Tues. May 19, 2026: Summer Prep & Solid Writing
image courtesy of meineresterampe from Pixabay Tuesday, May 19, 2026
Waxing Moon
Pluto Retrograde
Cloudy and hot
Hello, and welcome to another week!
You can read the Community Tarot Reading for the Week here.
Friday, I did some admin, then headed out to the pharmacy for my mom. It was quick trip, but all I wanted to do when I got home was laze on the sofa with the cats. Not an option, though.
I hauled myself to my desk and got some work done. I have a new debit card from the credit union, and had to update information on various channels, and EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM made it a nightmare. I am so sick of this. This is why I still use paper checks whenever possible. All of this should have taken minutes for each update. I shouldn’t have lost a morning.
In the afternoon, I took care of some more admin, and had discussions with my ghostwriting client about both series on which I’m working. I got the notes back on the one project, and started those revisions yesterday.
I cooked dinner (the salmon had been in the teriyaki marinade all day and was good), and read the book for this month’s Agatha Christie book club, THE LABORS OF HERCULES. It’s a collection of connected short stories featuring Hercule Poirot. I don’t think I ever read it before.
It was bucketing down with rain in the evening, and then quite cold.
Slept reasonably well. The way the cats carried on Saturday morning, I thought I’d overslept, but it was the usual 5:30 time. I’d hoped to sleep in a bit!
Morning routine was fine, and I added in a blessing for the graduating students across the street.
The day began as foggy and cool, but the sun came out, which was nice.
I did the usual Saturday chores, including (finally) switching out the flannel sheets. I didn’t go straight to bamboo. I’m using cotton right now. I also switched to the summer, lighter quilt.
I spent most of the morning turning my closet over for the summer. I packed away everything wintery that lives in the closet and went through everything else for fit, repairs, etc. Pulled a few things. Unpacked the summer clothes I’d packed away, and went through them for fit, repair, etc.
I’m low on summer pants and I could use another pair or two of ballet flats, but I’ve got plenty of everything else. Most of what I have goes with a whole bunch of other stuff, so that’s always a good thing. The summer pants will be boosted a bit with the navy pants I’m making that I can wear three-season, and a pair in black jacquard fabric that are a little dressier. Another pair or two of cotton palazzo pants would be a good idea. I might make them. It depends on whether I can find fabric I like at a price I like. I have not been impressed with what’s in the stores lately. I also need another pair or two of yoga pants. The last time I bought yoga pants was about 2012, and I’m wearing them out. They’ve worn well. It’s not an emergency yet, just something to think about if I come across something I like at the right price.
There was a fabric sale at Old Stone Mill the past two weekends in Adams, but I didn’t make it over there. I want to sew up what I bought from Swenson’s Fabrics the last few months, and some other material that’s in my stash from years back. Old Stone is known for quilting fabrics, so I probably could have found everything I needed for “Elemental Nine Patch” but I wasn’t in that mindset yet. They have sales several times a year, so I’m not going to stress over it.
The afternoon was spent reading and hanging out on the couch with the cats. Cooked dinner in the evening, and relaxed some more. It was a good, quiet Saturday.
Sunday morning, Tessa got me out of bed at the usual time. It was supposed to get up into the 80’s, so I baked the biscuits (American kind) my mom wanted for breakfast first, then cooked the potatoes for the potato salad that we can have for lunch over the days when it’s supposed to get really hot.
I did the Community Tarot Reading for the week, which you can read here. A few too many fives for my liking, but since I’m warned, maybe I can make smarter choices. What the cards predict can change with every action you make from the moment of the reading.
I went through and sorted winter sweaters, etc. I packed away what was clean, and put in the laundry bin what needs to be washed before I can put it away. I sorted through shirts and light sweaters for summer and got those organized. That took longer than I expected, especially since both Charlotte and Willa “helped.”
It was warm and sunny. I didn’t feel like doing much of anything. I read a bit, played with cats, just rested. Cooked dinner at night and read some more.
Worked a bit on an LOI. Figured out options to make for a potluck lunch to which I was invited at the end of the week.
I didn’t sleep particularly well Sunday into Monday. I woke up in the middle of the night in pain, and by the time I got back to sleep, the cats got me up.
Morning routine was fine and helped a bit. I had a lot of admin to do that stacked up. I read the plays for Monday night’s Athena project and sent out some emails. I wasn’t feeling great, and would have liked to take the day off, but too bad for me. I can do a whole lot of nothing over the holiday weekend, but this week, I need to get things done.
I got my marketing for the day done, and joined the Honor Roll Playwrighting session for two hours. I worked on I WILL BE DIFFERENT. I got three scenes done, near the beginning of the play(s). I think I have one more Alice scene to write, and I will be done with this draft (which has taken two years).
