Journal | Christian Durso

Posts for Tag: writing

Ten Years Of Morning Pages

Today marks 10 years of my daily practice of morning pages. If I have missed a day, I’m unaware of it. On days when the alarm clock broke, I did it later. On days when that became impossible I made it up the next day by doing double. Three pages or a half hour. Non-stop writing, non negotiable. It has become my little church, my tiny temple. More and more I’m a convert to the extraordinary power of small and constant acts.

I came across The Artist’s Way in the Brooklyn Library. I was dubious but it stayed in my bag for a week. I was seeing dead ends, half starts, bad jobs, and on one particularly devastating night on my Brooklyn rooftop I took inventory. Something needed to change. I went downstairs and read the first few chapters of the book, eyes rolling. ”Some of my students have done morning pages for a decade...” yeah right. But I set out a new journal and decided to try it first thing the next morning anyway. I had nothing to lose.

My heroes never needed a self help book on creativity. What failing did I possess that I needed one? These made up the laments of my first entry. I opened the journal the next day and did it again. I played along with the ruse, doing the book’s exercises, the check ins. “Get ready for radical shifts...” it warned. More eye rolling.

Within two weeks I was let go from my dead end golden handcuff job. I’d take side jobs landscaping rooftop gardens in Manhattan instead. I met a therapist on the upper west side I still see to this day. I pulled a lousy one-act out of the trash and would spend the next six months reworking it until it found a theatre, which today is my artistic home. By the autumn I’d left New York and was enrolled in a graduate school that would change my life.

I've come to these pages under-slept, hung over, sick, I wrote when the wind was fucking with the paper, on international flights where the hour of “morning” was unclear, in a tent deep in the Sierras, I wrote riding shotgun. They taught me to find rest while making something. .

Here is approximately 3 million words (Ten large novels). 1800 hours. 55 pounds of paper, filled front and back.

But this is not writing. No. It’s the patter of track shoes at dawn.  These are the folds in a bullpen catcher’s mitt. Here is the slide of petty detritus from which the occasional song arises. Here is where the apology, the business plan, and Act Two come to work themselves out. Here is the celluloid on the editing floor. The sawdust and scrap below the table. Here is indulgence in judgements and crank, bad moods, complaints, and my worst, so I can get onto my best. I often wrote while my coffee cooled, always to my left.

Julia Cameron taught me to rest at the page. Along the way I learned what a great poet once said of making— to trust that there is still time. And if there isn't time, that's okay too.

A Medicine For Jet Lag


The heat greets you at the airport sliding glass doors with a warm hug and doesn't let you go, not even when it rains. That is the kind of love we can all hope for. A love warm enough to set your coffee out at seven in the morning and collect it again at noon to find that it has improved,  rich and velvety.  The Thai add silk even to their coffee.  

I offer no advice for returning home to beat jet lag—  there might not be any good advice in the world for that—only to arm yourself with patience, to deal with grief and for the loss of such a profound experience. Sleep at noon, as though tossed into a sea of depression, climb the walls at 3 AM hunting for breakfast noodles and the afternoon sun, bike at dawn to the coffee shop on the east side and pace by the door until they open so you can finish your last entry in your journal. 

Eventually the real  medicine is the sun and then the stars. They will balance and guide your restless soul back into stasis, they will hush the turbulent rocking, telling you, like an animal displaced Shhh.. I know you are unsure, I know you are afraid, but you are home, you are on planet earth, it all keeps happening, and so will you. Then there is peace. And one day you wake up at 8 AM and realize you're back. And the other side of the world is somewhere out there-continuing its life without you now as it always had. Be grateful for your chance to take a turn on the great wheel.

