Getting Better News

and other strategies for self-regulation

Mar 06, 2025

While not paying attention to the news today, I wrote a poem, walked my dog, ran 2 miles, showered, cooked, ate, met with a client, worked on this Substack, and attended a rehearsal for a short play I wrote that will be presented 3/27 - 4/6 (link coming). I have an IFS training to attend at 3pm, another client, and a group coaching later tonight. I’ll also walk my dog again. It’s a beautiful day.

If you are struggling with a sense of uncertainty (or hopelessness) about what’s really happening, what’s true, this is by design. Corporate interests and government strategies are counting on your fear, your compliance, and your sheep-like nature to be led.

You can take back your sense of control by controlling your access to the media. Not by shutting down to play ostrich but by deciding which media you want.

I highly suggest ending your scrolling habit if you have one. Start targeting what you want to be informed about. I chose 2 issues that I try to stay on top of (Palestine and abortion). I use specific newsletters to keep me updated, things I can read in my own time, like Jessica Valenti’s Abortion Every Day and Bill McKibben’s The Crucial Years on climate change. For Palestine I read several news sources including Mondoweiss. And then there’s our government…

I will not let the news remove my joy. I will not let emails desperately seeking funding and freaking out about the potential for crisis to ruin my day. Yes, I send lots of petitions. But I also use this amazing button we all have called Delete.

Once you have figured out how to pro-actively support what you want to support, you can use Delete freely without feeling as if you are ignoring the problems. We are all human. We all have limits. We all have nervous systems and the need to regulate ourselves.

There are many wonderful organizations protesting and creating change. There are many ways to participate. A few include: 5Calls.org or Indivisible.org or CalllingUpJustice.com. It’s up to you.

Do not let corporate media dictate your day or how you feel. You can break your links to the mainstream machines that do not have your best interests at heart. You can get your news from Voices from the Holy Land or The Intercept when you want to, not randomly as you scroll. Or read books on the subjects that interest you to deepen your awareness of the issues beyond the sound bites.

It’s up to you. Resistance begins with our own ability to show up for the fight. And I know I can’t fight from a place of dysregulation or fear. I need a full night’s sleep. I need a decent, well-cooked meal. I need to be able to walk my dog and enjoy the forest. I need to be able to breathe in order to access my stores of hope which are always exactly where I left them. In my heart.

The Prompt:

Again this week’s craft prompt is from a series I’ve been doing in Brave Space based on Aristotle’s Poetics. Aristotle chose 6 elements he considered to be important for great drama. If you write other things, please feel free to adapt this for your own purposes.

Aristotle explains SONG as the rhythm and shape of language as it unfolds in drama, including music.

Merriam Webster definition of music: a) the science or art of ordering tones or sounds in succession, in combination, and in temporal relationships to produce a composition having unity and continuity b) vocal, instrumental, or mechanical sounds having rhythm, melody, or harmony.

Cambridge English Dictionary definition of music: a pattern of sounds made by musical instruments, voices, or computers, or a combination of these, intended to give pleasure to people listening to it.

Whatever your relationship is to music, it is enough. It is enough to understand how to use it to create patterns, structure, and ways to inspire, inform and create plays or stories. (Virginia Woolf said she couldn't write until she found the rhythm of the story.) For example, I think of each character as having their own rhythm. I think it's especially important to find this in a play since plays are so heavily focused on characters and language is the most present tool we have for characters to use with which to establish themselves. Each character has their own distinct rhythm.

If, as an example, you wanted to write in the structure of a symphony, (with 4 movements), you could. Quiara Alegrìa Hudes wrote, “Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue” (for 4 characters using fugue as a way to structure the play and inform the play which is also about fugue as a kind of psychological loss). So the structure functions as part of the illumination of the content. You can choose from what you already know. It's often better to go with what is already in you, because it's yours. We want to engage with the tools we already have. And structure is not necessarily something you’re going to have or know going into a project. Sometimes structure isn’t evident until you’re created your Discovery Draft.

Working with character, are there characters that embody specific rhythms? Do they march to their own drum? Or march steadily in 4/4 time? Is Tomasina a waltz in Arcadia? Do you have a scene between an old Blues man and a younger Hip Hop dude? What about Summer Rain or Snowfall? Who is a heartbeat and who is a train ride?

Working with setting/place(s) how can you bring these rhythmic elements into the settings and what disrupts those settings? You can create so much texture bringing musicality and rhythm into it.

We can think of Dialogues as songs, Monologues as arias or solos. An ensemble cast can play off each other as a jazz improvisation. Throughline might be a melody.

