So it’s been a while, and I figured I’d update on some of the writing-oriented stuff that’s been going on in my life. I mean, there’s nothing much else of interest going on, so why not?

…Okay, that’s not entirely true. I’ve got cool friends, a cool boyfriend, and I just traveled down to the Bay Area for the first time ever – wherein I went to Oakland, San Francisco, and San Luis Obispo. I’m also moving out of my house and in with Stephen and his roommates at the start of July, which will be wonderful.

But still, it feels like a weekly grind of work and nothing much else. It feels like I haven’t been writing much as of late, but when I wrote up the blog below, well, I guess I haven’t been totally lazy.

San Fran is beautiful, but those hills are killer.

Slam Poetry & April 30/30 Month

Still slamming. Still performing. Enjoying it immensely. Not much else of note there.

I did manage to finish my 30/30, which is the second time in the last year I’ve written one poem for thirty days in a row. Not too shabby, if I do say so myself. I posted the first group of poems on here at the start of the month, but then stopped after receiving a bit of backlash from some people about one of my poems.

Here’s the deal with poetry: it’s subjective. You’re relating the things that happened to you and the way you felt about them in that situation. Maybe the other person in the situation felt differently at the time. Maybe other people who were bystanders didn’t see it that way. But the whole point of poetry is the expression of one’s self, and I shared a beautiful poem and felt vulnerable after people got angry at me over it. So I didn’t post any more of my 30/30 poetry, as I felt it delved into a lot more personal things (my past/present eating disorders, boys, girls, alcohol, etc. etc.) and decided I didn’t want anymore backlash of my personal life.

The Misselthwaite Archives

Some of you might already know, but I work on a show called The Misselthwaite Archives. It’s a modern adaption of the classic novel, The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Here’s our pilot:

On the show, I do many things; from PAing to nagging the creative staff to photographing to set dressing to contacting companies etc. etc., but I do have two primary jobs.

The first is staff writer, wherein I write a handful of episodes for the entire run of the series. Besides writing my own episodes, I also either help redraft entire episodes and/or rescript portions of others. Here’s an episode I wrote on my own, and here’s an episode I co-wrote with Aileen. It’s a fun and challenging experience as a whole.

I also am the acting Multimedia Producer. I make sure all the transmedia we are is in progress, looks good, and gets posted online by its due date. I create a lot of the multimedia as well. For those who don’t know, multimedia is basically other forms of media that tell our story and go hand-in-hand with the show, but is much more content based. Some things I’ve created are fake yelp reviews, text conversations between characters, emails hinting at characters’ pasts, and even a fake will and testament for the protagonist’s parents.

Also worth pointing out: we’re doing a crowd funding run right now! You can watch a video where myself and a few other people who work on the series talk about that!

If you look at our crowd funding page, you’ll see we’re looking to get funds so we can pay actors/crew and afford food, port-a-potties, production design, film equipment, more food, etc. etc. If any of you are interested, I’d really appreciate people donating!

Get more information at our site: http://misselthwaitearchives.com/

Portland Book Review

A little less exciting, but I’ve been doing reviews for The Portland Book Review for the past several months.

I only do a couple a month, and don’t get paid much, but it’s been a very good experience so far. Here are some of the more recent reviews I’ve written: In The Circus of You, The Doll Collection, and Of Giants and Other Men.

Tough Pigs

Yes, I’m still writing for Tough Pigs. This month we did both a week of celebrating Kermit the Frog’s sixtieth birthday and another week focusing 25th anniversary passing of Jim Henson.

For the Kermit birthday week, along with contributing to a big group piece of all our favorite Kermit moments, I wrote this fluff piece about what all the Muppets would give Kermit for his birthday. While not a serious piece in the slightest, it was so much fun to write.

For Jim Henson’s week, I wrote two separate pieces. I first teamed up with my pals, Matthew and Evan, and wrote this piece about what it means to us being part of the Muppet-fandom but also being post-Jim.

And then I also did this:

I teamed up with Misselthwaite show runner, and good friend, Aileen Sheedy to make this video. I’ve had this poem sitting around for a couple months, performing it here and there (most recently I did it as a sacrifice in the Portland Grand Slam). I thought it’d be cool to do something different with it, and since we were honoring Jim over at Tough Pigs I thought it was the perfect opportunity to have it filmed. I wrote up some coverage on it over at Tough Pigs and everyone’s been going crazy about it ever since.

And that’s about it for now!

— JGask Out