Disguise the Gym

Perfect people dominate the gym. They have flat stomachs, firm buttocks, and defined everything. Yes, they go to the gym to maintain these bodies, but these are not the people who need the gym.

While on the treadmill, I stumbled upon an idea: disguise the gym. The sign outside should not include the word "Fitness." Instead, label the building "Buffet." Consider your favorite gym with this change: "LifeStyle Buffet" or "24 Buffet." The "Gold's Buffet" sounds like a nice Chinese buffet.

As I've written before, the last people who need buffets tend to patronize them [http://inklingsof.blogspot.com/2012/11/buffets-so-much-promise-so-much.html]. These people need a gym, but I sense that few would wander, by choice or by accident, into the local fitness clubs. I write this because, sadly, I see too few people in need of a trainer at the gym.

Gaining weight is easy. Staying overweight is easier. I know, because I did that for years. Losing weight and staying in shape requires effort and self-discipline. You have to count calories, shop for food wisely, reduce dining out, and exercise. You don't need to go to a gym or a track, or anywhere special, but it helps.

You could buy exercise machines, weights, and other equipment — but those usually collect dust after a month or two. There's a reason secondhand equipment is plentiful enough to spawn dedicated stores. Admittedly, we own some of that over-priced and underused equipment, sitting in our basement laundry room.

Going to a gym with someone, on a schedule, helps. A weight loss buddy encourages you to keep up the effort.

Where we live, obesity is endemic. Fried foods, starches, bacon, and beef are a way of life. The mall food courts include such places as "Potato World" and "Bacon Fries." Yes, there is a place that specializes in french fries with chili and bacon bits on top. Cheesesteaks and stacked sandwiches with fries and coleslaw between the slices of bread, not on the side, are standards. Eating beef on inch-thick Texas toast with French fries and mayonnaise-soaked coleslaw? Yeah, that must be a health food.

Walking around the mall is a good reminder of why we walk around the mall. Curiously, the gym is located in a former restaurant… in the mall, not far from a pretzel stand.

Pencils and Pens... My Favorite Writing Tools

fountain pen (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Mechanical pencils and fountain pens are my two favorite writing technologies. At one time, they were cutting-edge technologies, too, as I recently discussed with several writing instructors. Consider how amazing it is that pens don't leak everywhere. Okay, some cheap pens do leak, but not a good fountain pen. They are marvelous. Looking through the glass display case at Nordstom's or another upscale store at the pens and watches, awestruck by tools that are works of art, I want them, like a child wants candy. (Not that I also don't want candy, but that's off-topic.)

Why do I write with pencils and pens? What is special about these quaint, simple tools with no "undo" or "spellcheck" features? Why do I believe they produce better writing in some situations than any word processor? And why don't I have the same desire to use a typewriter?

Typewriters are great, especially the classic portables. I owned a Smith Corona manual and a Brother electric typewriter. I liked them, and I wouldn't mind having a typewriter in my office as a work of art… but pencils and pens still win out when I want to write.

I write most of my poetry and many of my script drafts in pencil. I use a classic Pentel mechanical pencil. My wife bought extras because I'm so attached to the design of the Pentel Quicker Clicker model (http://www.pentel.com/store/quicker-clicker-mechanical-pencil-1640) and you know a good design will be discontinued. Thankfully, they remain a popular model. It's just a great pencil (0.5mm HB lead).

My journals, collections of short poems and prose, are in pencil. The initial drafts are jotted down on orange-yellow unlined paper that is several decades old now. I write the poems on these sheets, letting them gather until I am ready to sit down and recopy the poems into the lined pages of ruled notebooks. When I do copy the poems, it is a slow process. I write in cursive, slowly and carefully, erasing my mistakes and rewriting as necessary. I want to lettering to be as perfect as possible.

The journals are not meant to be revised and edited. The only editing occurs during the copying process, from the unlined sheet to the lined college-ruled notebook. I fix minor errors and sometimes try to improve the poetry a little. The journals cover my life, from elementary school (fourth grade or so) through the present. The college years were the most active, those years of "angst" and self-absorption. I toss the drafts once I rewrite the poems. Those drafts have never meant as much to me as the final journals.