My third to last night, I stood on my balcony— naked, but for my robe— and watched the thunderstorm. The sky has anxieties too. Perhaps the leaving of the hot season and the arriving of the monsoon season is troubling.  Change can do that.  Perhaps I understand the sky’s meaning tonight. With the booming Thunder and the bold and brilliant lashes of light through the dark I know what this looks like, I have been here, and will be here again as I leave. I will sweep in on a great wind and cry sheets of it and stop as soon as it comes.  All in fantastic short bursts and alternating the light with the sound of cracks within, and I know enough to know that this is who I am, and this will not last, soon it will be cool, calm, where the crickets and the motorbikes trill in the night, and the pavement wet with tears, will freshen the city stench, the rivers will trickle a little faster, and soon dawn comes, with her ancient embrace, with the heat, and with the love.

A Midsummer on Thonglor



I think of Spalding Gray in Swimming To Cambodia, unable to leave Thailand after shooting a film until he had a perfect moment.  I had many of them working on my own film set, collected them like stones in a plate on my desk.   But they don’t often come at the end, as if it were truly a movie.

But I found it anyway in a local production of a Midsummer Night’s Dream at Garden Café along Soi 55. Two nights before I passed the  production and noticed the rehearsal, but they were set to open after I my flight.  The next night I lingered outside the gate, peering in, shifting from one foot to the other.  Eventually the producer came out and I explained how I wanted to see the show and if they needed audience members for their final dress rehearsal.  She told me that they could use the audience for their final dress.  Tomorrow at 7pm.  “It is in Thai, is this okay?”

Absolutely.

So I waved goodbye to my final Thai sunset through the window of the BTS Skytrain and returned to the theatre at the appointed time.   

They put up two large sheets to separate the traffic on Soi 55 from the traffic of the stage. The play began with song as the actors led us into the Garden Space, greeted by puppets twice the size of humans. I was enchanted. The play was translated, and not Word for Word, and they took generous license with the structure but I understood everything— the poor fate of Hermia and Lysander eloping, Helena’s desperate love, and of course Puck’s playful mischief. For the play within the play they picked audience members to play Pyramus and Thisbee and the Lion.  I got to play the Lion for the first time ever.  I’ve played both lovers in the past, but it was Bottom’s Dream I most identified with this  time. I thought of myself waking from a dream, as I would in 24 hours, on the other side of the world.   “Methought I was… methought I had…” and it is a precious vision of being loved by a fairy queen, fed and rubbed and doted on, and for Bottom, it actually happened though he doesn’t know it. He wakes in the woods, unsure, alone. Bottom’s solution, of course, is that he will make a ballad of it, as Spalding Grey once did too.

Tools From 2018

Here’s a list of tools I found that came in handy throughout 2018 for peace of mind, creation, focus, and pleasure. It’s not exhaustive, just the ones that stood out as the most helpful.

Headspace

I came across this application around a New Year’s Resolution, but really had no intention of buying the product. I did the ten free days and I thought that was going to be all but then — smart marketers— I saw a 40% discount advertisement show up in my social media feed. Suddenly I was ready to take the plunge. And I’m so glad I did. I used it every single day in the last year. 

I use this every morning for ten minutes. More if I can, and if I’m absolutely crunched I try to squeeze it in later in the day. I found that if I don’t do it in the morning, it gets harder and harder to make time for it. Even if I just get a minute or two in before bedtime on those tight days, it’s worth it.

Andy Puddicome’s voice is soothing, and British, and his is the only voice on every meditation on the app. So if you don’t like his voice, then this app is not for you. He is a former monk and he has a way of talking about and guiding meditation in a way that really connected with me.

After completing the “foundations” I tried his 30 day meditation of Creativity, though I did not find marked improvement in my creativity after doing it. Ditto with a few of the other “Pro” level meditations. But I also learned, having now meditated over 400 days in a row and over 4000 minutes (the app has a handy tracker which helps motivate me to keep the streak), that if you’re looking for “results” you’re not approaching meditation in a helpful way. 

The biggest changes are the littlest things, and that is the big change. You won’t get fireworks— most of the time. But by watching the mind for ten minutes a day you start to really get acquainted with its ways. The “practice” is really letting yourself get comfortable with observing and letting go… of thoughts… of emotions… of control. The practice, is of course, for doing this throughout your day when it matters. 

