You Wonder How These Things Begin

The title for this post is a quote from "The Fantasticks", a musical that I have been in love with since High School and which took up my last September. It was while performing this show that I conceived the idea for my current work in progress. It was a joke made to one of the other cast members that has grown and taken on a life of its own. However, to say that is where it began would be a simplification. It's beginning stretches back in time to books I've read, jokes I've heard, and moments from my own life that I didn't even realize were leading to this story. Finding true beginnings is hard.

Instead, let's focus on the now. The more immediate moments that have led to my current state of mind. Heh. Focus. That's not really going to happen. Even as I write this my mind wanders to the past.

Anyway, on Friday I had a sit down meeting with a friend of mine. It was very casual and we discussed some business. We came to mutual agreement and shook hands on it. However, because it's business and we live in an ugly world there will eventually be documents to be signed. I believe, but am not sure, that my friend feels a similar disgust that such steps are necessary between friends. Still, we live in a world where it is highly necessary to take steps for your own personal security. Can you imagine that? Keeping ourselves safe from our friends.

Please, do not think that I am upset or angry at my friend. It is an ire directed at the world, and no one in specific. If it was directed, I would probably direct it at myself. After all, I am as eager to have a binding agreement safe-guarding my interests (and his) as he is to safe-guard his own (and, I believe, mine).

Again, I drift into tangents. I had a moment of bluster talking to him when I announced, "I'll have the first draft of my next project finished by the end of July." This thought didn't come out of nowhere. I had previously contemplated it over the past few days. It was doable, but not necessarily likely. It could have been a private goal kept to myself. If I succeeded I could have celebrated. If I had missed the goal, none would have been the wiser. However, I decided to make the goal public. Now, I have to get it done. Why? Because there is no reason I can't get it done,and I don't like to make excuses. If that first draft isn't finished by the end of July, it's because I didn't try hard enough. I will have let other pursuits (like this blog post) interfere with my progress.

So, here I am with a self-imposed deadline for a project. Fortunately, the first half is already written and just needs to be transferred from the notebook to the computer. I started doing that immediately. The good news is that as I typed, I like what I was typing. It wasn't perfect, but after six months of sitting it's not bad. That will make re-writes easier. It also rejuvenated my interest for the project. It had been flagging after I finished the first act and wasn't sure where to go. That hesitation is gone.

This is partly because of an article I read by Terry Pratchett in his book "A Slip of the Keyboard." In it he talks about working with Neil Gaiman, not just on "Good Omens", but on independent projects. They would send ideas to each other about sticky plot points, how to solve them, and where to go next. Despite the trope that writing is a solitary activity, I was reminded again that good writing is a group activity. You need the feedback, advice, and insight of others to help you craft a good story. Adding to this, I read an article about beta reading Brandon Sanderson's "Oathbreaker". It reaffirmed that same basic idea. My first draft doesn't have to be good, it just needs to be finished. My support group will help me fix the problems.

Anyway, this led me to think about the story over the weekend. It's been one of the dominant thoughts on my mind. Others include learning lines for the upcoming show, finishing work, spending time with my family in a schedule full to bursting, and Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (what an incredibly expansive and addicting game). Pondering has given me a lot of good ideas. Most won't make their way into the show, but some will. One of my constant questions is "Who is going to die?". I know someone will be dying at the end of the story. I just don't know who yet. As I pondered on Sunday I came up with an idea for one character. It completed a story arc for him. The current project is a musical and so I imagined him having a song at this moment. He stood on stage surrounded by people, thrust to the edges of the stage, giving him the focus. The lights fade and he is spotlit in blue. And he laments. It was touching. It was powerful. I almost cried. It doesn't exist, yet. At that moment I knew this moment would be in the show.

However, as I continued to work that moment of bliss led to despair. I am not a lyricist. Can I create that powerful moment or will I need to turn it over to someone else? I hate the idea of needing someone else to write my lyrics, but what else can I do?

This leads to last night. Last night I had a dream. Okay, several nights ago. It took me several days to write this blog post. But when I wrote those lines it was last night. Too much unnecessary honesty?

Let me start by saying that I believe in a very rational explanation of dreams. Dreams are the detritus of a mind busily creating memories and sorting through the stimuli of a sensory overloaded day. The more you think about things, the more likely they are to appear in your dreams. It's never a guarantee, but what has been on your mind is going to be in your dreams. I've been thinking about this, so it's only fair that I dream about it.

On the other hand, I do not completely eliminate dreams as messages. I don't believe that most dreams are messages, and not all dreams need to be prophetic to be of use. We can learn from dreams even if they are just the waste product of an active mind. I hope we can learn from them.

I'll start the story mid-dream, because that's where I remember it. There was an old theatre, empty, unused. Unloved. A small group of my friends decided that we were going to buy that theatre for our own purposes. There were four of us. My friends, in the way of dreams, were faceless wraiths acting as place holders for people. Only when it became important would they take on an actual identity. Then, they would change identity as necessary as well.

We approached the owner of the theatre to put forth our proposal. However, before he would even hear our proposal he decided to test us; he wanted to see if we were worthy of his property. I guess, in some fashion, it wasn't entirely unloved after all. Then he began making demands. He made my friend Brent (now he has an identity because he's the center of the attention). sit down at a keyboard and play. Play he did. After listening to him play a complex version of "Phantom of the Opera" he asked him to break it down to it's core theme in as simple form as possible. Brent did so, playing this melody in several different keys.

I am going to refrain, but it's possible for me to breakdown for you why Brent, why "Phantom of the Opera", and even why he was asked to break it down to it's core theme. All those things have their correlates in real-life.

It was impossible to tell whether the man was pleased or not, but he moved on to me. He asked me to sing. I tried to waive him off, but he insisted. I found myself thrust into center stage and expected to sing. I have a handful of songs that I have practiced for auditions and recitals. At that moment I could remember none of them. It seems all to common in dreams to be unable to reach information that should be readily available, perhaps because it is all too common when we are awake.

I dithered. He pressured. Eventually, I remembered the opening lines to one of my songs. Having no other choice, I began to sing. It was my hope that after singing the two lines I knew that the rest of the song would come back to me. However, it didn't. I was halfway through the second line when I realized that I would either have to admit I had failed (which did not seem like a good idea) or just start making up my own lyrics. And so that is what I did. I kept on singing.

Part of me is glad I couldn't capture the lyrics to have when I woke up. I'm afraid they would be far less wonderful than they seemed in the dream. Not that they were perfect, even in my sleep my critical side complained that I was repeating a single word too often. However, I completed a song that seemed to be about a person needing rehab and begging someone to take him there and help him clean himself up. My dream self was crying (a correlate to making myself cry pondering this awake?) when he got to the climax of the song.

And that's the dream as I can remember it.

The point? The point is that my brain, asleep, managed to come up with lyrics. It did so easily, freely, without fear. It just created. And at the time (although clearly dreams are never a time to judge quality) it seemed like the lyrics were pretty good. If I can do that asleep, I should be able to write amazing lyrics when I'm awake.

So that's what I'm going to do. I'll write the first draft of the book (due by the end of July). Then while I wait to get feedback from my support group I'll begin writing the lyrics to the songs. After all, who else is going to do it if I don't?