Do You Ever Defy Expectations Like Harrison Ford?

By
Scott D. Parker

Let’s be honest: if you watched Apple TV’s “Shrinking” series, a good number of us did so because we had one overriding thought: Harrison Ford doing a comedy?

Granted, it’s not a typical comedy sitcom with a laugh track on a stage with a studio audience. But it’s still a comedy. A trio of folks—Jason Segel, Bill Lawrence, and Brett Goldstein—created the show, and they know comedy.

The great thing about this 10-episode series: it is a comedy, but it is also something else: it’s an honest look a grief, how people get through it, and the pitfalls and victories along the way.

And it has Harrison Ford doing comedy. I’ll admit I was a little skeptical. Ford just doesn’t do comedies. Even now, without looking up his IMDB page, can you name any comedy he’s done? There are funny moments in various movies, but no comedies come to mind.

Why did he do it?

Maybe to see if he could.

It’s a Comedy and a Drama (i.e., Real Life)

The show centers on Segel’s Jimmy, a widower with a teenaged daughter, Alice (Lukita Maxwell). Both are trying to deal with the death of his wife/her mother and they are growing farther and farther apart. Jimmy is a therapist. Ford plays Paul, the senior therapist and one who serves as Jimmy’s mentor. The third therapist is Gaby (Jessica Williams) and they have a charming and fun relationship. The three actors are so good together that you might wonder if they’d worked together before.

Rounding out the cast is Liz (Christa Miller) as Jimmy’s next-door neighbor who basically took over helping to raise Alice after Jimmy checked out for a year and Brian (Michael Urie), a lawyer and good friend of Jimmy.

The events and relationships come across as genuine, albeit in a TV version. My wife doesn’t always laugh out loud at TV shows, but there was more than one time when we both were laughing so hard we had to pause and rewind the show because we missed next lines of dialogue. Two scenes later, our eyes welled up with tears and we’d give each other quick glances to confirm that yes, we were both crying.

That’s the kind of show this is. I don’t binge TV, and we watched the first episode way back on 4 March. We picked episode 2 up on 29 March and were done by month’s end. Even I couldn’t get enough of this show. My wife and I both expressed interest in going back and rewatching some Jason Segel movies.

Doing the Unexpected

Oh, and Brett Goldstein? You know him as the gruff Roy on “Ted Lasso.” He wrote two of the episodes, one of which just ripped out the emotions and the tears out of our bodies. He also wrote one of the recent episodes of “Ted Lasso,” one of the more emotional ones. For a guy that I came to know as an actor first, he can really write well.

Back to Ford. After a career of not doing TV, he’s now doing two shows (“1923” is the other one). “1923” is a western so that’s at least in Ford’s wheelhouse, but “Shrinking?” That’s something new. He’s said in interviews that the script was one of the best he’d ever read…and that’s saying quite a bit.

Being the professional actor that he is, I get the sense that “Shrinking” came to him at the right time. He liked what he read and said yes. At first, I suspect he might have been a little hesitant to agree to do a project that was so unlike what he was used to and is known for.

Then, I thought about it differently. What if he took this role exactly because no one expected it of him? How daring is that? Or, rather, how exciting.

When was the last time you thought about creating something—a book, a song, a work of art—that no one expected of you? Did it make you scared? Did that fear make you pause and not move forward?

Or did you accept the fear, defy expectations, and go for it?

Carving Up Your Hours and Meat Loaf’s Example for Creatives

by
Scott D. Parker

You don’t find the time to write. You make time to write.

That’s an adage I’ve held onto for years. I firmly believe that if you truly want to write, you will make the time to write. Thus, the excuse of “I would love to write but I just don’t have the time” flies out the window.

But sometimes you have to carve up your time to find those pockets in which you can write. I did a little exercise this week that you might find instructive if you are wanting to find all those extra minutes in your week to get your fingers on the keyboard and your brain into its imagination.

I started a new day job this month and this is the end of week three. Naturally, I now have a new schedule, one that involves three days in the office and two at home. It felt like I had less time to write, so I broke down my days.

Every weekday, I wake at 5am. Yes, I am a proud member of the 5am Writing Club. Have been a morning writing for going on nine years now, and dedicated 5am-er for the past three or four. I find it liberating to have the house to myself, only a single light on over the kitchen table, and just a cup of coffee (two, actually) beside me as I write. Zero internet, zero TV, zero anything other than a psalm a day until the words are out of my head.