Starting in 2019 I’m committing to 15 minutes each morning as opposed to 10.


AirPods

Man did I shit on these when they first came out. Too expensive, why is Apple getting rid of the 3.5 jack? What an awful decision. So I was wrong. I use these every day and they’ve made listening to podcasts, audiobooks, phone calls, and music both at the gym and around the house effortless.

Goodbye tangled headphone cords. I didn’t think the price tag would be worth it. And had I not received these as a gift I wouldn’t have tried them. As it was, several months later, I gifted them to someone else. You don’t get these for Sound Quality, you get them for convenience, which is what they give. 


Productive Morning playlist

I’ve been on this one a while. It’s on Spotify and of all the “focus” and “mood” playlists, this one has just the right amount of ambience and uplifting mood boost to begin the day. I listen to this almost daily, often through my morning pages, my coffee, and just before my meditation. 


Una Matina

So I’m super late to the Ludovico Einaudi party. But it was watching SHARP OBJECTS on HBO this year that turned me onto this 2004 album. My goodness, my writing music, my writing music, my writing music. I’m going to explore his entire discography.


Beethoven

Of course, there’s this guy. Rediscovering his 7th Symphony this year has been mind opening. Wherever you are, it is extremely likely that you haven’t spent enough time listening to Beethoven’s Seventh. 


Things 3 (Productivity)

I switched to a hybrid Bullet Journal / Things 3 Workflow this year. I’d write a whole post about it, but honestly it’s a little tedious and I’m still working the kinks out of it, and it requires a lot of doubling, which mostly works for me but probably goes against any guru out there.

Things 3 is an excellent Task Management system. I’ve tried several of them out there, but Things 3 just hits the sweet spot. Its UI is gorgeous, it is user friendly, and above all it is one of the few task managers that integrate directly with your calendar (I use Google) without a third party. That last feature tipped the scale for me.

(Note: you can’t schedule your calendar from Things, but it reads and updates it)

So unless you’re on Outlook 24/7 or an OmniFocus nut, Things 3 is probably going to be your most powerful tool out there (Mac and iOS only). It has changed the way I schedule tasks for the future, something that the Bullet Journal just cannot do as effortlessly, a thing I found Reminders and Google Keep and so many other apps cannot do as smoothly. 


Fantastical 2

And this is my Calendar App on both Mac and iOS. It has fully replaced my Apple Calendar or the clunky Gmail app. Adding events is a breeze, it knows what you mean if you type “Therapy every other Tuesday at 2pm at 1234 Main Street, Atwater Village.” It crunches that sentence and your calendar is suddenly full. No clicking, no spinning a wheel of numbers. It’s done. Great on iOS and Mac.


Highland 2 Pro

So here’s the big new addition to my Writing Workflow. I wrote a post last year expressing doubt that John August had made a meaningful improvement in a crowded field of writing applications. I bought the product anyway because I did use Highland 1, and I write screenplays and if nothing else I knew it could be a tax write off. I was sure it was going to be a brick.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

I ended up writing a seven part series for a studio this year and I used Highland 2 on every single episode. I even encouraged my Writers Room to buy and use it over Final Draft.

Don’t get me wrong, you are still going to need Final Draft when you get into production drafts, revisions, you’re going to need its incredibly sophisticated scene, character, INT/EXT breakdowns. Final Draft isn’t going anywhere, and when you enter truly your “FINAL” draft for a producer, I encourage you to migrate your work here. (Which is a cinch). 

But for your FIRST draft, or maybe even your SECOND OR THIRD draft, Highland 2 is where it is at. You have to learn to write in Fountain, which takes all of about 10 minutes, but once that’s over you’ll never want to go back to writing not in Fountain. Suddenly, everything becomes easy and smooth. Where Final Draft demands shortcuts, and gives pop ups in order to navigate elements, in Highland 2 you just WRITE, everything on the left hand margin, and the program knows what to do with it, how to format it. With a single toggle click it shows you what it looks like in draft form. 

