Tess Sharpe

Oh look, my journal. The thing I haven't posted in in ages. Bad me.

I do have some pretty good excuses. Involving four bouts of pneumonia and having a 6 week run of a play where I was required to wear a dress that was so tight that my cast-mates started calling it "The Jessica Rabbit Dress".

Luckily, I survived all bouts of pneumonia (though halfway through each bout, I was wishing someone would just kill me already) and the full run of the show. Which, considering I spent a total of 27.5 hours doing my hair and make up during the run, is pretty impressive in my view. My Jessica Rabbit dress is safely back in the costume shop, and I am back to writing my butt off.

A lot has happened while I was gone. Including the great Amazon Fail, Query Fail, and Agent Fail. Twitter certainly has brought out some interesting things in our little community. And in 150 characters or less!

The only thing I'm working on now is my Class B series. I (finally) have a (tentative) title for Book 1: The Other Side of Eden. I'm going to post a short summary this week and hopefully a teaser next week. I'm chugging along on the first draft. I'm about to hit the point where I can write everything in order, rather than half and half, which is encouraging.

I'm incredibly excited about this book and this series. I love the characters and I'm having so much fun building the world. I've destroyed 9 major cities in the USA and have come up with a (kind of) natural way to build a city of glass, thus fulfilling my childhood dream to live in the Emerald City. I forgot how much I enjoyed writing urban fantasy--I haven't written any type of fantasy since I was a teenager.

I'll close with a Jessica Rabbit quote, in honor of that dress that I never have to wear again: "I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way."

XOXO
Tess

Things that have happened today so far:

1.) I spent way too much time in bed under the covers because my 18 year old cat got all cuddle-happy. Baby decided that his purpose in life was to lick my face as much as possible, which I very kindly let him do for about 15 minutes before pushing him off me and running to the bathroom to scrub my face with boiling hot water and a lot of soap.

2.) My assistant stage manager (who I loved and adored and wanted to take home with me in my pocket) quit today. Suckiness. Now I'm stuck with a billion kids and just me. Eek!!!! Must find new assistant ASAP.

3.) Laundry. Because it seems all day all I ever do is laundry. How do I get this many dirty clothes? Seriously?


I'm off to make another pot of coffee and then I have a early night rehearsal. And I seriously need to stop by the Democratic Headquarters because I have this paranoid idea that I am in fact not registered to vote, even though I did submit the little form at the DMV.

So. Tired.

I don't know how you Mom's and Dad's do it. I had about 1.5 hours with the kids with a ton of theatre games and then a read through and I am about to conk out.

Of course, there were like, 20 of them or something. I haven't even got a solid count yet because our cast was finalized today! Awesome!

More detailed entry to follow tomorrow, or later this week.

Have a make-up designer, so now I can give my make-up student to her for a shadowing type experience. Awesome.

Delegation=the key to sanity.

I had a really great first read-through with my kids that I will post about AFTER tomorrow (or rather, today since it's after midnight). I have an entire acting and theatre workshop to teach tomorrow (with the help of many great people, including my ASM, AD, Director and hopefully at least one of my sound techs) and I have to get back to that ASAP.


P.S.- For the next few months, my posts might be theatre-heavy, rather than writing-heavy. This is because BASHED is out on submissions (with a few partial and a full requests, a few rejections and more than half unanswered still, but it's early) and I'm spending most of my writing time out-lining some projects that I am really looking forward to, and re-writing TEN THINGS. I'm experimenting with it and putting the first 50 pages in first person. I will try to post a teaser every Tuesday, however.


P.P.S.- I totally understand if my fabulous writerly friends will skip over my theatre posts. When they get really lengthy, I promise to put them behind a theatre tagged cut. I'll see those friends hopefully before the New Year!

Am super super busy right now with the Xmas show at the theatre. Have ten million little kids running around and I have somehow ended up teaching stage managing, basic acting, theatre games and theatrical make up in one version or the other. I am going to attempt to write SOMETHING in ANYTHING that I'm working on right now by Wednesday, but who knows how that goes.

