chefs and rockstars

"Mom, I was thinking about what I want to be when I grow up and I'm going to either be a rock star or a chef".

This is how my evening started out, with my seven year old pondering potential vocations. Vacillating. Stuck betwen a rock and a flake pastry. I can so relate, though. On the writing front, I'm in a holding pattern. As of this morning, I'm awaiting answers from three one-act festivals that I've submitted work to (New York, Montana and Massachussets) and their results should be announced/posted on the website any day now. There are also festivals in Kentucky and Wisconsin that I have entered, but their results won't be announced until the beginning of the new year.

This weekend, I finally finished the ten-minute, Disco-themed jobby. My writer-friend Elayne read it and gave valuable feedback. My husband also read it and picked the story bones clean like the critiquing vulture that he is. I say this with total love, however. Sometimes I get so caught up in the dialogue ("did I give the Senator enough lines"?), subtext ("What is the real nature of Chip's relationship with his mother?") and themes ("Is the Wizard of Oz too trite?") that I forget that the shit doesn't even make sense. I also submitted an essay I'd written about the neighborhood ice cream man to Critique Circle. And before you sigh, I'm not putting him on blast for selling bootleg Sponge Bob sicles, it's a heart-warming nostalgia piece.

The quest is on for more people to read the disco jobby. I don't know why, but this play is the play I have the least faith in. Perhaps because it's brand new and hasn't "proven" itself in any contest or festival. Maybe it's because the subject is too close to my heart and I'm afraid to share it. With feelings like these, I'm sure this will be the one that makes it to the stage first.

I'm telling my son to go ahead and be that rockstar.