The journals capture moments in time. They capture my experiences. They are not meant to be revised forever, updated and tweaked by my improved "skills" as a writer. Perfection of form or craft is not the point of a journal. The journals are exercises, yes, but they are memories captured for later reflection.

I need to return to the journals to make up for years of neglect — something I vow to do from time to time over the last six years, and yet I still neglect the notebooks. I hereby vow that 2014 will be different. I will get back to all forms of creative writing, now that we are settled into our new home.

My scripts drafts are in pencil, too. I write on legal pads, numbering the pages. I transcribe the pages from the legal pads into the computer, usually every few scenes. I still have stacks of pads I have yet to migrate to digital form, sadly. Again, I need to focus on my creative writing with my "spare" time. When I type the pages, I keep the legal pad pages. The draft pages of a script are mine, while the final production of a play or film is never going to be the same as the first draft. There's something special about the legal pad pages and the pencil scribblings.

When I have time to think and ponder, I write slowly with a pen. Ideally, a good (not great) fountain pen. The scratching of the pen as it crosses the page, leaving ink on the page, is a great sensation. It is as if I can feel the words being created, taking form on the page. It's not like the sensation of a pencil. But, a pen is less than ideal for drafts and I lack the confidence to use a pen for my journals — I hate sloppy mistakes and would panic if I made an error in ink.

A fountain pen is best for letters and other artifacts we wish to share with others. You do not write a letter in pencil! No, a good, personal letter is in pen. A letter, a note, written in pen has more personality than an email or a post shared online. To me, the fountain pen also represents one of the greatest teachers I knew, a man who favored a Parker Sonnet Ciselé (http://www.parkerpen.com/en-US/pens-inks/sonnet). He critiqued my stories and poems with that pen, and graded countless thousands of student assignments.

Computers are wonderful for writing. They have made editing and revising easy, changing how we write. I can rewrite and rewrite endlessly. Sadly, I do just that. With my journals or with a letter, once I am satisfied with the page, that's it. You can't erase forever with a pencil — and you can't cut-copy-paste — and you can revise even less with a pen. Writing slowly, carefully, and thoughtfully is the result of the technology I select as a writer.

And yet, these are digital words… about which I should write a journal entry!

Hair I Am

"You're looking really good. Did you lose more weight? Something's different."

This time, it was a colleague at the university, following a compliment after two weeks of similar polite greetings from a number of people including neighbors, students, and coworkers.

I stopped combing my hair forward, where it wants to rest flat against my head, and started forcing the hair backwards. This seemingly minor change, from letting my hair rest as it wants to demanding it be combed back, has resulted in more praise about my appearance than I have ever received.

There was a minor haircut, trimming around my neck and ears, but the stylist left "the top mop" as it was. The rest was up to me.

Had I known that "poofy hair" would impress people, I would have gone back to the style two or three years ago!

Mnemonic was 'Too Good' for Me…

Sunday, I went to see Quantum Theatre's production of "Mnemonic." I give a lot of credit to Quantum Theatre for taking a chance. Performing another company's work was risky, and it didn't quite work for me. This was a play devised by an entire production company, written by the actors and representing that original production company.

As a writer and audience member, my wife can attest that I like some "odd" things. I respect adventurous writing and innovative staging. I've seen plays in which the actors never take the stage, and some that were immersive media experiences. I've enjoyed plays that are in multiple languages, reminding me that good actors and staging transcend language barriers (but I still tried to translate what I could). I've written plays in which mime was essential, and some that are surely abstract.

But you must never forget that people need to feel engaged by a play. Writing shouldn't push the audience or readers away. I don't fall into the camp that "art must offend" nor do I believe that "challenging" the audience has no limits. You can overshoot the challenge, and then you're left with empty seats.

Reviews such as this are a problem for theatre: 

Based on a small random sample of audience response, I might say "Mnemonic" is too good for its audience, except that the Quantum audience is as good as it gets in Pittsburgh (adventurous, intelligent, willing).
— Stage review: Quantum traces memory, mysteries

When you consider a work "too good" for an educated, informed audience including professors from excellent universities, it might be the work that is the problem. The acting was solid enough and the staging was excellent, but the play didn't speak to me — and judging by others, it didn't speak to them, either. The play feels like it was meant for a specific place, time, and production company. It didn't make the move, and maybe that's an interesting question in itself.