Ah, balancing two highly creative careers, the joy it brings.

I just got an e-mail from the artistic board at the theatre, asking me to commit to directing THE PHILADELPHIA STORY in the fifth slot of the 2009 season.

YES!

And earlier today, I got a call from the director of the 2008 Christmas Show, offering me the stage managing job, which I accepted.

It has been a plethora of good theatre news today.

I am stoked! And now I have to go back to expanding my already 42-page outline for the Anatomy Books (which I will talk about when I am not so excited/outline-y).

Marriage Go-Round closed tonight (or rather, last night since it's the 17th now). Much fun was had, the audience loved it, and I enjoyed seeing the show again, since it had evolved quite a bit in the last few weeks.

That is one of the main reasons why I love theatre so much. The constant evolution of it. Nothing is ever exactly the same in it, something is always different: a performance, a line reading, the way an actor feels about a character, how they react. You never know if you're going to have a great audience who really connects with the work, or an audience who just sits there like big blobs and never even crack a smile. The energy is always different.

It's truly fascinating to me.

It's kind of like revising, I guess you could say. I find it interesting of all the parallels I can draw from writing and theatre, because ultimately, writing is a very solitary endeavor, while theatre is anything but.

I like the way that works. How similar and different they are. Keeps it interesting.

I'm looking forward to taking a few weeks break before I have auditions for another show for a director at a different venue. I am going to write as much as I can--hopefully finishing the two Harlequin stories that I have started and finish my revisions to the first 5 chapters of Ten Things. But first, I have a meeting at City Council because they're meeting to approve the building of our new theatre downtown (which is gonna be AWESOME, though I'm not sure I'll still be in town when it's done in 2010) and a few other theatre-related stuff to deal with (like Strike and finding out if Philadelphia Story has been picked up for the 2009 season).

Yay for full lives.

So yes, sorry about the lack of posting. I had to go into hibernation because of Marriage Go Round.

Which is now opened, so my job is over, for the most part.

Things that happened in the past few weeks:
1) MGR opened
2) I got lots of cards and presents from my cast/crew. Including a crystal and mirror music box that has a crystal unicorn on it and plays "To Dream an Impossible Dream" Normally not my thing, but I totally love it because of the subtle sarcasm and marriage-go-round theme (which was prevelant in the play). Plus, I adore the actor who gave it to me to pieces and now it's on my dresser and I smile every time I see it.
3) Written maybe 1,000 words because I haven't shifted my theatre brain to the back in order for the writer brain to muscle its way forward again.
4) Convinced a ghost-hunting friend of mine, J, to take me ghost hunting because I'm playing with a paranormal book idea at the moment.
5) There was a repeat of the giant zucchini incident, with an even more giant zucchini. I still haven't decided what to do with this one. I only got through half of the other one before it decided to go bad.
6) I've run around like a chicken with my head cut off because show openings are stressful
7) I've got jury duty but they keep telling me not to come because my trial will start later. I'm starting to think they don't like me.
8) Pitched Philadelphia Story to the Artistic Board. And then got made fun of by my friends who were in the meeting because I am, ironically, one of the worst public speakers ever if I am not uber prepared (I was prepared and didn't make a huge fool of myself, but you could still tell I was quite nervous). Acting is very different, I explained to them, because duh, it's not me up there.

I am breathing a huge sigh of relief because the show is awesome and my actors are cool and I don't have to stress about my pitch anymore because it's up in the hands of the Artistic Board Gods and I can finally take my theatre hat off and put my writing cap back on. At least until the Christmas Show (which will have like 15 little kids in it. It's gonna be insane. And awesome).

Also, I am determined to write something LIGHT and HAPPY after Ten Things. Otherwise I might have a cloud of gloom permanetely hovering over my head.

I have been super busy. Which is good and annoying at the same time, because I haven't gotten much writing done. Though that might be in part because I hate the desk top computer and miss my lap top because it's easier to work with.

