The guy next to me is Scott Loyst.  He was the drummer in the production of black/white which I staged back in April.  Scott’s  a talented dude… his day/night job is a paramedic, but he drums, skateboards everywhere and now I’m learning he is a painter – and a darn good one.   He made this painting for me.  I won’t even begin to tell you how he created this piece (and he’s done many like it); suffice to say, it wasn’t with a paint brush but with some technique involving spray cans and a lot of procession.

As I write this blog, the painting hangs in the study above my head.  Scott titled the painting, The Chair of Power and Burden.  The chair he refers to is one in which a movie director sits on.   I am currently sitting on another chair – the writer’s chair – a diferent chair, but one in which the power and burden still apply.

One of my friends asked me, “So which is it, the power or the burden?”  They both have equal weight but if I had to choose one, I think the burden weighs a tad heavier.   Power puts you in charge and there is some fear in leading a group of people.  However, I know what I want and I’m laser clear with my vision.   But the burden of making that creative experience the best possible experience for everyone (including the audience), that feeling often is overwhelming.  I want the best.  Good is not good enough.  But to get the best, one has to push and that’s where the burden comes in, that’s where the sleepless nights play havoc on the mind.  It’s a challenge I embrace, like re-writing a script. 

I just had a public reading of my play Animal on June 2.  It was one of many drafts which I had to push myself to make better with each passing draft.  Can it be better?…probably (I wrote a blog about it)…..and the burden returns.    The good thing is the power to act upon that burden is there.   

I find a great deal of solace in what novelist and screenwriter Raymond Chandler had to say about the writing process which relieves some of the burden:

“…you never quite know where your story is until you have written the first draft of it. So I always regard the first draft as raw material.”