I finished the outline of my Bob’s Burgers episode, and I must say, I am very happy with it. I think it’s a good episode that really explores the characters, and the Bob and Linda and the restaurant plot I came up with – where they get a karaoke machine – has oodles of comedic potential.

But now that I am finished with that, I must now turn to the other thing I have that is due next Wednesday : the two skits I am submitting to Sketch class for potential inclusion in the skit show that will be produced next term (I think).

And I am freaking nearly all the way out over that, because I want them to be SO GOOD that I am putting way too much pressure on myself.

Luckily, neither skit needs to be one I submitted to class. That’s good because I don’t think any of them are all that great. I mean, they are okay, but nowhere near as good as I can do. The ones I submit this Wednesday have got to be something truly special. I really want to knock people’s socks off. I want them to think, “My god, who wrote that? Because it was hilarious!”.

I want them to stand up and cheer at the end of the skit.

The conundrum is that I know damned well that the way to achieve that end is to relax, stop putting so much pressure on myself, and let the funny come to me. My best stuff always comes from a place of fun and play. That was easy before because I wasn’t writing for anyone but me, essentially, in the sense that there was no specific audience I was trying to please and no gatekeeper’s approval to seek.

In this case, there is a gatekeeper – my prof Jackie – but I am guaranteed one skit in the show. So all she will do is pick which one.

But that only makes things worse, because I just know that if something I am not proud of is performed in the show – in front of a real audience, with real actors having to learn my lines and everything – then it will just fucking crush me.

Which is the problem in a nutshell, really : I care too damned much about this. Far beyond the point where it is productive. Sure, every artists has to care about their art in order to have any chance of achieving excellence. But they can’t afford to care so much that it makes them unable to act because the stakes are too damned high.

So some time between now and Tuesday night, I have to write not one but two dynamite, knockout, epoch-making skits that will leave audiences breathless with laughter and make me a god amongst men.

So ya know…. no pressure.

I have a few strategies in mind for getting the creative juices flowing. For one, I am going to go over my skits from long ago in order to try to get into that same mindset where I wrote what amused me and was pleased by it. I will also go through my skit idea files and try to be a little more open minded and forgiving this time so I don’t get too depressed by the experience.

A big part of the problem is that whatever I write has to be able to be performed on stage, with a very tiny budget, and no spotlights or any other kind of special lighting. This is severely limiting and quite frustrating to work around. And a little ironic, because in other classes I have been getting negative feedback about my tendency to only write conversations.

A conversation based skit would be perfect for the stage! I just resent having no choice in the matter.

I will get there eventually. I will work through all this panic and reluctance and get to a place where I can relax and let my mind wander and find that killer idea that will be hilarious, fun to write, and really show off my mad creative skills.

And then do the same thing again. Sigh. It has to be two really good skits because I have no idea which one Jackie will choose. If I do one really good one and one meh one, she might very well pick the meh one and then I will wanna shoot myself.

I have to admit, the whole thing has me so nervous that I am tempted to do the homework for Thursday and Friday first. Get them out of the way. But that might lead to my not having enough time to work on my skits, and that leads to rushing, and rushing is the mortal enemy of excellence.

And when it comes to this, I am all about the excellence.

Another factor in my favor is that there is no set length for a skit. The prof has said she needs short things as much as she needs long. So I might come up with a whole passel of little funny bits that can be used between skits. Stuff that is simple, only takes a couple of actors, and only take up a corner of the stage so people can change sets and stuff on the rest of the stage.

Then again, we have no spotlights, so…. that wouldn’t work.

Still, something like a monologue would at least give the other actors time to get into makeup and costume for the next real skit. It’s something to think about.

I know I am one funny, funny guy. I know I have written brilliant stuff before. I know that I can do it again. I just have to keep repeating one of my mantras to myself : The stakes don’t change the game. Whether it’s seen by a million people or just me, the skit is either funny or it isn’t. So I should just relax and pretend like it’s all just for fun.

Because at the end of the day…. everything is.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I have been working on the “outline” of my episode of Bob’s Burgers today…. and it’s been awesome.

And hard. Basically, an outline is the TV world’s equivalent of a Hollywood “treatment”. Both are extremely detailed versions of everything that happens in the movie. Like a beat sheet, it is still in the form of a plot breakdown, but an outline is far more detailed.