I am currently working on my query letter for Bashed. I hate query letters. With a passion. I've written about 5 drafts of this one and it's still annoying me because I keep reading it and thinking "Tess, this is the definition of LAME. Fix it!."

Frustrating!

We're down to three weeks left before opening for Marriage Go-Round. Things are going pretty well. I've got a pitch meeting on the 27th so I'm assembling packets for the artistic board to look at. I am hoping to direct "The Philadelphia Story" next year.

I was going to work on the next show, but I truly think I need a break, since I will be either acting in or working on the Christmas Show (which should be interesting, because it's like a cast of 25 and a lot of kids in it). I need to get a ton of writing done before that, and four shows in a row with no break seems kind of insane. Even for me.

Plus, it's a musical and I'm not sure I can handle another one. We shall see though. I might miss the theatre.

Ten Things is going well, I haven't been writing much but I figured out the solution to my cliff hanger problem (it involves over-dramatic actors and practice swords) and realized that there's no way in heck I'll be able to finish the book in 50,000 words like I thought. The stuff that I put Anna through would be way too rushed and piled on top of each other in 50,000 words. I'm aiming for 65,000 right now, but I think it'll be more like 60,000. At least for the first draft.

Other than that, all I've been doing is eating grapes and watching a ton of Nip Tuck (even though I have to look away when they do the surgery type stuff because I am a wimp).

XOXO
Tess

Things I have been doing instead of writing or blogging:

Closing a show
Going into full-blown rehearsals with Marriage-Go Round, since the theatre is ours now
Cleaning (both my room--that only took 5 hours--and my computer. I took all the keys off my lap top and scrubbed and now everything looks brand new. It was kind of stupid for the iBook people to make them white--they get dirty REALLY easily).
Generally lying about and staring at my ceiling, contemplating the meaning of life and other deep thoughts

Tomorrow, I get back to work.

Today I have been doing research for Marriage Go-Round, the play that I am assistant directing. I'm actually doing prop and costumey type research. And it's not because I don't have a great costumer. She's fabulous and I love her more than anything.

I'm just slightly anal, I guess. That and I have costuming experience and I like to meddle.

I am looking on the internet for butt pads, fake breasts and chalk cigarettes.

Yes, you heard me right.

One of my actresses is insanely talented but the character she is playing is supposed to be shaped like Marilyn Monroe. The actress is more shaped like Keira Knightley. And unfortunately, there are numerous (like, 50 gazillion) references to the characters butt, breasts, and faboo curvaceous figure and I can't exactly take them out of the play.

Now we just have to figure out how to pad her so that she doesn't look a) silly and does look b) like a marilyn monroe type bombshell.

I keep running into dead ends, NOT because there isn't a numerous sites selling butt pads and breast inserts, but because the character walks around in just a skimpy towel in one scene and in another she's in a see through nightgown. So we can't use the normal butt pad types because they're more like granny panties than anything. I found one boy-short type thing that might work.

I must admit, as a girl who has quite a booty, I find myself mystified as of why anyone would WANT one. My curves (and there are a lot of them!) and I have generally been on good terms with each other (except when my boobs make me have to go up a dress size and then I have to alter the bottom half because it's two sizes too big. Then it's "CURSE YOU CURVES!") but the butt pads seem a little odd to me. But hey, if it makes a girl confident and feel good, then who am I to tell her no?

I'm also trying to find chalk cigarettes. The play is set in the 50's and so the characters smoke all the time. Because I work in a 100 seat theatre, we don't even do herbal cigarettes (which is the most commonly used, at least in my experience, when actors smoke on stage). I did find chalk cigarettes, but they are only two or four to a pack and I need more than that. I guess I can order a few packs, but that's kind of annoying.

Chalk cigarettes, for all you non theatre folks, look like real cigarette smoke, but all it really is is chalk dust. They're pretty neat.

I am off to try to find more appealing looking butt pads,

Tess

My notebook, with the 70 or so pages of notes I have on 10 things, including character arcs, outlines, descriptions and names of lesser characters as disappeared.

I am not pleased.

