New post on Mrshawking.com -- "The set for Mrs. Hawking at Arisia 2015"

New post on Mrshawking.com!



"The set for Mrs. Hawking at Arisia 2015"

Building the set for this show may have been the most difficult aspect of producing it. I wanted a real set for it, not only to elevate the production values, but because the plot demanded that Mrs. Hawking physically scale it. I got a lot of heat for that when I was writing it in grad school, but it was very necessary for the spectacle of the piece— we should see what a gymnast Mrs. Hawking is –so I stuck to my guns on it. Unfortunately, that meant a pretty demanding standard for the building of the set. But because of our limited budget, getting shop space was unfortunately not possible. That meant we were forced to build the set in my backyard. If it had been May, that might not have been such a big deal, but we had a week in a Boston January.

Read the rest of the entry on Mrshawking.com!

Counting my fan chickens before they're hatched

I want to journal again. I hate that I've written so little recently, and I want to get back to my previous five or so times a week. And not just about my writing, though I want to talk a lot about that. I want to get my life and my thoughts back in here. But for the moment, I'm probably going to talk a lot about writing.

If I ever become truly successful as a writer, with a significantly large fanbase, one thing I'd like to be able to do is hire an intern whose sole job is to take in the reactions of fans. They would then distill this reaction down to the important upshots, filtering out the noise from the signal. This distilllate they would finally pass on to me, so that I would be aware of what fans were thinking and feelings, but not necessarily have to be steeped into all the bullshit that often comes of a throng of many different voices with many different opinions and many ways of expressing those opinions. Not to say that fans are inherently nasty, or that dissention is inherently wrong, but everyone's seen instances of fans getting mean and taking things to extremes. As I mentioned, I would want to keep abreast of reactions and possible criticisms to my work, but having that intern person to filter the important information out from the nastiness or extremity would help keep me sane. I have a feeling I would stress out inordinately about my inability to please everyone enough without having to hear the meanness on top of it.

In related news, I am taking an extended break from Tumblr. The negativity has just been too much lately. I'm not deleting my blogs or anything, but I don't want to go back to it anytime soon. It's time to break the habit.