Working through revisions and having some pride

Writing anything for me is difficult, because I have a really loud inner censor that screams, "That's shit!" a lot of the time as I write. That voice sometimes yells at every sentence. It even happens when I write for this blog. I've gotten better at ignoring that censor voice on here and in my creative writing. Now I wait until it's all out of me, and then I declare out loud that what I've written is shit. Some would argue that it's just as bad, but at least I'm letting the ideas flow.

Artists I admire: Anna Deavere Smith

Last night I started teaching a new course at NYU, "Creating Ethnodrama: Theory & Practice." I've taught variations of this course under other titles in the past, but this new course represents an arrival of sorts. I've been working with interview data and field notes to create play scripts for over fifteen years now, and as I prepped the opening lecture for the course, I realized that it might be helpful for my students if I explained how I got there. Like literally what were the steps that lead me to this moment of standing in front of a room teaching a graduate course on this very specific style of work.