I can't say it was a bad experience, watching "Mnemonic." I can't say it was wonderful, either. It was "okay" — which isn't going to expand the audience for theatre. I'm not suggesting theatre has to be pop to be a success, but it can't be "okay" and thrive.

When someone like me, a fan of the surrealists, modern art, and experimental music, is left wondering "What was the point?" that's not theatre that's "too good" for the audience. (And yes, absurdist theatre makes the point that there is no point… but "Mnemonic" wasn't an absurdist work.) 

Related articles

• 'Mnemonic' sure to give audiences food for thought
• Quantum's 'Mnemonic' is a thoughtful mystery

On Being 'The' (or 'A') Pittsburgh / Visalia Playwright

It was a brief discussion after a play with a director about to read one of my scripts.

Director: What is your goal, as a playwright?

Me: To be The Visalia playwright or even A San Joaquin Valley playwright. Maybe a dozen people will know my name! Or at least the name of one of my plays. Maybe.

Director: And then what?

Me: To be one of The Pittsburgh playwrights. That might be a bit harder….

Director: And then what?

Me: There's a "then what" after that? I hadn't thought about the next step. I'm still at the first step!

Director: This is Pittsburgh. Off-Broadway and Broadway aren't creatively far away. You need to think about that.

Me: I need to get something produced and fully staged in Pittsburgh before I worry about—

Director: Always think ahead. You never know who will be in an audience.

It was a good point. In Pittsburgh, you might have a Broadway actor, director, or playwright in an audience. I've met several, now, and worked with a couple of Broadway veterans. When I think about that, it gets a little overwhelming. It's also a reminder that every script has to be the best it can be.

I was only slightly joking about being one of The Pittsburgh playwrights. There are some towering historical figures and current dramatists in the Greater Pittsburgh region. By comparison, I cannot think of a major playwright — a major writer — from my native Visalia, California. That means I stand a better chance of being the best-known writer from Visalia. (I do know some amazing artists from Visalia, especially photographers and illustrators.)

Here's the list of Pittsburghers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_from_the_Pittsburgh_metropolitan_area

Recently, I wrote that writers have to be unrealistic. You need big dreams. Maybe I shouldn't joke about being among the Pittsburgh greats. Maybe that should be a goal. Seems unrealistic enough…

Finding Me

Through 1991, I had filled six journals with poetry and short prose. Then, it took me seven years to fill the seventh. The eighth journal has been less than half-filled since 1999 or so. This summer, 2013, I have vowed a return to the poetry journals just as I have returned to playwriting after too many years.

There is a box marked "Scott's Writing" in the basement. For years, it was a paper box, a Staples red box to be precise. Our first house in Pennsylvania flooded and I moved the writing to a clear plastic bin. While I know the bins can crack and leak, let me pretend that my writing is now a little safer.

Why not backup the writing to the cloud? Because much of the writing has never been digitized. The writing wasn't created on a computer. I still have poems and plays I wrote in fifth grade, Mr. B's class at Ivanhoe Elementary. I was a playwright and poet then... and I still am. I just got a bit lost along the way. "Books" bound with colored electrical tape and featuring crayon illustrations are meant to be what they are — physical artifacts of my youth.

It's hard to explain the gaps in my writing. There was a shift from poetry to scripts in 1999. Then, I stopped writing for several years. In 2004, I returned to graduate school and my creative writing was once again pushed aside. But why is that? Several of my classmates and a few professors managed to write creative and scholarly simultaneously.

Looking back, I wrote a lot of poetry and short stories while an undergraduate. I wrote hundreds of pages for myself, while writing academic papers, working on the school paper, and working 20 to 30 hours a week. What's my excuse for the lack of productivity in the last decade or so?

Writing well isn't about writing a lot — but the two aren't entirely separate. I'd like to be even a fraction as productive as I was years ago. You can always edit and revise once the ideas are on paper or stored away as bits of data.

As I have posted recently, I believe I was afraid of being "just a writer" instead of having a more secure career. An aspiring writer is like an aspiring actor: one works at Starbucks and the other waits tables, but they both have big dreams. Recently, I was asked if I'd consider acting in one of my stage plays. That would make me eligible for paying jobs as a barista and a waiter!

I wonder what coffee house poets are qualified to do?

