Sketch Challenge, 3rd Set: Not Now But Soon

I am so tired.

I finished the last 13 pages of Set 3 this morning, about 10 hours late. I won't make any excuses; I just didn't get it done on time. This week's sketches got markedly more political. I had previously avoided that sort of thing, and was still hesitant to do so this week. But in the end I decided that's where my head was, so that's what I'd write. It's not like these will ever see the light of day anyway.

I still feel very disorganized and unstable, though I've made substantial progress in getting things together. This morning I was fondly remembering the first week of Kimberly Welsh's Sketch Challenge and Proof of Insanity, Now No Longer Giving A Shit What The Sketch Is About, Or Indeed Whether It's Funny, So Long As The Page Count Goes Up. Ah, those halcyon days when I was so full of optimism and wonder. I remember how excited I was to carry my little pocket notebook around, seeing the world through the eyes of a kid on an Easter egg hunt, searching for the little nugget of humor in everything. Everything was so shiny and new! Now my house is a disaster area, I scrounge for food, I barely look presentable half the time...

I'm hurtin', y'all.

BUT! This was the whole point of the Sketch Challenge and Gauntlet and Rite of Passage! Because I read that John Finnemore was going to write 5 sketch shows in 10 weeks, and we all know that while that sounds fun, it's probably not as much fun as we might think. And I wanted to know what it would really be like, suspecting all along that it would probably come with one or two major low points. Well at least now I know I was definitely right! And that's not even the thing I'm most proud of! My biggest accomplishment, as assessed by my very own impartial self, is that I haven't quit yet, and I'm NOT GOING TO. I'm sure I've already mentioned my unfinished EP, the two screenplays I half-finished, the various short stories that got outlined but never written... I have a bad habit of not finishing what I start. But NOT. THIS. TIME.

All my deluded expectations of being pleasantly surprised to find that I am a natural-born sketch-writing genius are dead, as are my fantasies of sitting at my spotless writing desk, sipping a cup of tea and laughing pleasantly to myself as I read joke after hilarious joke pouring out of my fingertips during daylight hours. I know now that I might have potential as a sketch writer, but I also have a really long way to go. And that getting there involves my writing desk getting very messy indeed, and me sitting there at 2 in the morning in food-stained pajamas and no makeup, having epiphanies about why people smoke cigarettes and/or do meth.

The really twisted part is: I kinda love it.

So there you have the final assessment of Set 3. Not as funny as the first two sets, a little behind schedule, not the work of genius I'd hoped for, but DONE. Which is all that matters right now.

The little bar is turning a sort of orange instead of red! I may live to see green!

Of course, quality is still a concern, and I don't like thinking I might...well...suck. It's downright depressing, actually. Which is why I was so happy when a friend of mine posted this on the social media, after snagging it from Wil Wheaton's social media, and who knows where WW got it from, but ANYWAY!

I'm getting this tattooed on the inside of my eyelids.

I've always felt I'd rather write something and know it sucks than be the oblivious egomaniac who writes sludge and thinks it's comedy gold. And literally everything I'm doing at this point is pretty much 100% an act of faith, so I just have to keep thinking that eventually I will learn something and I will get better at this...provided, of course, that I don't quit. WHICH I WON'T. Reading this occasionally helps keep me reassured and calm. I need more of that.

And now for the weekly expression of gratitude to someone who said something nice which helped keep me from drinking a whole bottle of Nyquil:
John Brett of the Week! (not like that)
This week's John of the Week is...my friend Brett! I had a late-night mainstage show at the improv theatre last night, which is always a pretty sizable challenge. Holding my own amongst the mainstagers at an hour when I would ordinarily be sound asleep is no small feat for an old lady like me! But the challenge part is offset by the awesome part, which is that I get to perform AND I get to see/work with a ton of awesome people, including my aforementioned friend Brett. In the end, I had a great time with a great cast and a great emcee, which was all I could've asked for. Then I checked my Twitter timeline this afternoon and saw this:

Awwwwww!

And that made my whole weekend a billion times better. Thanks Brett! Brett also once made me an amazing origami penguin, but I am a terrible photographer and could never hope to capture its incredibleness for you here. But it lives by my TV, so you KNOW I love to look at it ;)