Month: September 2014

art, happiness, movie

Inspired: Figure out how to be happy and then do it – a lesson from The Angriest Man in Brooklyn

Christa Avampato
The Angriest Man in Brooklyn
The Angriest Man in Brooklyn

“Would you want to know when you’re going to die?”
“No.”
“But if you could, what would you do with the time you had left?”
“I’d try to figure out how to be happy.”
“Then why don’t you?” ~ From The Angriest Man in Brooklyn, one of the last films staring Robin Williams

I hear a lot of people say that finding what makes us happy and doing it is easier said than done. I used to be one of those people. Now that I’m doing what makes me happy, I realize the action of deciding to do what makes me happy is easier than anything else I’ve ever done because it’s just who I am. My heart, head, and hands are all aligned toward the same goal: to be the best writer I can be and to tell stories that help people. I figured out how to be happy and then just did it. And it feels pretty darn good. I recommend it. 

art, commitment, courage, creativity, theatre

Inspired: How Sing After Storms Won at the Thespis Theater Festival

Christa Avampato

Sing After Storms For the team that worked feverishly on-stage and behind-the-scenes at Sing After Storms, I will be forever grateful, forever standing on my feet and giving you a standing ovation of wild applause for your courage and commitment to create. Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!

We didn’t win the Thespis Theater Festival in the traditional sense.* We were one of 6 finalists nominated for best play out of 39 plays presented, and we didn’t walk away with any prize money. To me, we won in every sense that matters: getting down a painful, powerful, and thought-provoking story to free it in the hopes that it helps to free others.

Theater is hard, so damn hard. It’s more difficult to create than many other art forms because we must build it together. That togetherness must then be orchestrated and tuned with a light, but steady and confident hand. It’s about giving boundaries—the story lines, the confines of the physical space, time—and then just letting people play within those boundaries. It’s a heavy burden and a limitless gift. We put our story out there into the world for judgement and critique, and then allow others to change it, color it, and give it its own life separate and apart from the life the playwright infused into it.

It hurts to let a story go out into the world to fend for itself, and yet in that letting go it saves, serves, and heals. Perhaps that’s the greatest gift that this show has given me—the chance to be free and whole all at once, and the chance to find and sing my song.

*Comparing large-scale musicals to intimate relationship-based dramas, and films of staged shows to live performances, seems a bit odd to me. It also seems unfair to expect a show that was staged two and a half months ago to pull a cast and crew back together with 5 days notice over a holiday weekend to give a performance to be judged against shows that closed much more recently. However, I’m willing to put that aside now that I’ve written it down and expressed my opinion so I can feel nothing but pride for our team. Thanks for allowing me to digress for a moment. 

creativity

Inspired: Let your writing teach you how to live well

Christa Avampato

This seems as good a strategy as any for handling change and stress. Isn’t this exactly what we do for our characters in our writing?

image

action, work

Inspired: Work worth doing

Christa Avampato

“Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt

What are you doing, right now and in the greater scheme of life? Does it matter to you, to someone whom you care about? Are you a better person for doing this work? Is someone better off because you’re doing it? These are the most important career planning questions we can ask ourselves. The answers to them will do one of two things: either help us double down on our commitment to what we’re doing or steer us toward charting a new course. Life is short. We have a small amount of time to leave the world a better place that we found it, and there are so many ways to do that. Our only work is to find the right way for us.

books, writing

Inspired: Online resources to help you plan and write your novel

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest
From Pinterest

I’m participating in National Novel Writing Month this year when I’ll write the first draft of Where the Light Enters. I’m excited to craft the story of my heroine, Emerson Page. I love a good plan so as I do my preparation research, I hunted around online for resources to help me plan my novel. I’m incredibly surprised (and grateful!) for all of the resources and generous advice on planning. If you’re writing a novel, here is a list of the resources that are helping me during this exciting time. I hope they help you, too!:

  • Your Novel Blue Print – Author Kevin T Johns wrote a free ebook titled 12 Common Mistakes Rookie Authors Make (& How to Avoid Them!) to describe 12 of the lessons he learned the hard way when writing his first books. It’s like a map that shows you all the places not to go when writing a book. And couldn’t we all use that kind of advice?
  • Story Plan Checklist – Writing instructor Karen Wiesner wrote an incredible thorough post for Writer’s Digest that outlines all of the key considerations necessary to craft a cohesive, compelling story. Again, totally free and actionable! This is the plan I’ll be working on for the next two months.   
  • Bill Holland’s HubPage – Author and teacher William D. Holland discusses many of the main points that Karen Wiesner makes though it’s a more condensed version and he throws in a few extra bits of wisdom. For example, all of the agents and publishers he’s worked with over the past several decades have told him you have about 10 seconds to grab their attention when introducing your book. I’ve heard of elevator pitches in the business world, but in the writing world, time is even more precious. 
  • How to Write Killer Fiction – Author Carolyn Wheat wrote this book to describe her four-arc system to outline a novel. The beauty of her system is that you can either use it to plan your novel, or use it to rework your draft into a tighter draft before querying agents and publishers. I also love that she diligently emphasizes the importance of the end of a book. So many authors start from the beginning and then fall apart somewhere in the middle. If we start at the ending, we have a better shot at delivering a work that will stick with readers long after they close the book. Though not free, it’s worth the investment.  

Writing a novel is grueling work, and we could all use a little help. Luckily for us, there’s plenty of it to go around. The writing world is a generous world. 