The Conflict: Writing and 'Realism'

What follows is a long, meandering essay on why I haven't been doing what I should have been doing for the last 23 years. Not that I haven't been writing from time to time, but I would stop writing just as I started to hit a good stride. Between "realistic" pursuits, I would write a half-dozen plays, a hundred poems, or several decent short stories. Then, I'd feel like a failure, since I wasn't selling my works, and I'd slink back towards the "realism" that required putting creative writing aside.

Professional (and pro-ish) writers are, by nature, unrealistic. They have to be, since writing leads to a successful career about as often as portraiture, ballet, or professional sports. If you don't imagine yourself good enough to earn a living, you aren't going to keep writing — and writers write. You need a stubborn sense of pride and the hubris to imagine someone is going to recognize the value of your words.

You might not assume a financial value to your words, but you assign them some sort of value. Maybe you write to teach, to persuade, to entertain, or to "change the world" in a grand way.

When someone tells me that he or she writes for "the self" and some manner of (low-cost) personal therapy, I cringe. Really? You write just for yourself? Then it is a hobby and you are not a "writer" in the way I use the word. To me, a writer creates for an audience. Maybe it is only one other person, but there is an audience.

I used to tell my students that writers are engaged in conversations. Leave it to college students to point out that you can have a conversation with yourself (silently, ideally). Still, my point is that writing and all forms of communication are transactions between people. Writing is an interaction with some sort of goal. Maybe the goal is simply to reinforce traditions and good feelings (epideictic rhetoric), but there is always a goal when we communicate.

For professional writers, your words must attract not merely an audience… but an audience willing to pay for your works. Talk about an absurd dream: earning a living as a writer.

I've ended up meandering around writing, because I've constantly allowed myself to be "realistic" about the potential to earn a living as a writer. While some of my classmates never stopped writing, never accepted that they needed "real" careers to pay very real bills — including student loans — I kept trying to earn money, at the expense of being a writer. So, of course, I succeeded at failing and being unhappy. I would have been much happier being unrealistic. I couldn't have failed as a writer any more than I did in other pursuits. Realism drains creativity.

When I headed off to college, my goal was to be a journalist. But, as I watched newspapers and magazines close, I decided to make the ultimate mistake and shift entirely to teaching. After all, teaching seemed like a secure career path. That didn't end well, and I decided to embrace technology. When that didn't work, did I return to writing? Nope, I went back towards teaching. Only later did I briefly focus on returning to college for a graduate degree in journalism… but that didn't work out well, either.

My entrepreneurial efforts might be compared to being an unrealistic artist, but my attempts to "fit in" within corporate or educational settings were soul-sucking disasters. Not that failing as an entrepreneur is good, but it is better than other forms of misery and discontent. Still, writing would have been cheaper and easier than some of my attempts to achieve financial security.

In a cycle I have written about several times, I would start to pursue writing only to panic about financial security. I'd end up doing something that seemed realistic and potentially rewarding, chasing dreams of earning a living at the expense of writing.

Experiencing failure after failure (personal and financial) as I embraced "realism" over creative writing, guided me towards a doctorate degree. Only an artist could view a career in academia is more secure than doing what he or she loves. It turns out, there aren't anywhere near the job openings necessary to accommodate a fraction of terminal degree holders. Chasing writing would have at least avoided piles of student loan debt and years spent not writing the creative forms and genres I enjoy.

If you want to be a writer, write. I tell my students that, I tell my clients that, I tell seminars that, and yet it isn't what I was doing. I was busy being "realistic" while advising other people to embrace the absurd notion of writing for fun and profit. Why had I allowed this to happen? Why had realism won over my true nature as a writer? I spent six years in graduate school, not engaged in creative writing.

Yes, yes, I know that academic writing, all writing, is "creative" to some degree. But everyone knows what I mean when I describe myself as a creative writer trapped in the world of scholarly writing. Just try to submit an academic paper as an epic poem. Maybe a journal or two will accept it, but most are hung-up on APA and MLA formatting and that horrible language of "academese."

Forget realism. Assume your creative works are good enough. Assume they are whatever you imagine them to be — they just might be that good.

When I write, I know the work I produce isn't "great" compared to the works I admire. But, I also know, without any doubt, that my works are better than 90 percent (or more) of what I read, hear, and see. That's the balance an artist probably needs: the certainty that you're good, the humility to recognize greatness in others. You need a little realism, without being realistic.

