Improv Novel

Those who follow me on twitter may already have gotten the scoop but for those who like to get their info in long form I have a new project which I hope will distract from the increasing wedding planning fervor. I have decided in a last minute sort or way to participate in the national novel writing month. This means I have done no planning and as such will need to make it up as I go along. This made me think of how much I love doing improv shows. So I am going to do this novel in the style of those games. For the rest the month or until you all lose interest and abandon me I will post topics for suggestions from the audience. The next morning I will post what I have written based on your suggestions. My one caveat, I am not signing up for the official site and am not trying for their word count goal. That's the trick with improv, knowing when to cut the gag.

So, for day one I need audience suggestions for a title, genre and location. Here goes nothing.

As it turns out I can blog from my phone. This breaks down yet another of the mental blocks which wad serving me to separate my phone from my computer. It may also improve the frequency or my posting.

On the wedding front things have been continuing as they ought. We remain ahead if schedule and really are down to assembly of elements and obtaining the favors. Could be much worse!

The Future!

I know, it is hard to believe that a man who seems constitutionally incapable of blogging more than once in a three month period should discuss the future but it seems like a good idea for a number of reasons. First off I have a number of projects to which I would like to direct everyone's attention and secondly I would hope to address some of my plans for my own future. Hopefully as things progress this will help in the interpretation my twitter feeds even if I cannot manage to blog again before the wedding.

First off I want to direct everyone's attention to a project from Crowdsourcing which expands the one city one book concept which we have embraced here in Chicago. It takes this great idea to all of our beloved twitteurs and, in fact, everyone on the internet. The result of everyone reading the same book at roughly the same time will be that, according to Jeff Howe of Crowdsourcing in the Huffington Post, "a wildly diverse group of people would suddenly have at least one thing in common". Think about this on a worldwide scale for a second.
I simply had to get involved so I am plugging it to all of you. Making the matter even better is that the book chosen by the denizens of the internet through informal voting is American Gods by Neil Gaiman. So go snag your copy off of the shelf, borrow it from a library if any copies are left or buy one of your own and get ready because the reading schedule should post in the next few weeks.

I also want to take this opportunity to talk a little bit about the radio play project I have been working on for about half a year now. Our Fair City is a radio play set in a distopic future with all the trimmings. General mismanagement of natural and human resources has resulted in a barren world inhabited in subterranean-corporate-city-states. I know this may sound like something you've already seen. Trust me, this is special. Our Fair City focuses on the characters within the city. People fighting to make their way in an unfair world. Using the lens of the individual we give you interesting perspectives of the inner workings of the world. This first episode focuses on how the denizens of HartLife deal with mortality. Bear with us as we get everything up to speed.

As for myself outside of the internet plans for the wedding have sped along apace. We are still about four months ahead of schedule for the big things. We have a lot of tiny things to worry about and financing to obsess about. Otherwise all is in order and we have begun populating the address list for the save the dates. After the wedding I hope to start classes at Columbia's Center for Book and Paper Arts. After about a year and a half I should be able to make more decisions regarding my professional path. I venerate, once more, Giselle Simon of the Newberry Library for her excellent career advice. From the center I will look at conservatory for book making or a degree program in Library Science.

I'm also thinking I might take a summer course at the Newberry. Because I'm not stupid busy enough already, right? I will probably end up giving it a pass but for those of y'all in Chicago I recommend giving the program site a look. You can thank me later.

As for the immediate future it looks likely that I will remain at MSI for the foreseeable future. Tomorrow will mark the one year anniversary of my employ at that fine institution and I quite enjoy being able to educate hundreds of people every day about such a historically interesting artifact as the U505.

I leave you today with a less prescient note. I have just made "overkilli" chili for tonight's repast. Sadly I may have made it too spicy to be palatable for the girls so I'm hoping for the magic of sour cream to save my chili reputation. Keep an eye on twitter to see how it goes.

There are a number of topics which I need to cover in the next few posts which will hopefully make up for the complete lack of any kind of update in the past month and a half. They include: my professional future, wedding planning, artistic endeavor, life in a submarine and the upcoming holiday season.

Here goes.

As for my professional outlook it seems that not taking the GRE in college was a graver mistake than I could ever has imagined. My advice to anyone still enrolled, do it now. I wanted to avoid taking it because I do not agree with the policies of standardized testing and, as someone likely going into the educational field, I have some very decided opinions there. I also did not want to take the time to study for it and to make a trip out of town to take it. On top of that, I had every intention of attending grad school in England within a year of graduation. Well, life has a way of changing the plans you think are so very flawless. The postal system scuttled my grad school plans and then I fell in love. Now I am looking for programs here in the states where they care about the GRE. The biggest kick in the balls is that I could have taken the test for free in college but now in the real world I have to pay $150 for it.

As a result I am revising my plans for career advancement. As a means of hedging my bets and ensuring that I can be in a school program come spring which will provide me with education, career advancement and work opportunities I am now looking into the field of secondary education more seriously. I am looking into programs which will allow me to begin getting a teaching certificate and allow me to take on the five year loan forgiveness program. After five years of making a salary higher than my current one I will have the ability to erase all of my federal student debt. I consider this an opportunity not to be missed. What I need is a program to get me certified which does not wait until the summer to do so. I need to be enrolled in classes, at least half time, for the spring and I also need to be able to work. I do not want to repeat what I did last time which has become, ultimately, more expensive. And so, I search. If anyone knows of any programs or has gone through them I would greatly appreciate the input.

As for planning the wedding, that seems much more straightforward. Perhaps it is because I have a theatre background but the concept of finding a space, preparing it for a particular effect and rehearsing the people for what is, in the end, a production albeit one with incredible emotional attachment and significance is not as daunting as it might be. What worries me is our budget. We are financing the wedding ourselves which means that we need to be more creative with our planning. I definite;y see a lot of potential in our initial planning but am worried that the popular conception of a wedding is miring us in the process of creating a ceremony which is significant for us and expressive of our unique love (i.e. the end goal).

Int he field of artistic endeavor I am trying to get myself back into writing novels and possibly commercially. I might write a few proposals and send them out to publishers if I can find a good source for the proper format of such things. I also have a modern poetry project which is in its early planning stages. The most active of my current projects is a scriptwriting collective. There should be a podcast of the screenplay forthcoming.