I was a little bummed that we had a new file name to deal with “.highland,” because that kind of sucks, but the ease of export int .fdx or .pdf is crazy simple. I sent off full drafts to the Studio without ever having opened Final Draft. 

I was a doubter, but now a convert.


Scrivener

I’ve been using this program for years and each time I might think I’m ready to move on from it, I find that nothing else compares when it matters. This year it shined as never before. 

While Highland 2 Pro was where I did the actual writing of the episodes, Scrivener was where literally EVERYTHING ELSE went. (And after the episodes are written in Highland, I archived them back into Scrivener (Sept Draft, Oct Draft, Nov Draft, etc). 

Where else can you compile the monstrosity of what it takes to write a series (or a research paper or novel or anything that has more than just a few documents)? There are original notes, the germs, images, lightning bolt ideas, emails copy and pasted. There’s sketches of the characters, the first pass on the Series Bible, the edit, the notes on that bible, the emailed notes the producers give. V1, V2, notes on V2, V3, V3.1, etc. Also, research upon research, web articles clipped. Episode Outline 1, 2, 3, notes for each outline. Then finally the Draft, V1, V2, and the notes for each, and on and on and on…

Literally hundreds of documents in order to make about 8 good ones. 

I’m telling you you won’t keep all this in order in “Finder” with 100 different .fdx and .docx files and filenames. Scrivener takes all this massive info and puts it all in one place with a great file system (and it handles them all). And it is connected to dropbox so I’ll never lose it, even if my laptop falls in the Gulf of Thailand. 

And it has a split screen so I can view “the Notes” while I scan “The Draft.” Or I can compare V2 and V3 side by side. 

Scrivener gets fair criticism for being bloated when there is so much fad over minimal writing programs (am I’m a big fan of many of these). But when you need the muscle, there is nothing else out there that can handle this much writing and keep it sane and welcoming. 

My hat, again, goes off to Literature and Latte.


Bose 35 QCII

I admit I only got these at the end of 2018, but they’ve been transformative. I’m sure there are some audiophiles out there who will tell me exactly why I wasted my money on this product. I don’t care. I love them. I understand there is some considerable competition out there for top dog in this price point, and I’m sure all the products are great, and there are a ton of wonderful comparisons out there (I know, I’ve read them). But I took the plunge on these, and they are great. 

Nothing else closes a door at home or a coffee shop or the office like quality Noise Cancelling. I’ve used them on a couple flights to Asia and they drown out all the cabin noise, too. For focus, this tool has been absolutely incredible.

My only complaint is that the bluetooth range isn’t that great. With lesser headphones I could wander around a small apartment with my phone on the counter and never lose connection. The Bose 35 QCII needs the phone really close. Other than that, they are a great compliment to the AirPods.


End Note

There are so many tools and artists that we keep close to us to help us— I don’t want to say be more productive, though that can be a great result, but— get more out of our work. There are more from 2018 that were useful, to say nothing of human connections and trips, and vacations, and good rest, but these are a solid ten that stood out for my year.

Which of these have you adopted or rejected? Which ones did I miss?

-C

Odyssey Home


Last week prior to setting sail for the Thanksgiving holiday I chose to revisit Homer’s Odyssey as my first mate for the journey along Interstate 5 North. The translation, by Emily Wilson, and narration, read with depth and clarity by Claire Danes, proved to be excellent companions. Not only is Wilson the first woman to translate Homer in English, her poetry is both understandable and elevated. The first 4 hours, or 100 pages, are all introduction, which, if you haven’t committed to Homer since high school or college are more than necessary and not only pleasant but revelatory. 


As I steered my ship north toward the Bay Area, day turned to “rosy-fingered” sunset, into dusk and finally into dark black night, and I listened to a man, “a complicated man” as Wilson posits as no other translator has, try to make his way home. On the heaviest travel day of the year, I took comfort in this complicated man’s plight weeping on the cold shore of Calypso’s island wishing to see the smoke rise over Ithaca again. I was surrounded by a thousand other vessels traveling north, south, west, east, all fighting for inches of paved road to make their way home. As I drew further north and into the night, into the story, torrents of rain fell onto the Central Valley, easing the choke of smoke from the fires, it fell onto the hood of my car, which felt like Zeus knocking. Some ships ran aground, wrecked or else spun off their course, tossed by the angry “wine-dark ocean” to the side of the highway.  