Somehow, I need the faith in my works to not be sidetracked by other pursuits. Chasing money has probably cost me money and delayed my career as a writer. I'm not sure how I will avoid being sucked back into that bad cycle, either. How do you not worry about earning enough to pay bills? To take care of family? I need to be unrealistic and convince myself that writing is a career.

If I am going to do anything other than write, it should enable and extend my creative writing. This is going to be a scary transition, and too often I have been scared out of writing full-time. Why do some people pursue their long-shot dreams, while others surrender to realism? The artists must have insane self-confidence and a realization that they are not meant to do anything else.

I keep claiming to be a writer. I make this claim every few years, and then quickly abandon the path required to succeed as a writer. Time to embrace what I tell others and be unrealistic. I must write, write, and write some more, and not only blog posts about why I should be writing….

Dramatist Me

Deciding to be a full-time "dramatist" is not a decision to be taken lightly. Yet, that is the path I am choosing. This probably proves I'm unrealistic and unstable.

Playwrights and screenwriters seldom earn "the big bucks" as writers. Okay, few writers in any genres become wealthy. That's why so many of us split our time between writing and teaching writing to other aspiring scribblers. Consider the logic of struggling career writers encouraging other writers, but don't dwell on it too long.

There are some precautions to take, like preparing for a wagon-train across the frontier.

My wife and I are stocking up on food and water, buying what we can on sale and storing it in our basement. Canned food and pasta are the staples for starving artists, I've been told. Yes, we have our Ramen noodles, rise, and Campbell's condensed soups on the shelves. It isn't enough to stock for the lean months. No, we're mastering coupon clipping, too. Stock up on the cheap!

Next, you have to have good guides, unflinching men and women familiar with the terrain. I've met several such guides, and a few scouts, too. The scouts are great because they've suffered the slings and arrows of production company rejections. Ideally, I'll learn what not to do by listening closely.

Knowing that failure is the likeliest of outcomes, why in the world would I dedicate myself to this path? Because I've always admired dramatists.

I've lived in some great regions for the theatrically minded. I grew up in the Central Valley of California, a region captured by the works of John Steinbeck and William Saroyan. What playwright wouldn't want to be like Saroyan? A bicycling curmudgeon on the streets of Fresno, I can relate to that.

My wife and I moved to Minneapolis in 2006, where theatre and radio plays are at the heart of the region's creative community. I would look at the Guthrie Theater (despite how ugly I believe it is) and imagine one of my works on the main stage. Maybe the second stage, but still… it is THE Guthrie.

Today, we live in Western Pennsylvania. My plays are being read in the shadow of the August Wilson Center. (While he traveled East to West, we've gone the opposite direction.) Another great playwright, looming large in my imagination, reminding me how middling my works might be.

For every Wilson or Saroyan, there are hundreds of dramatists like me. How absurd is it to imagine I might have a play on stage in Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, Chicago… or even New York City? Short of self-production, a path restricted to the more financially secure (or insane) dramatists, the path ahead will be rocky.

Maybe you'll find me in coming months, standing outside the August Wilson Center passing out scripts to passersby in the hopes that one might know someone who knows an agent or producer.

Questions Writers Receive

The most common questions writers receive:

1. Where do your ideas come from?
2. How do you get your ideas published / produced?
3. I have this really great idea! Can you write it?

1. I steal the ideas by eavesdropping on conversations around me. People say some pretty amazing things, far better than I could create in my imagination.

2. Submit hundreds of works and query letters. One or two might be chosen. People won't know how much work it was to get a single work published or produced. Maintain the illusion it was easy, just to annoy other writers.

3. No, the idea isn't that great. No, I won't write it for you.

Finding the Answer

The answer is not 42. It is not 21, 7, or 1 million. The answer is 49.

It is the one of the best experiences in life. It might be the most addictive concoction on the planet. If there is a Heaven, this is what is served with the milk and honey.

The meaning of life is found on page 49 of the 1985 edition of Betty Crocker's Chocolate Cookbook under the heading "Fudgy Brownies." Don't bother with the newer versions of this recipe; they aren't the same. No, the only answer that matters is in that one special book. Technically, it is only a partial answer. The unwritten secret is an additional two cups of dark chocolate chunks, unmelted and added right before baking.