I work in the office Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. That means I have a hard stop at 6am so I can get ready for work, jump in the car with the daily smoothie, and drive to work, usually listening to an audiobook (most recently finished Carol Burnett’s memoir).

So, accounting for the waking, exercising, Bible-reading time, I’m left with approximately 45 mins in the morning to write, give or take. Doing the math, 45 x 3 = 135 mins. Since I work from home on Mondays and Fridays, I allow myself an extra 30 minutes. 75 x 2 = 150 mins. That’s 285 mins, or 4.75 hours per week in the mornings to write. Not bad at all.

Side note: I don’t write during Family Time at night.

Then there are the lunch hours at the day job. Accounting for regular meetings going long and, you know, eating, I estimate I have 45 minutes I can spend writing on my Chromebook. That’s another 135 minutes, which bring us up to about 7 hours per week that I have to myself and I can write.

I have more time on Saturdays. I tend to wake at 7am, get the dogs, head out to Shipley’s for do-nuts, come home, cook and eat breakfast. Generally, I get to writing around 8am and the family leaves me alone. On Saturdays in which there are few things to do, I can get two hours easy. Then, it’s Family Time (or Chore Time) so the writing is off the table. Now I’m up to 9 hours, more or less.

Sundays are a tad different. I still wake at 7, but I have a hard stop around 9:30 or so to get ready for church. So let’s call it a good 90 minutes. Now I’m up to 10.5 hours of writing time per week.

All it took was for me to analyze my schedule and see what time I have available. There’s a lot I can do in 10.5 hours. I knocked out NaNoWriMo’s 1,667-word threshold in any of those given time frames, but if it’s slow going, I can get 800 words in any one of those writing sessions (although my daily goal is 1,000).

Here’s where the math is magical. If I can average a 1,000 words an hour, that means I can write approximately 10,000 new words of fiction per week. With a day job. With Family and Chore Time factored in.

And all I basically ever do is wake up earlier than my family and write. Makes me really happy, productive, and helps start the day on a good note.

Now, how does your week break down?

Meat Loaf’s Example and His Challenge

The news broke yesterday morning that Meat Loaf passed away. I have an unabashed love for his soaring, Broadway-like anthems. In particular, there is a late-career gem I wrote about back in 2016 that was the first song I went to upon hearing the news. Then I listened it again before playing all the songs I have on my Mac.

In the various comments from folks yesterday, more than one commented on Meat Loaf’s improbably resurgence in the early 1990s. In an era of grunge and rap and early hip-hop, here was Meat Loaf singing about the things he would and would not do for love. The song was over the top, the video was even more over the top, but people ate it up. I know I did. There he was, wearing makeup to give him the appearance of a beast, starring in a mini-movie. Were it anyone else, they would have been laughed at.

But not Meat Loaf. He knew who he was, what his talents were, what kind of music he liked and performed well, and just did all that. He was himself no matter what. Sure, he had some down times, but he kept to his talents. When it worked, it soared. When it didn’t, he kept going.

From the last part of the tweet that announced his death came this challenge: “From his heart to your souls…don’t ever stop rocking!”

That’s his challenge to every creative: Don’t ever stop [making your art].

Let Your Creativity Shine: The Inspiring Message of Brad Meltzer

By
Scott D. Parker

Sometimes, a guy is exactly who he seems to be.

I’ve enjoyed Brad Meltzer’s work as a comic book writer and as the author of adult thrillers. His blend of history and exciting, page-turning books is right up my alley. His latest novel, THE ESCAPE ARTIST, is one of my favorite books of the year and has one of the best hooks I've ever read. Here’s my review. Meltzer is also a fantastic interviewee, especially when he deep dives into the stuff he loves. I wrote about one particular interview back in 2015.

This past Thursday, I finally got to meet Meltzer when came to Houston (at Katy’s Books-a-Million) to promote his latest book, I AM NEIL ARMSTRONG.

It is the latest entry in his series of children’s books featuring heroes from history from which we can learn. The genesis of the ongoing project was to remind his own children who were the real heroes. They were ordinary men and women who sought truth, justice, and to achieve something never before accomplished. Here’s one of the quotes from his website: ““These aren't the stories of famous people. This is what we're all capable of on our very best days.”

It is an admirable goal. It is also one that seems to be seeping through. There were something like eighteen kids there. Most held a copy of one of Meltzer’s books in their hands, and not just the Neil Armstrong book. A few had written him letters or drawn him pictures. All because of the stories he told in his books and were illustrated by Christopher Eliopoulos.