It then occurred to me that our oldest stories in the West were about 1. War (The Iliad) and 2. The aftermath of war (The Odyssey). And this second is about feeling lost, grief-stricken, guilty, homesick, PTSD, reckoning with the dead, families in despair, returning in disguise without trust for anyone, bringing the sword back into your very home.


I was traveling to see my sister and her husband as they hosted their first Thanksgiving in their new home. I was leaving Los Angeles, which was once my childhood home and now my home as an adult. My parents who live outside of Lake Tahoe left their home to travel east. I have no home, and I have many homes. And as such I find myself similarly tossed, at times. By fate, by choice, by chance, by luck. Wilson told me that the poem is in the *nostos* category, which means *home*, which is how we get the word *nostalgia*. I wonder if the need to search for *nostos* is as human as our need to tell stories. 


After the weekend, I bought the paperback to read along with Claire Danes’s voice. Reading tonight in a home I once thought would only be temporary. And it perhaps still is temporary. Or maybe home has always been the same place, only the gods continue to shift the winds and the furniture.

Highland 2 Review: More, but not sure why.

I found Highland and the Fountain markup syntax about five years ago. In that time I’ve used it to write a lot of paid, and a even more unpaid, work. I’ve used them to write features and treatments, countless one acts, spec pilots, episodes, plays, and work that never went anywhere, work for writers groups, and more.

I’ve tried to convince other screenwriters to use Fountain syntax and Highland. Some have bit, some balked at the learning curve (which really takes about ten minutes for such a great game changer). But I continued to advocate because it made the writing process so much more fluid than anything I’d ever come across.

So when Highland 2 dropped I didn’t even skip a beat, I bought it from the app store the first week it was available. I was very excited to start using it. But as I began playing with the features I regretted that I was not one of the Beta Testers…

Because I’m not in love with it.

Let me start by saying that almost everything I write ends up in Final Draft at some point. 

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Joshua Tree Hymn

Where the Pacific sings of infinity, 
The Sand Flats blush because they've seen the end; 
The cities sell the fountain of youth, 
But the Granite Boulders whisper 
"we were a millennium below the earth and still your bones will be there longer"; 
When the Redwoods take the eyes above, 
the desert draws the gaze within.

An F-250 roars across a black vein into rust sundown clouds;
The sun lingers, as if to stay, and then she sends stars;
Blue tide pools trickle below your surface,
And for your own reasons,
You keep these to yourself,
Like the gold better men
Never found.

A Reply To A Former Student Concerning Advice On Starting A Theatre Company

The following is an email I sent to a former acting student of mine who asked about forming a theatre company in Los Angeles. The show she mentioned was eventually mounted in Hollywood and she told me that my email had an impact in how they went forward. I reread the email and decided the advice was worth sharing.

______!

It's so great to hear from you.  I love that you've started a theatre company!!  Yes yes yes, this is a great thing to do.  ____________ sounds like a wonderful idea and that fact that you're focusing on a female driven story is just the best.

Your question about obtaining financing is the million dollar question.  As long as [your] Theatre is in operation you'll be addressing and struggling with this question, so my advice is to cozy up to it and get used to asking, looking, searching.  

It sounds like ___________ is helping foot some of the bills, which is a great start (a better start than we had at IAMA).  And I think that your goals for wanting to pay everyone involved are really great to have though they do come at a high cost.  I do have some experience with Grants though I have to say that they are time consuming and it's probably best to think about Grants for the long term existence of [your] Theatre rather than to fund a single play, especially the first play.  A grant can often take months to apply for and even more months to hear back about.  And also, once you've had some work and some successes it will probably be easier to obtain some of those grants.  

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