"If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second-greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first-greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they're happy."
-Dorothy Parker
It's nearly two weeks since the closing of Skazki: A Spell of Ice and Snow, and despite everything I said in the lead-up to the premiere, I think I am still in a state of disbelief. You often hear in writing circles and fandom arenas about fan castings for this and that series. I am not above this—having once planned out nearly the entire cast of the Freedom and Control series. But this, as so much else in the world of writing and creativity, is fantasy.
But the important thing about fantasy, says the novel version of Katya, is that it helps you survive reality.
I have waxed poetic lengths about the development of the idea which became Skazki. The months of unemployment, the 75k-word draft of a novel written in a month, the script writing seminar with Dive-In Productions that led to the meeting with Sean and Liza Robinson which became Mystic Evidence Production's world premiere of a musical I had written and adapted from my own work. Now we lay in the aftermath, evaluating and planning and writing on. In a way, it's paralytic, though a kind of paralysis which stems from catharsis. A year, give or take, from the first lines of a draft novel to the closing curtain reminding us all to pour some tea, and I find myself a little struggling to begin new projects or finish the ones which existed before and during Skazki's development.
Some of that paralysis stems from waiting on a full response to a novel, too. Madelen has had a bite, and we await what an agent thinks of her in all her gory glory. Some of it is as I've said: catharsis. Though I did not expend anywhere near the energy of the production--had not the exhausting nights of the cast and crew nor the creative explosion of the composer or musical director nor the weight and pressure of the producer and director, to say that Skazki took nothing out of me would be a lie. It was and is a deeply personal work, all the more personal for it having been the piece of writing which went farther than any before it. To have it exist in the world, to have heard people repeating my words, singing them, crying to them, shouting them for the first time was a magical experience unlikely to be replicated.
Now there is that most fundamental part of my personality which asks: what next? As though this were not enough, and it truth, it isn't. Few things are. At once, this attitude towards life, which has been pervasive throughout its entirety, robs me some of my ability to live in the moment as much as I would like. It doesn't necessarily rob me of my ability to appreciate life, and I have gotten better about slowing down, but there remains that itch in me. At the moment, I haven't found quite what to scratch it with.
In a few days I will announce the third Telgora book, and the editing of that has been a slog. There is a fourth on the way, too. Given the state of self publishing and the rise of generative artificial intelligence and the giant corporations which oversee the creative space, especially self-publishing, I think it will be the last of the Freedom and Control series to be released in parts. The fourth will be released as a single book, and then that series ends. Madelen, and all her related projects, remain on pause until we hear about her chances at traditional publication. There are two other started novels sitting in my files, neither of which have fully called out to me in the ways I would like them too.
For now, then, what I can work most keenly on is a medium for which I have had the most success without fully grasping the fundamentals. I had long given up the idea of being connected with theatre, as theatrical as I am. I love theatre of course—there is magic to it. The ability to inhabit not one life but dozens, to hold an audience's attention, to play a trick of art and mind and create and experience hard to find elsewhere. Especially when it is live. Even now, I hear Baba Yaga's warning call, that stories are a power beyond anything we see. How much more so when it's not one story, but many?
I think the most educational experience to come out of this entire affair is exactly that: experience. I've said to more than one person that the ultimate lesson of Skazki is that I did do this, which means I can do it again. It's a matter of focusing, of narrowing, of evaluating and planning. All of this I am ostensibly good at. Writing, too, I am ostensibly good at. Suddenly, "Hurricane" from Hamilton gets going in the back of my head. The eye of the hurricane, indeed.
The best part of this is that it's no longer so alone. Writing is often by its nature a solitary endeavor. Even though we have friends who support us, and suffer alongside of us they should also write, there is no one sitting behind or beside you with a blunt instrument compelling you to put words to a page. There are ways in which we hold each other accountable, and check in on progress, but even then, we remain solitary in our endeavors. Theatre, by contrast, is the opposite. It is communal by nature—a coming together of actors and crew and audience and so many involved in minute aspects of productions which can go unnoticed but for their absence. I cannot begin to express my gratitude to everyone who brought Skazki to life. Everyone who took a chance on this dream, this vision, this shot in the darkness and cold of winter for the belief that relief could come and help us all feel a little better. The small acts of kindness which dispel endless winter nights.
We are debriefing the show soon, myself and the producer and the composer, and deciding what comes next of it. If it has a life beyond what we've seen, wonderful! I will be forever glad and still forever stunned to even be in the room having these conversations. If not? Well... there's always what comes next. That's the blessing and the curse of watching Tick... Tick... Boom! during this entire affair. You write another, and another, and another. Time keeps moving, and the words keeping flowing (hopefully).
So, what now? A musical based on the horrors of generative artificial intelligence? A romantic bartending comedy? A western drama based on the start of the first world war? Inside of every riddle, there's an answer, and inside of every rhyme there is a spell. Picking which to cast (look, a theatre pun!) is no small thing.