it feels like we haven't seen much of spring (well, my daughter has, because she's in Italy with her grandparents. Brat. I am so jealous.). We're on our fifth day of rain today, with more on tap for tomorrow. Yesterday, we went to the newly revamped Boston Children's Museum, as did half of the other children in Massachusetts. Wow. I'm not sure how to describe the energy level in that place, other than overwhelming, surely measured in megatons.

I do get a bit of a treat tomorrow night, with the first rehearsal of Measuring Matthew, for the Dragonfly Festival (May 10-13, in Boston). This is a play that's been produced successfully in other cities, but I've never had the chance to be involved in any of the productions or even see the show. First rehearsals, especially with unfamiliar actors, are a bit like going on a first date. I'll be both nervous and excited, and on my best behavior, trying to make a good impression (and I assume they'll do the same for me and for the director). The day before first rehearsal can sometimes be the moment of peak potential--everyone involved has the potential to have this be a transcendent experience--the actors will all understand their roles perfectly, the director will fully grok the piece, and the playwright will make the perfect tweaks to the script. It's definitely a time to savor, before the hard work and reality sets in (though sometimes the experience actually exceeds expectations).

What I'm Reading: The Hidden Wound

I've read Wendell Berry's The Hidden Wound before, and I'm positive that I'll read it again. Berry, well known for his poetry and writing about the land and the environment, tackles race in this extended essay, originally written in 1970, with an afterword added in 1988. He writes gracefully about how race and the legacy of slavery has affected our entire nation, and him personally.

He's especially interested in how slavery set up an unhealthy relationship between whites and the land and the labor associated with maintaining (and loving) the land on which we depend for our existence. This concept of the degradation of essential tasks by the wealthy and powerful, has modern political resonance in the current struggles over illegal immigration and the constant refrain that "illegals do the work that Americans won't." I'm sure that Wendell Berry has written elsewhere, and more recently, about this, but The Hidden Wound will get you thinking about it. (As well as lots of other things--it got me thinking a lot about what exactly constitutes community and the power of neighborhoods.)

Here are a few quotes that I marked:

"I am a good deal more grieved by what I am afraid will be the racism of the future than I am about that of the past. The past may to some extent be understood, and it is our obligation to do that, but it cannot be corrected. There is, I am sure, such a thing as a sense of guilt about historical wrongs, but I have the strongest doubts about the usefulness of a guilty conscience as a motivation; a man, I think, can be much more dependably motivated by a sense of what would be desirable than by a sense of what has been deplorable. The historical pressures upon race relations in this country tend always to push toward two complementary dangers: that, to whites, ancestral guilt will seem an adequate motive; that, to blacks, ancestral bondage will seem an adequate distinction."

and:

"The essential cultural discrimination is not between having and not having or haves and have-nots, but between the superfluous and the indespensable. Wisdom, it seems to me, is always poised upon the knowledge of minimums; it might be thought to be the art of minimums."

If I could I'd just cut and paste the whole book here, so everyone could read it. But you'll just have to get a copy for yourself.