Did I miss any resources that you’ve found particularly helpful? Please share in the comments below!

change, grateful, gratitude, Life

Inspired: Today is the 5-Year Anniversary of the Apartment Building Fire That Changed My Life

Christa Avampato

Today is the 5-year anniversary of my apartment building fire. Tonight is also the awards ceremony for the Thespis Theater Festival in which my play, Sing After Storms, is nominated for best play. A portion of that play is based on my fire experience. The synchronicity is not lost on me.

I used to regard that fire, in which I lost almost all of my belongings and barely got out of the building in time, as the worst day of my life. Now I know it was one of the best because it taught me that no matter what happens, I’ll always be okay. That fire literally burned the fear of living right out of me. In the same way that fire chemically transforms everything it touches forever, it changed me forever, too. It showed me how strong I am, and that knowledge serves me well every day. The recovery from it was painful and difficult, but when I consider how much I love my life now compared to my life then, I know it was worth the struggle to get well.

September 5th now feels like a second birthday to me. In my home, I keep a photograph of my old apartment after the fire. That’s where I began again, completely from scratch, to build a life worth living. It’s a self-portrait in a way, a daily reminder that I am fortunate to be here at all. That we all are. I’m glad I hung in there, even in the darkest, most frightening, lonely hours, because on the other side of that fear I found everything I ever wanted. I found me, and that’s something not even a fire can take away.

dreams, experience, failure, fear

Inspired: A life of “oh well”s is a better than a life of “what if”s

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest

Part of the puzzle of pursuing a path that is meaningful to us involves learning to weather the tough times. I’ve had my fair share and I’m sure have many, many storms waiting for me around the bend. These few things help me to keep going when the going gets rough:

    • I look for the good. Every situation, no matter how difficult, has something good about it. A friend rises up to help in a way I never expected. I gain more compassion for other people who go through tough times. There’s always some light in the darkness.
    • I make sure I learn what go me into the tough situation and what will get me out. As long as I learn something to help me avoid making the same mistake again, I think of it as a win.
    • I stop. When I face a challenge, I step back and ask myself if I really carry enough about the end goal to keep going. This reflection helps me to understand my priorities.
    • I let myself feel really bad. Buddhism teaches us that the only way to move through adversity is to feel the full range of emotions it brings – anger, fear, sadness, disappointment, rage, etc. We have to give ourselves room to feel anything and everything that arises. Only after I’m truly done with those emotions do I pick up and try again. Don’t put a timeline on that process. Sometimes I bounce back almost immediately and sometimes it takes much longer than I’d like it to take. Emotions are like that. They can’t be forced to do anything. They just are. We have a right to all of our feelings and it’s healthy to exercise them.

Failure and disappointment are a part of every life. I don’t know a single person alive who’s ever gotten every single thing they ever wanted. When I fail or when I’m disappointed, I eventually remind myself that this means I tried to reach for something that meant a lot to me. I tried and in the process, I lived. When I look back, I’d rather have a life filled with “oh well” rather than a life filled with “what if”. 

change, opportunity, writer, writing

Inspired: What a seed teaches us about risk-taking

Christa Avampato

My friend, Amelia, one of the incredible actors in Sing After Storms, posted this quote last week and I’ve been thinking about it every day since. To grow, we have to leave the security of the shore and delve deep into the unknown. Discovery and growth happen when we encounter new experiences, people, and places, when we take risks, and try something we aren’t quite sure we can accomplish.

I have no idea what my life will look like in a few short week when literally everything changes and I start my full-time writing life. I do know that I need this. I need to give this new, wild, unpredictable adventure my best shot, way out there in the wide open air where I’m free to learn and grow in many different directions. Giving up my current way of life seems like complete madness to some; they’ve told me as much. And that’s okay. I’ve known plenty of destruction, followed swiftly by plenty of growth, and I cherish it all. Where they see only loss, I see pure potential to have exactly the life I want to live. I’ve got a chance, right now, this very brief window of opportunity, and I’m taking it. 

art, books, story, writer, writing

Inspired: Meet Emerson Page—the heroine of my first novel, Where the Light Enters

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest
From Pinterest

I want you to meet someone I’m going to spend a lot of time with this Fall. This is a sketch of Emerson Page, the heroine of my first novel, Where the Light Enters. She’s 15, strong-willed, curious, and battling both personal and external demons. She’s stronger than she thinks she is, more talented than she ever imagined in ways she never knew were possible, and is about to learn some deep secrets about her heritage, the world around her, and the world that exists just below the surface of our awareness. Emerson loves technology, is fascinated by the weather and nature, happily gets lost in stories, and is devoted to animals, especially her therapy dog, Friday. For now, she lives in New York City, but that’s about to change, sort of.

I’ll write the first draft of Where the Light Enters this November as part of National Novel Writing Month. The title is inspired by this quote from Leonard Cohen’s song, Anthem: “Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” And by this quote from Rumi: “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”

I found this picture while scrolling through Pinterest and pinned it up at my desk. This visual helps me watch the story unfold. I tried to figure out who the artist is, but no luck. If you recognize this sketch, please let me know!

career, work

Inspired: Another lesson from the dirt—the power of rest

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest
From Pinterest

The land has so much to teach us. When farmers plant crops, they rotate them so that the land has a chance to rest. Land that’s rested grows the best crops. We’re the same way. A mind and body that’s rested is able to give its best. So take a load off this Labor Day. Do what you love. Be with people and animals you love. Enjoy the sun, sand, surf, and breeze. Tomorrow will be here soon enough.