No matter how bad a day might be, brownies make everything okay. But the brownies on page 49? Wow. Simply… wow.

Original Notes from The Gospel Singer

Questions for 'In the Raw' Marketing

Answers of C. S. Wyatt

Playwright, The Gospel Singer (or, Religion is a Drag)

1) What inspired you to write this play?

My sister, Mysti, gave me the idea. She claims to have an endless supply of ideas for me – as long as I promise to invite her to any red carpet events. Mysti has given me the ideas for a dozen or more scripts. We share a dark, dry wit. We both find people amusing, especially the people unaware they are amusing.

Several people inspired The Gospel Singer. Mysti and I were active in community theater, which is how we came to know "Isaac" and "Donnie." All the characters in the play are based on real people. Though our hometown of Visalia is in California, it is a Southern town. Consider this article from the L.A. Times:

Visalia is… no stranger to controversy. In 1986, business owner Loren Lowdermilk announced that he would be named grand titan for the Ku Klux Klan in California and Visalia would become the KKK's headquarters. That set off demonstrations of protest by large crowds of townspeople outside Lowdermilk's auto-parts business. He keeps a low profile these days. — Los Angeles Times, March 3, 1991

Anyone calling himself a "Grand Titan" is pretty absurd. Then, you meet the man and the local Evangelical pastor trying to "clean up the town." The pastor's son drove a new red Porsche. The blind leading the blind. One of my high school classmates drove the General Lee from the "Dukes of Hazard" — and he was Mexican-American.

Imagine being gay, black, devout Christian, and an entertainer in such a community. That's a story better than any fiction I could craft. People were offended when the AIDS Quilt came to town a few years later. So, of course, Mysti volunteered to work on a panel and the local production of Quilt.

I worked on the production of the musical Quilt doing drag make-up. Connie created the panels for John and Brent. We couldn't get enough actors to fill all the roles because people didn't want to work with the "gay theater company." It was sad. — Mysti Wyatt, 2013.

Some situations (and people) are so absurd, you need to laugh at them. I hope The Gospel Singer does just that — allows people to laugh at hypocrisy, including our own. That would make "Isaac" smile.

2) How do you think the In the Raw process will help you?

As the saying goes, comedy is hard work. It's even harder when you aren't a funny person. Friends tell me I'm funny on paper, but caution me against trying stand-up. We have friends who can make any story hilarious. I can ruin the funniest story simply by speaking the words. Hearing and seeing a play, it's easier to see where the humor does and doesn't work.

If people aren't laughing even at the serious moments, then a script isn't ready for production. When I hear laughter through the tears, then the play is finished. It's not there yet, so it doesn't do justice to the men who inspired The Gospel Singer. They were among the naturally funny storytellers.

3) How does this play fit into the larger body of your creative work?

The Gospel Singer was in a tightly packed box, along with my other scripts. It is much easier to stack full boxes; they hold weight better. The plays were supporting my box of mediocre poetry.

High-quality drama and literary works impress me, yet when I have attempted to write something serious, the dark humor comes through. If you want to persuade people, make them smile. Normal Lear is a role model, along with comics like Sam Kinison, George Carlin, and Lewis Black. I was fortunate enough to meet Kinison twice during college. His advice was, paraphrasing, "Scream at the audience. They deserve it. Look at the world around you! It is a joke."

The Gospel Singer addresses serious issues without being preachy. Well, the music is a little preachy. From getting older (The Garden) to fighting city regulations (Clown and Mime), my works are about real people, real situations, and the choice to laugh in the face of absurdity. You can either believe "Life sucks, and then you die" or you can realize the cosmic joke is how seriously some people take stupid issues. Mock those people — they usually don't recognize themselves, anyway.

4) What was your biggest challenge in writing this play? How long did it take?

The biggest challenge for me is submitting a script to a theater company. I'm a productive writer, but not good at doing anything with what I write. My wife, Susan, says I get distracted by the next project before the current one is complete. We tried to-do lists, schedules, and every imaginable task management suggestion. Friends say I need an assistant to keep me on task. It would be full-time job.