I’m going to do a rough assembly and read it, then figure out if it’s one play or two plays, and start rearranging material, adding scene numbers, years, etc.
Emma (who runs these sessions) let us know that Dramatists Guild is doing End of Play again this year, but in June, so I went ahead and signed up. I don’t think it’s the best structure for the revision of I WILL BE DIFFERENT, and I think the May Morris piece isn’t ready to write yet. So I may try to finish CONSEQUENCES or finish LAUGHTER AND TURPENTINE or try something new. What, I have no idea. Hey, I have two weeks, I’ll come up with something.
I felt much better by the end of the writing session.
I looked over the notes for the ghostwriting client. They love what I sketched out for this, and just, basically want more, and a little bit of rearrangement. So I feel pretty good about digging back into that. I got my deadline for this draft, which is June 1, although I will try to get it done a little earlier than that. I had a really good session on it this afternoon, with things flowing well.
The weather wasn’t too bad. It was warm, hitting 90F, but not too humid, so I could concentrate.
I put together and easy and tasty dinner using ingredients from the CSA, served with rice, which was good.
I finished the book I read over the past few days, a biography of Lorne Michaels, who has produced SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE for fifty years. SNL was always part of my landscape. I never worked on it, although I was encouraged to do so around the time MISS SAIGON was winding up. I never even submitted a resume or tried to get an interview, mostly because I didn’t want to be around the frenetic schedule and the drugs. There was a dive bar in the subway station of the 50th St. No.1 train called Siberia where various show crews, including some of the SNL crew, hung out in the late 90’s/early 2000’s (it’s now a much more upscale place called Nothing Really Matters), so I heard a lot of the backstage stories. (The performers attended the upscale parties Michaels threw every Saturday night, and then the after parties that sprang up around town). As much as I admire the work they do, especially in such a tight time frame, and going live, my sense was that it wasn’t the right place for me. It was a better choice for me to be a repository of anecdotes. The brutality of working on that show wasn’t something that appealed to me.
I also learned a lot about comedy by watching the show and talking with people involved in it. Too many people don’t understand the difference between humor and comedy. Any genre can have humor layered over it/woven through it, and can work. Comedy is very tightly structured. The more effortless it comes across, the tighter the structure. Even the best of the zaniest comedians understand the structure and it’s a part of their personal rhythms as much as their heartbeat.
Even if an audience doesn’t intellectually understand the difference, they will feel it, and if something supposedly funny doesn’t work, it’s usually because the structure doesn’t support it. They might not know why, but they can feel it, because even intellectual comedy speaks to rhythms and how it feels in the body.
When I watch clips of the show, it’s still useful to break down the beats and dissect the sketch. If I’m struggling to build a comic scene in my own work (as opposed to a humorous scene), watching a few different clips and dissecting them (sort of like diagramming sentences in elementary school, but for the whole sketch) gets me back on track.
The book is well done, and was very interesting.
At 8:30, I set up the laptop in the living room and spent the next two hours on ZOOM with the Athena Project, for the month’s plays. Bea hung out with us for a bit, and then wandered off. Charlotte slept through the whole thing. We had lovely, lively discussions, which were helpful to both playwrights. I think it’s very important to show up for other playwrights, and not just swan in and out when my own work is featured.
They ask that we wait six months after they’ve featured one of our plays before submitting again. I was featured in March, which means I can submit again starting for October’s session. Although I will probably wait to submit for January’s session.
It took me a bit of time to settle after the session, but I eventually did. I slept reasonably well, in spite of the warm weather. It’s not too humid yet, so I was fine.
Up early today. The morning routine was fine. Consistency makes a positive difference. I watered the plants that needed a drink, before it got too hot, so they wouldn’t stand in wet feet all day. I think I will take a shot at the first draft of the final Alice scene I want to write for I WILL BE DIFFERENT (it’s early in the play, but the last one written) set in the Barbizon Hotel.
Maybe this weekend, I will start the rough assemblage of the second draft.
Also on today’s agenda: BETTING MAN, ghostwriting, and, hopefully, yoga. I have some hand laundry to do, too, from the closet turnover, and some stain removal to work on. How a yellow shirt hanging in the closet can get a stain that looks like coffee dripped down the back is beyond me, but there we are. I was worried there was a ceiling leak, but there’s not. It’s supposed to be 90F again today, and then the weather breaks tomorrow. It feels like we will have a thunderstorm. Once it gets hot, I may adjust my schedule and start work earlier, take a break when it’s hot, and then work again in the evening. Or, I might pack up and work at a library or at the Clark.
Have a good one!
#athenaProject #books #clothes #comedy #cooking #EndOfPlay #fashion #honorRollPlaywrights #playwrighting #reading #saturdayNightLive #sewing #writing
Ink In My Coffee
Devon Ellington
Devon Ellington