Passions

I love singing. Absolutely and completely. Love it. But I'm never sure that I'm any good at it. I have pretty bad stagefright so solo numbers are out and I'm not going to do it professionally, but it's something that gives me joy when I'm doing it. It's hard to say if my voice will ever be where I want it - I dream of being Lea Salonga doing endless variations from the Les Miz and Miss Saigon soundtracks. That's who I imagine myself as in my best vocal fantasies. My voice though is strange, strange to me, the flaws right out there on the surface.

Then there's writing. That's more of a love/hate thing. My brain seems hard-wired for it. It's who I've been since the age of 9, possibly even before that - writer. Started out as prose, then went into a brief foray into non-fiction, then episodic fiction, and finally into screenwriting. But the soul-stealing quality of writing makes me crazy, but there's no greater feeling. It's like I'm Tobias Beecher to the page's Chris Keller. That constant craving to have it, and then the drive to just push it away, and riding those last 10 pages of script - anybody who has done it can tell you - there's no better feeling.

So today, I am in church, having a not-so-easy time with the singing (the female voice in the monitor is not mine - and it doesn't sound pretty, I have no idea if anyone can hear me or if everyone thinks that the other voice is me). Our pastor started talking and it was like anvils falling from the sky telling me to go back to this script that I've been to about 1700 times and still haven't gotten it where it needs to be. And I'm still working on a new one that is offbeat and deliberately absurd. Or will I say "screw it all" and sit here and surf the net for the rest of the night...

Okay, okay, I'm writing...

Passions

I love singing. Absolutely and completely. Love it. But I'm never sure that I'm any good at it. I have pretty bad stagefright so solo numbers are out and I'm not going to do it professionally, but it's something that gives me joy when I'm doing it. It's hard to say if my voice will ever be where I want it - I dream of being Lea Salonga doing endless variations from the Les Miz and Miss Saigon soundtracks. That's who I imagine myself as in my best vocal fantasies. My voice though is strange, strange to me, the flaws right out there on the surface.

Then there's writing. That's more of a love/hate thing. My brain seems hard-wired for it. It's who I've been since the age of 9, possibly even before that - writer. Started out as prose, then went into a brief foray into non-fiction, then episodic fiction, and finally into screenwriting. But the soul-stealing quality of writing makes me crazy, but there's no greater feeling. It's like I'm Tobias Beecher to the page's Chris Keller. That constant craving to have it, and then the drive to just push it away, and riding those last 10 pages of script - anybody who has done it can tell you - there's no better feeling.

So today, I am in church, having a not-so-easy time with the singing (the female voice in the monitor is not mine - and it doesn't sound pretty, I have no idea if anyone can hear me or if everyone thinks that the other voice is me). Our pastor started talking and it was like anvils falling from the sky telling me to go back to this script that I've been to about 1700 times and still haven't gotten it where it needs to be. And I'm still working on a new one that is offbeat and deliberately absurd. Or will I say "screw it all" and sit here and surf the net for the rest of the night...

Okay, okay, I'm writing...