I’m in the middle of two projects right now. Since mid September, I’ve been rehearsing a play I wrote this past summer called The Ripple Effect. The play deals with the theme of how our words and actions can have a profound impact on others.

AT THE STONE CHURCH, 45 DAVENPORT ROAD, TORONTO

I’ve been working with 11 volunteer actors and we are just at the point in the process where the blocking is complete and we are moving onto acting. The actors are close to being off book with lines memorized. The play takes place on a bridge and we are building an actual bridge on the stage. There are 6 songs sprinkled throughout the production (2 of them are original pieces) and there are also 3 short films that represent dreams that several characters have in the play.

The cast is multi-cultural with different ages and gender represented in the story. And although it can be challenging co-ordinating all these different schedules, I’m thankful for the rehearsal process because it gets me out from behind my desk.

Which brings me to the second project I’m working on called The Great Surrender – my new feature length screenplay. Writing can be a lonely endeavour. It is just you, your ideas, pencil and paper (in my case I write everything long hand first – yes, very old school but I think best on paper) and eventually the white computer screen. I have found that once a story gets into me, it’s very hard to think of anything else. Creativity can possess you until you are able to finish the job and then let it go out to the world (which is both thrilling and nerve-raking at the same time), but until then the story and characters are always on your mind.   I’ve been obsessed with The Great Surrender for the past 2 months now.   I’m at the point now where I am nearly finished typing a 2^nd draft on the computer. I love the process of translating what’s on the page to the screen as the story begins to take real shape. The Great Surrender concerns Zackary Foley – a 24 year old former high school football star who has been lost a good chunk of his life. It’s only after a tornado puts his mother in a coma that he finds purpose and is forced to break free from a tragic incident in his past that has haunted him. The script explores the fear of giving over to something outside of yourself and that when you do that, miracles can happen.

The Great Surrender will be entered into The Chronos Prize in Screenwriting come November.

I have written all these years because one, I have found something that I like to do, and two, I believed in every script I committed to paper. They may have not turned out the way I envisioned, but they each began because I wanted…needed to tell a story. That is what has kept me going. What keeps you going? What do you want/need to do today? I leave you with a quote by Steve Jobs talking about being passionate in whatever you do and the consequences if you are not:

You have to be burning with an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want to right. If you’re not passionate enough from the start, you’ll never stick it out.

Steve Jobs