I'm thinking I might have left it at the theatre, since I'm practically living there right now. But I don't have the time to drive over there and look.

Frustrating! I need that info in order to write this scene.

The Triple Threat 1K challenge is going well. It'd be going better if I could find my damned notebook. But I've made progress in and out of order on 10 things. Bashed will hopefully be done and out to agents by the end of July (hurrah, it only took a year and a half to whip it into shape).

Teaser Tuesday tid-bit is ( here )


This article in my hometown newspaper made me smile (http://www.redding.com/news/2008/jun/09/lakehead-men-to-be-married/) Some of the comments made me want to bang my head against something very hard. I need to send flowers or some type of wedding/celebration cake/cookies to these men--they are very brave to be publicly out and have an announcement in the paper in my hometown--which is very conservative and where two gay men were murdered in the 90's.

The musical is going well. My cast hasn't declared mutiny yet, though my boy actors have taken to peeing outside by the dumpster because there isn't enough time between songs to go around the building to pee. The girls, of course, cannot do this. Stupid inferior plumbing.

The show I'm assistant directing is called "The Marriage Go-Round" (hereafter referred to as MGR). It's a very funny show about marriage and love--Julie Newmar actually starred in the movie version of it way back when. I am going to have to work with one of the actresses on movement and loosening up, because the character is very sensual and seductive and she's not translating that. It's a hard thing to do, because it makes you feel silly. All the theatre people on my list--any exercises you can think of to get her into that vamp/bombshell state of mind/state of movement? I'm not sure Fitzmaurice tremors and yoga are going to help.

I'm off to dig through the piles of folded clothes I haven't put away, in hopes of finding my notebook,

Tess

In the span of a day and a half, I've opened a show and managed to get fired for no legitimate reason that makes sense.

I go to work this morning and my manager tells me she has to let me go and she's nearly in tears when she's telling me this. Saying that my work was inconsistent and that there were customer complaints. Except that's ridiculous because I always had her check over all my work before I went home and she was constantly telling me that everything looked and tasted great. In fact, when the special pie inspector (for the chain of stores that I used to work for) came two months ago, she told my manager that my pies were the most perfect she had ever seen. In the whole USA. And my manager is the type of person who would have told me if there had been complaints because she knew I would want to improve it.

So something's going on there. I have no idea what, but I'm fairly sure that I'm better off not get tangled up in it. So I told her that I had really enjoyed working with her and that I had learned so much from her, shook her hand and left.

I'm not terribly upset about it, but after 2007 and everything that happened to me in that year, this hardly even phases me. I just kind of thought "hey, cool, more time to write."

I'm bad.

I'm going to find a waitressing job. Hopefully a morning waitressing job because I want to continue working at the theatre and that takes up nights.

The show opened fairly well. No catastrophes. Not a full house, but still a pretty good size. I was fairly tempted to club my director (when he finally deigned to show up) over the head when he yelled at me for talking in my head set to my lighting booth girl who was trying to explain to me a problem she was having, but I managed to refrain and laughed inwardly at his stupid Looney Toons tie (seriously, what grown man wears a looney toons tie?). I was really proud of all the actors for pulling the show off so well, considering what they've been through, what with having no director and the pitiful substitute of me.

And now, since I do not have work anymore, I am going to sleep in. Until at least noon. And then I am going to write. For HOURS. Glee!

Monday will be spent at the unemployment office and looking for a new job.

XOXO
Tess

My life has narrowed down to rewriting (still not done), running a show that is rapidly falling into disaster territory, and watching episodes of House.

He's so mean and sexy and cynical! I heart Hugh Laurie. He's utterly, seamlessly good no matter what. Brilliant. That kind of consistency is just...well, enviable.

Also, I am sad because I kind of broke my iPod charger and still haven't gotten a new one. Need to put that on my list of things to do/get (which is getting increasingly larger while I run around trying to keep this show from creating riots from the badness).

I should note that it isn't the actors that are bad. They're actually really good (fantastic if you look at how much they've had to deal with).

I'm off to rewrite more and then reward myself with watching House yell at his underlings.

