Day 1 of the next stage of Crossing into Presence. October 9, 2009.

My father and I are writing, rewriting and editing it, the goal is by the time I fly back to Manchester to have a finished script of a full piece.

Last night as I was leaving Libation, I got into a conversation with my friend Steve B. about Crossing into Presence and he was really moved as I described the project. Then he suggested that I write a daily blog about the process and actually use that as part of our marketing down the line.

I hemmed and hawed about how I tried to write a blog last year and just wasn’t able to keep it going, and Steve said, all I have to do is write it every morning, then edit it, and put it out there. I think I got too caught up in wanting to make it perfect before. I am such a perfectionist.

So here I am, sitting at the LeRoy Neiman Arts Center next to my father as he types. About ten minutes ago I gave him the assignment to create some new material for a section of the script. Basically I wanted him to write about what was going on in his mind leading up to our second meeting when I was seven.

Besides the fact that the material we are working on is so important not only to our own lives but to so many others, if I take a step back from all that, this process of creating Crossing is artistically really exciting (and of course a bit scary) for me.

Exciting because the way we are working is the process I’ve discovered years ago that works best for me when writing a script.

I collage words. I write poems, journal entries and such, I keep them, and then when I begin working on a new project, I collage them. And that poem that never felt quite right alone, suddenly is the perfect thing to come next in the script.

So this is my process, and it’s amazing to realize that it works with this project as well. This time I am not just drawing from my own words, but also the words and writing of my father. And stringing them together to make one coherent piece.

It’s funny, about 40 minutes ago my father told me that his advisor still feels like he needs to know more about my process. To which I automatically got defensive and interrupted my father by giving excuses for why I just couldn’t write process notes. I’m not at Goddard anymore, you are… why don’t you just take notes of what I say, it would take me too long to write, I just don’t have the time, blah blah blah. And he them tells me he understands all that which is why he has a mini recorder that he is going to use to start recording our sessions.

I was relived, but after he got to writing I went over to a computer, and checked my email, then signed into my facebook account and decided to set my status update about working on Crossing. And as I was typing it, I realized I remembered Steve B’s suggestion of a blog and suddenly saw how that was all my father’s advisor wanted anyway, and sat down to write this. I am smiling and laughing at myself because I am stubborn sometimes and it takes me a while to try something that someone else wants me to do, even if subconsciously I want to do it to.

As I look to my left I know my father has that trait as well.

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