Last night, MDW and I attended a film screening on the USC campus. Having graduated in 1987, I believe this was my first trip back. (Though I have been to the Colosseum for football games.) My final semester was taken up by a creative writing project under faculty mentor, T. Coraghessan Boyle. Professor Boyle had an arid sense of humor, dropping out dry koans then moving on. In class once, he suggested we always write the last paragraph of a story in French so the reader would feel stupid. He was a great resource and a warehouse of story-crafting knowledge even then. But I never took full advantage of his insight. I was eager to get back out in the world and write for real.
My plan had been to take a job somewhere overseas and write something very expatriate and wry. But having focused so hard to finish college in two and half years, I folded immediately after graduation. I checked out jobs, sent out stories, started new ones, began a book, but my follow-through was shot. The only thing I completed was jury duty. Finally, a few months later, I stopped even pretending to write, returned to acting and spent the spring and summer performing bad plays.
What's this got to do with anything? As Dummy Fever gathers dust in its third draft tomb, I've started thinking about acting again. Maybe it has something to do with all the energy we put into selling the old place, getting a condo plus my training for a marathon, then running two in less than a month. I fear my follow-through has crashed again.
Could just be a 21-year cycle. In any case, I will complete the book. And no more acting.
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