Yesterday was muggy and hot, but today there's a crisp fall edge in the air -- perfect as we get ready to go back to school. This weather just makes me smile. I'm in the midst of syllabus-finalizing, but I can't help taking a break to go shoe-shopping for Kavi's fall shoes. She can barely get into her summer ones! These Robeez autumn songbirds just make me melt (although, admittedly, the Pediped shoes and boots will be notably easier to get her feet into, and are also cute.)Actually, I'm not quite back to the syllabus work -- one last summer project is to write a play this weekend. That's not as crazy as it sounds -- I'm taking a free playwriting workshop through Rasaka (sponsored by the Kiran Bavikatte Foundation, thanks!), and we're all supposed to write ten-minute plays over the course of the weekend. We did discovery exercises all morning yesterday, and then drafted the play in the afternoon. Mine's titled The Yellow Dress. I got most of the way through while at workshop, then came home and finished it last night after Kev made us dinner. It's too long -- 13 pages instead of 10. But I'm not sure what to cut, so I'll just hope that we can figure that out today. We're going to do staged readings with real actors for all the plays, very exciting!
Right now, I'm afraid my play is not only too long, but too talky, too unsubtle, too autobiographical, and has too many South Asian names. (There are only two characters, but also reference to children, spouses, etc.) But I shouldn't borrow trouble -- it's not supposed to be perfect in one day, after all. We'll workshop it today, and hopefully I'll figure out how to fix some of the problems.
This has been super-fun, and I'm starting to really like playwriting. But writing so much so fast and intensively also made me feel a little ill yesterday! I think I'm glad that I don't have intensive writing workshops all the time -- although it would certainly be nice to get this much writing done every weekend!
Tomorrow, school starts at UIC, and I get to meet my students! Asian American Lit and Advanced Fiction -- can't wait!!! (You know I'm going to sleep horribly tonight -- I've been teaching for almost a decade now, but insomnia is still inevitable on the night before schools starts. Just too excited.)
I love the robeez and theyre actually really easy to put on natalia used to have a few pairs the back part folds down and you slip the foot into the front part and pop the back into place again