Go Broke.

SO aside from my day or really mid-afternoon/early-evening job spilling pilates all over the place and writing my script, I have also been writing/producing a live sketch show which will open November 4th. My friends and I running the show thought that instead of waiting around for opportunity/better-representation/financial stability to walk through our front door, we'd hunt it down and beat the crap out of it ourselves. We are doing what some of my totally unhelpful but at the time inspirational acting coaches said to do: Just make it happen.

I am making it happen. This is what I want, right? I want to create comedy and stories and I want to tell them creatively and have people come to see what happens. I want them to pay me for my ideas and presentation...I want them to laugh! I have faith that all of these things will happen when we open, but then why am I not ecstatic about what I am about to accomplish? Believe me, while I'm a realist, I'm also one of those count-my-chickens people... so why aren't I picking out fabrics for the curtains of my hen house?

I think it might be because that would be too easy. We as writers, actors, whatevers in LA, come here to get picked, to get lucky, to break into something… not to invent it. Somehow creating a show and paying for it and doing all the work to get it off the ground seems totally unrelated to dreams of being discovered, in whatever capacity, and making it big. While I would much rather create my own show than be in someone else’s, it still feels like this is small potatoes compared to what dreams are made of…

But maybe that’s how I know I’m doing it right. I don’t know if the 3 of your out there reading this have ever produced a live show, but let me tell you: it sucks. Aside from writing, rewriting, staging, costuming, painting, building, casting, scheduling, contacting, reserving a theater, publicizing, marketing, getting a box office, making a program, and learning complete website design in 2 weeks… my co-producers and I are all IN the show. This is just about the least glamorous things a person can do… it’s unbelievably hard work, and more than anything it’s time consuming. Which leads me to my main point:

You won’t be a self-made success until you’re broke (unless you’re already really, really rich.)

Becoming a success (which is different than being a success) is a full time, 80-hour a week job… and it has no benefits or even salary. If you wanted to become a success professionally, you’d have to quit all other jobs… there’s just not time to do it right any other way. But since becoming a success professionally doesn’t pay, you will become broke. This is an essential step one must take if they want to be a success. And so I am happy to announce that I am one step closer to being successful.

Woah! I almost tripped there as I descended from my soap box! That was close.

Some might view this post as a shameless plug, some, a desperate cry for help, but I think of it more as a squishy combination of the two. either way, check out my maiden voyage in website design at www.TheNaughtyChildren.com

L'Shana Tova, Bitch. (a Jewishy Post)

I'm one of those goal-oriented people who has short periods of excessive productivity and then finds excuses (work, sleeping, eating cookies, Lost, SNL, Josh...) to burn out and talk about writing instead of doing it. But when the right excuse to write comes along, I can start again on a non-stop train to burn-outville, which thankfully is a long trip as trains are fucking slow creatures compared to air planes and wit. My current excuse? The High Holidays, specifically the New Year I never (until now) stayed up until midnight for.

This year I'm going to have a New Shana's Resolution! L'Chaim! To Write!

Clearly resolutions are always broken, but I'll last a few months... and in a few months it will be the Western New year! Wait, Western? English? Christian? What is "our" calendar called? For simplicity sake can my two calendars be Heeb & Goy? I do love that word Heeb.

"what's up Heeb? Curled any long payes lately?" sometimes I'm so jewy!

Anyway, the point is, maybe I can ride this resolution until December 31st at which point I will renew it and then maybe it will last forever since I'll have been in the habit for so long! All my hopes will come true if I can make it to 12/31/05. I know what you're thinking, "but jackie, it would take a MIRACLE to get you writing diligently from October 4th through December 31st... you'll burn out long before then!" But I reject your pessimism, and remind you of a little MIRACLE I like to call Hanukkah! They told that little sonofabitch candle that it would burn out. They gave that wick ONE DAY, but it went practically forever!

This year I'm going to jew it up all over the place and embrace my roots, I am going to be the Honikman Miracle, not only am I not going to burn out after one day, I'm going to light the way through not seven, but eight figures! whoo hoo!

then I can have all the latkes & pilates I want. "Latkes & Pilates" being the name of the next one-woman show I write for myself...