I am sitting in the theatre surrounded by 6 spastic actors with jazz hands (also known as spirit fingers).

Gotta love choreography rehearsals.

I'm stage managing a show at a theatre here, so I might not be around as much as usual. It's interesting--I've house managed before (meaning I basically keep the audience from being too annoying. I once had to stop a woman from changing her baby on the stage during intermission. Seriously.) but I haven't done stage managing for awhile, being on the other side, sitting there with the director and producer and listen to them decide about auditions and give input is always weird for me--probably because first and foremost I am an actor and a techie, not a director or producer. The brutal honesty can get to you, sometimes.

Stage managing consists of keeping everything organized, making sure the actors don't kill themselves, and doing everything possibly to prevent the directors head from exploding when the actors do something stupid. Or when the techies do something stupid. Or when anyone does anything stupid. After opening night, the director's done his job and he goes off to new projects and then the theatre is mine. Meaning POWAH! POWAH!!! Muwhahahaha....okay, evil moment over.

It's fun though, and the main reason I am stage managing and didn't audition is because it is a musical and I do not sing. Or dance. At all. I am hoping to do the next straight play they do, but if Job #2 works out , that might be impossible. Sigh. Money before art. So depressing. Oh well.


In other news, I am baking lots of pies at Job #1, might be getting Job #2 either being a pastry chef or a waitress, and I am possibly becoming a personal chef. My work life is so varied. :P I don't know how I can handle the sudden changes of venue.

I haven't found a book to settle on yet. I keep skipping around and frankly, it's driving me insane. I'm pretty sure I will stick to one once I totally finish Bashed (few more weeks. One of my crit partners is insanely sick so I'm a little behind now). I also have two amazing new crit partners in a new crit group called YA Edge. We trade chapters and I am LOVING both of their books and feel so happy I get to read them before they go off and sell millions of copies (hopefully!). Plus, they're advice is just incredibly helpful. I've gotten to the point where I've read the damn book so many times I can't really see little problems like indentations or if there's a wrong word somewhere.

Now, I'm off to download episodes of Dexter and getting Thai food,

XOXO
T. Sharpe

Today I did a monologue in my acting class. It was supposed to be one we had written, so I took one of the very few speeches that Anna has in Ten Things (Anna is not once for a ton of words at once). Partly this is because I was being lazy and it was already written and I wouldn't have to memorize it because once I write something, I pretty much remember it.

And also because I really do like the monologue.

Crying on stage is very emotionally draining. It's almost as bad as dying (dying on stage is EXHAUSTING. You seriously want to sleep for a week afterwards and usually you have to go and do it again the next night or the evening if you're doing 8 shows a week and oh my god sometimes you just want to slit your wrists and really die rather than die onstage). I ended up crying, because the monologue is depressing as hell, and was sniffling all through my critique from my professor and I actually ended up calling into one of my jobs and sleeping for 4 hours straight.

I read my stuff out loud. Always. While I'm writing it, while I'm revising, after I've finished. I go through line sof dialogue, I wake up D at 3 in the morning and read it to her, I tap out beats and flow and rhythm and probably every other supremely actor-ey thing you can do with writing.

This helps me understand the characters, it helps me write better dialogue, and it also helps me connect in another way with my writing and it gives me a chance to merge my two passions/careers. It helps me really get to what my characters are feeling if I act it out.

Of course, I often look like a crazy person doing this because I'll do it in my car, or at barnes and noble or during my breaks at work.

Sorry for not writing lately, I've been trying to organize all my stuff for the move in August, plus I picked up another job and there are finals and a new book (called Drive, yes, I know, y'all are probably thinking that I keep skipping from project to project, normally I am NOT this scattered) and Bashed is almost ready to go out to agents, so I should be writing more in the late summer.

I seriously drove like, 40 miles an hour yesterday because it was snowing in Oregon and the streets were all icy.

Good thing is, all I have to do is send my official transcripts to Admissions at the college and I will be accepted and ready to start school in the Fall.