Here’s just one section :

Int. School Hallway – Day

Louise is hurrying to class when she bumps into a girl she’s never met before and feels compelled to tell said girl how much she likes the girl’s skull and knife motif clothing. The girl thanks her and says her Mom got it for her from the P’tit Mort store online. Louise gets her to spell that for her so she can enter it into her phone and pester her mother to buy her stuff from there when she gets home from school. Louise asks the new girl why she’s not met her before, and the new girl says she just moved into the area and her first day was yesterday. Louise says she was sick that day, but she is glad to have met the new girl now. The bell rings, and Louise says “Crap!” and dashes off toward class, only to immediately dash back and say “By the way, my name is Louise. I’ll see you at lunch. Bye!” before dashing off again. The new girl shouts “Pleased to meet you Louise, I’m Eleanor!” after her.

As a result, it takes way more effort than the beat sheet did… and I am loving it. My mind is all fired up from the constant exercising of my imagination and I feel like it’s glowing like a blade in the forge as a result. I love it. No video game could hope to compete.

And that’s something I have been thinking about lately. I realize that part of the transformation I am trying to achieve is to fully embrace how much I love to create. I keep coming back to the idea of “I’d rather be writing”, and I am making a conscious effort to reinforce that idea every single time it returns so that I can loosen the grip that video games have on me and become more productive.

Video games will always be a part of my life, but in order to go forward, I need to scale it back to “fun hobby I can take or leave” levels. I have realized how much time I have been pouring into Fallout 4 and how deeply addicted I was to the time I spent in that world, where I was competent and deadly and heroic and involved and… well, all the things I am not in the real world.

And while there is nothing inherently wrong with that in the short term, the out of control escapism that is represents is not good for me. Over the last month or two, I have been doing whatever I could to maximize my Fallout 4 time, and measuring my days in how much time I would have to play Fallout 4. And I think that has drained a lot of my energies. And my work has suffered as a result. It dulled my creative edge, and led me to doing my homework as quickly and cheaply as I could so I could get back to the game.

And that’s just plain unhealthy.

Plus I need those energies for my school work. I want to produce top quality stuff and that takes dedication and focus as well as the energy to approach it with the right combination of dedication, playfulness, fun, and determination to show the world just how fucking awesome I am.

So I am going to spend more time writing and less time burning brain calories on things like video games. They’re great fun and a good way to relax, but only in moderation. Too much, and I start to lose my already tenuous connection to the real world, and I don’t have a lot of that to spare.

I have to stay connected to reality. Everything I want is there!

Speaking of video games, started on a new one today. It’s called Bioshock Infinite, and I bought it with the Indigo gift card my sister Catherine got me for my birthday way back in May, along with a couple of books.

It was hard to figure out what to buy (hello, option paralysis) but eventually I picked Bioshock Infinite because it was in my price range the the reviews for it were off da hook, y’all.

I mean seriously. The Metacritic score is 94… out of a hundred. That’s like an A+ game! And the reviewers were heaping it with praise, calling it things like “visionary”, “beautiful”, an “achievement” and so on.

And as I have finally gotten sick of Fallout 4, more or less (the two games are different enough that I may alternate), I figured it was time to give the new game a try.

And so far, it’s a hell of a game. It started off very slow… you walk through the game’s world without a lot to do, just soaking it all in. But things start getting creepy pretty much right away. The cult that runs the flying city that is the setting is super fucking disturbing… every thing I learned about them made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Lots of heavy handed Christian-like talk about the path of righteousness, being purified, heaping fire on “the Sodom below”, aka the USA, revering Washington, Franklin, and Jefferson like they are the Trinity, racism, a land that is like some kind of 1910 conservative’s wet dream where everyone is a gentleman or lady and there’s no minorities and it’s all picnics and the county fair and “wholesome” businesses.

But they really outdid themselves with the dread in one part of the intro : all along your path, you have been seeing propaganda posters about the “false shepherd” who seeks to lead the righteous away from the one true path and cast them into hell and so forth and so on.

Then you come across one that said “You shall know the False Shepherd by his mark!” and it shows a hand with AD stamped on it.

Guess what you have stamped on YOUR hand.

I was like, “oh shit oh shit o shit”. It was an amazingly effective storytelling moment.

Shortly after that, you are (of course) discovered, and the game, which has been quite bucolic up until that point, suddenly turns ULTRA fucking violent. It really caught me off guard. And now it’s a pulse pounding nonstop FPS thrill ride.

Should be a heck of a trip!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.