I wrote the first draft of The Gospel Singer during November and December of 2003. I was "between jobs" and wrote five or six plays during that winter, most of them simultaneously. When I have an idea, I write quickly. I log the writing time for each project, because that's what every obsessive person would do. The Gospel Singer took almost 20 hours to write. If I pause and think about the writing, I find only the faults and suffer creative paralysis. Unfortunately, I tend to write something and move on to the next idea. That's why I have boxes filled with scripts and other writings.

I returned to graduate school in 2004 to study composition theory and the rhetoric of fiction —not a very marketable master's degree. The Gospel Singer joined many other scripts in a storage box. We moved to Minneapolis in 2006 and the box ended up in our basement. On a summer day in 2010, I sat on the floor of our basement and read several of the scripts. I though, "This script isn't horrible." I sent The Gospel Singer to my sister, asking her what she thought. I partially revised the script… and then my wife and I moved to Beaver County, Pennsylvania. The scripts were "lost" again until late 2012.

Vowing not to forget old scripts again, in early 2013, I sat down and started typing them into Final Draft. While I was revising The Gospel Singer, I received an email announcing "In the Raw." My wife told me to send the script to Bricolage, so I did.

You can say the play took nine years to revise, or you could say it took three months, spread out over nine years. Maybe I should do something with the other scripts in the box, too. But, I have other ideas to get onto paper….

5) If you could eat your play, would you like how it tastes?

At least it isn't bitter. I have a sweet tooth.

Playwright's Notes

I have already pondered what people will ask when they first read this or see it produced. No, on the surface you couldn't ask for a stranger proponent of faith. I'm agnostic, or something like that. Then again, I'm also not gay, black, a Southerner, or a singer of any skill — ask anyone unfortunate enough to hear me try.

Writers should explore what they don't know. Being outside a story gives me more reason to research themes. I learn a lot talking to other people and trying to tell their stories as best I can. It is fascinating to me that few people think their experiences are interesting or could teach lessons to a wider audience. Granted, writers get to fill-in what they don't know with whatever they fancy.

This play is about faith. Not really the faith in a higher power, which I leave to theologians and philosophers for now, but faith in yourself and what you must do to be true to yourself. If you aren't true to yourself, no other faith matters.

About the Playwright (original version, from 2004)

(I always write an "about"  — and then few people see it because I stash the writing into a box.)

We are assured C. S. Wyatt exists. Rumor has it there is photographic evidence he roams Central California, looking for inspiration. Many suspect this quest is a thinly veiled effort to avoid editing, that painful process of recognizing he makes a lot of mistakes when typing. At least he ventures beyond his home office and into sunlight, regardless of the reason.

The Gospel Singer is Wyatt's nineteenth attack upon the dramatic form. For some reason, he attempts to make a statement with each script. This is a more plausible explanation for his reclusive manner.

C. S. Wyatt is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America, Inc., the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights, and the Visalia Community Players. The Players are authorized to present his works for fundraising purposes.

The Gospel Singer (or, Religion is a Drag)

Saturday night, my wife and I attended the "B.U.S. 8" (Bricolage Urban Scrawl) fundraiser at Pittsburgh's New Hazlett Theater. The event supports the Bricolage Production Company's theater season. The theater, and its lobby, were packed with people. It was great to see the level of community support for new, original theater in the Pittsburgh area.

The atmosphere was wonderfully supportive. Often, writing is a lonely and frustrating process. To have a theater community celebrate writers, directors, actors, and tech crews equally was encouraging.

One of my plays, The Gospel Singer (or, Religion is a Drag), was selected for Bricolage's "In the Raw" play festival. The dramaturg working with me said Bricolage received more than 80 script submissions; only three new works were selected. A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry, and A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams, are the classic plays to be featured during the festival. There's something a bit intimidating about having one of your plays listed alongside two of the greatest works in American theatrical history. (Tangent: The 1961 film version of A Raisin in the Sun is even better than the more famous Streetcar adaptation. Watch it.)

The Gospel Singer will be performed "In the Raw" on May 19 and 20, at the Bricolage Theater in downtown Pittsburgh, PA. Here's the kicker: The price of admission is whatever you will generously contribute to Bricolage. If you'd like to learn more about "In the Raw" (including The Gospel Singer), visit:

http://www.bricolagepgh.org/events/gospel-singer