I also got to talk to the head of the Theatre department, and I am SO excited about getting back into the theatre swing of things.

In other news, I am still sick and I sound like a man when I talk. I'm popping Dayquil/Nyquil like Judy Garland and drinking diet root beer like no tomorrow (much smoother and pleasantly fizzy than regular sodas). I am also watching the second season of One Tree Hill and occasionally exclaiming "OH MY GOD THIS IS SO BAD"

It's nice, to be a normal girl sometimes. It'd also be nice to stop coughing, hehe.

There will be actual writing news when, you know, I'm actually WRITING.

I'm not sure I can even describe how much I love this book.

It's tentatively called "Ten Things."

I've said before that my characters come to me in layers. This is the same with the actual book, too, I think.

When everything clicks together, it's intense. It's a rush of words and sounds and tastes and people in your head that weren't there a minute ago. It comes so fast and so sudden that sometimes it takes you days to process everything. Everything is swirling around your head so fast, and the words fly off your fingers and you wish you had two extra hands so you could just. type. faster. You can't sleep or eat or think or talk coherently because your mind is going in 1,000 different directions.

It's characters who have hobbies or addictions or interests that you know NOTHING about, but somehow, when you do all your research, it turns out that it fits them so perfectly.

I've written several short stories about what I call "The Moment." The one that happens onstage, right before the curtain goes up. Where everything is at this crystalline point and when that big velvet curtain finally rises, it shatters everywhere and you BELONG.

Writing is like that, too. When it's like this; when everything is rushing at you and you are just trying to keep up, there is this underlying sense. This knowing.

You belong in this world you're creating. And every other world you ever create. You aren't the puppet master, pulling the strings of your characters. You aren't play god.

Because that world? That's you. Spread across the page, in black, times new roman 12 point font.

You don't just belong IN that world. You belong TO it.

I tend to romanticize things, I know. But what can you expect? I'm an actor. I'm naturally dramatic and romantic.

I love watching belly dancing because it's so wonderful to see all these women, confident with their bodies, exuding and rejoicing in their sexuality/sensuality. Some were skinny, some were curvy, some were overweight and they didn't care because they love what they do and they love their bodies and the way they look. And they were all beautiful in their own way.

I am currently attending university to get my BFA in Acting. Acting is equal to my love of writing.

It also comes in direct conflict with writing, because in writing, apperance doesn't really matter. You go to work in your PJ's, you don't have to brush your hair. It's just you and your computer. Acting is the complete opposite.

As an actress, I have to be very body conscious. When you're in a competitive program, you have to stand out and look good ALL the time. And sadly, you can't be overweight. It's really just the way it goes unless you want to do comic roles for the rest of your life. There are exceptions, but there are many roles that I want to play that I know I would be overlooked for if I was overweight.

I had a professor tell me to lose 50 pounds at the college I transferred from. I was 5'9, 150 pounds and a size 9/10 at the time.

It was pretty much that moment that I decided to change schools. I was too close to hollywood and the body image there. I personally liked my body and didn't care for someone telling me to basically become anorexic.

I'm not a skinny girl. I've got curves. I like them. But I am also aware of what my job entails, so I am careful about what I eat and I work out every day and yes, I am currently losing weight in preperation to transfer schools.

This is the business. I may not like it, but I do it because I know that it's necessary to get roles. It's like learning grammar or spelling in writing. You are selling yourself in acting. The way you look and your talent.

I am NEVER going to be skinny. Not unless I want to starve myself, and I am not willing to do that. I love food and I love cooking it.

Writing and acting have many similarities to me. And they also sometimes seem in direct conflict with each other. I think that acting has made me a better writer, it has made me understand my characters and greatly improved my dialogue. And writing has made me a bettter actor, because I KNOW words, and it's impossible for me to read something out loud and not put expression in it, because I know how it feels to have those words pouring out of you.

So those are my random thoughts for the day. Now I have to go and try to see if changing all of Bashed's font to red will let me print out the rest of the manuscript, since I just ran out of black ink AGAIN.