Speaking as a Houstonian, I’m very glad Eliopoulos captured the moment when President Kennedy declared the moon as the ultimate goal of the 1960s. You see the background? That’s Houston’s Rice Stadium.

In his his 30-minute talk, Meltzer talked about the genesis of selecting Neil Armstrong. I appreciated his history talk, especially the comment about heroes. In the Depression, when all looked bleak, Superman burst onto the scene. In the months after 9/11, the first Spider-Man movie arrived. I wore my Aquaman shirt (and stood next to a dad wearing a Flash t-shirt) so we had a little of the Justice League present and accounted for.

But heroes don’t always wear capes and tights. Heroes are like Armstrong who did something no other man had ever done. Heroes are Jackie Robinson and Lucille Ball, people who also accomplished things for the first time. And Meltzer—always cognizant of the children sitting on the floor right in front of him—kept reminding them that they could write their own story, be the heroes of their own stories, and make the world a better place. In fact, he uttered a sentence so inspiring I took out my notebook and wrote it down:

“You can use your creativity to put good in the world.”

Frankly, it made me want to get home as soon as possible and work on my stories.
After the talk, we all got back in line and waited for a chance to meet the author, get him to sign anything we brought, and snap a photo with him. The kids went first, of course, and Meltzer treated each one of them like they were the only kid in the store. Actually he did that for everyone, adult and child alike.

In the meantime, I struck up a conversation with some of the folks standing in line around me. All were women, and all were avid readers. We pointed at some of the books lining the shelves and talking about them. We talked about audiobooks. We talked about ereaders like the Kindle (I was the outlier). But there was a funny moment when one of the ladies asked the deadly serious question: do you bend down the corners of pages. Like a rousing chorus, all of them said no. It was so good to stand and chat about books with avid readers. I discussed my books, but like a dunce, I didn’t have any of my business cards with me. [Shakes head] But I got to meet Meltzer, let him know how much I enjoyed his thrillers, his comics, and how glad I am that Scott Brick—my favorite audiobook reader—is the narrator of his adult books.

Let me circle around back to the quote I captured: “You can use your creativity to put good in the world.” Think about that today. Then follow through.

Best News of the Week
Here at the Parker house, we got great news this week. My wife, Vanessa—jewelry artist extraordinaire!—is featured in HoustonVoyage Magazine. Here’s the link with her interview and some spectacular photos of her work. Need a hint at how good her work is? Here you go.

Through the fear

by: Joelle Charbonneau

This week was the first college opera performance for one of my students.  While wishing him luck on opening night, I typed the Italian words "In bocca al lupo" and told him if he didn't know the phrase, he should learn it.

Why?

Because in opera as in theater, it's bad luck to say good luck.  Instead, we say a variety of things.

Toi toi.

Break a leg.

In bocca al lupo.

I think the Italian version is my favorite.  Literally translated it means in the mouth of the wolf.  And the person to whom the phrase is directed should respond with "Crepi il lupo" - May the wolf die!

A bit violent, but a good description of the emotions that go hand in hand with stepping in front of an audience and putting your hard work and talent on the line.  It can very much feel like putting your hand into the mouth of the wolf.  And trust me when I say you don't want the wolf to come out the victor.

Since having that Facebook exchange, I've thought a lot about stepping into the mouth of the wolf both as a performer and now as a writer.  No matter how hard you've worked, there is no guarantee that the finished product of your labor will be well-received.  It takes just as much work to put on a bad show as it does a good one.  It takes just as many hours (sometimes more) to write a bad book.  Just because you put your hand into the mouth of the wolf doesn't mean that you won't get bit.

Writing (and performing) are rewarding.  There is something truly wondrous about a kernel of an idea coming to life because of your effort.  But with any creative endeavor--there is a risk.  There is a good chance that after all the hard work and dedication, you'll fail.  The wolf will win.

This week, I started a brand new project.  It's something very different from everything I've done up until now.  The more I work on the idea, the more I realize that it is going to require a great deal of courage to write.  I don't know if anyone will want to publish this book.  I don't know if I can do the idea justice.  But I'm going to try.

So, like in theater and opera, I am now stepping into the mouth of the wolf.  The curtain is going up.  If I'm lucky, I will defeat the wolf.  If not....I won't regret the adventure.

To all of you who are creating on the stage, the page, or in another medium - I say to you:

IN BOCCA AL LUPO!

And hopefully we will all triumph over the wolf.