Other components of music that can structure a play or a scene or a moment can include harmonies, harmonics, counterpoint and silences. How does silence function in your play? What happens in the rests? In this scene? In your life? What is your and/or your characters' relationships to silence? Who fills the empty spaces? Who craves silence/space? What is enabled by it?

Often we are working toward a transformation that we want to feel truly authentic. Sometimes only silence can allow for that to happen. Use it.

Upcoming Classes!

Good News! The Dramatists Guild Institute is teaming up with PlayPenn to offer a roster of Spring Classes with Roland Tec, Pandora Scooter, James Anthony Tyler and me! I’ll be teaching Structure is Not a Dirty Word starting Tuesdays, April 1st through June 3rd, 6pm - 9pm ET via Zoom.

AND this Sunday, March 9th, 2-5pm ET for playwrights/screenwriters interested in EVENTS & REVERSALS: making things happen! No saggy second acts!

Brave Space Schedule:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

3/6 Thursday 7pm ET Brave Group Coaching
3/7 Friday 12pm ET Brave Space w/fast feedback

3/9    Sunday 2pm ET Events & Reversals Workshop
         Sunday 6pm ET All Human Brave Space
         Sunday 730pm ET Brave Sharing Salon
3/10  Monday 12pm ET Brave Space
3/12  Wednesday 12pm ET Brave Space
3/13  Thursday 7pm ET Brave Group Coaching
3/14  Friday 12pm ET Brave Space w/fast feedback

3/16   Sunday 6pm ET All Human Brave Space
3/17  Monday 12pm ET Brave Space
3/19  Wednesday 12pm ET Brave Space
3/20  Thursday 7pm ET Brave Group Coaching
3/21  Friday 12pm ET Brave Space w/fast feedback

3/23   Sunday 6pm ET All Human Brave Space
3/24  Monday 12pm ET Brave Space
3/26  Wednesday 12pm ET Brave Space
3/27  Thursday 7pm ET Brave Group Coaching
3/28  Friday 12pm ET Brave Space w/fast feedback

Each week Fridays include fast feedback for up to 1 page (@300 words) of writing or to discuss a craft issue/get help on your project. 

Each month there is a Sharing Salon on the Second Sunday (730pm ET) for sharing up to 10 minutes of work (up to 1500 words).

Share Emma’s BraveSpace.online Substack

Opportunities:

Breath of Fire is offering free evenings online to write your play with the amazing Diana Burbano on Wednesdays 630 - 830pm PST. Diana is the Artistic Literary Leader of Breath of Fire, an award-winning playwright, Equity Actor and Teaching Artist for South Coast Rep. From 2/26 - 10/22/25.

Play the game of Telephone for all kinds of writers and artists, a global community of responses. (I’m loving it!)

Women in the Arts & Media have a list of opps you can sign up to get monthly.

For poets looking for UK opps, sign up for Angela T. Carr’s Wordbox with monthly opps & more!

Clubbed Thumb's New Play Commission due March 20th!

Due April 1st, T. Schreiber Studios wants short plays on the theme “It Happened to Me.” There is a $5 submission fee, but if selected, they pay a small stipend and your work is produced in NYC in June. (I did this a few years ago with them, and they produced the plays at Theatre Row. This year I think it’s at ART/NY.)

Pittsburgh New Works seeks one-act plays for their 2025 season of world premieres. 15 to 20 plays will be selected as full productions or readings. Read their guidelines (they have changed somewhat) and if your play qualifies, submit it no later than Sunday, April 6!

For 10-30 min plays for The ReOrient Festival (about the Middle East Or by Middle Eastern writers) til April 30th more info / submit

April 1: The Democracy Cycle 2025 Open Call

The Barn’s residencies take place in Lee, Massachusetts -- we offer one residency in the spring (roughly the first full week of June) and one in the fall (roughly the second full week of October). Residents are provided with room, board, working space, and a stipend of $600 for the duration of their stay. These residencies support emerging artists in the performing arts. Reach out to info@thebarnatlee.org with any questions or for more information.

Amazing People Doing Amazing Things:

If you’re in NYC and looking for the best self-defense class, PREPARE changed my life! I highly recommend them. If you ask, for groups/schools, they might travel.

SUR: The Trojan Women Project Sat. 3/29 to 4/6 in New York @ LA MAMA'S ELLEN STEWART THEATRE. https://www.lamama.org/sur/ or more info here

JOIN 100 Days of Creative Resistance! free email of encouragement, opposition, and commiseration — a reminder of why we write and create — from 100 iconoclastic contemporary voices on each of the first 100 days of the 47th president’s regime.

Audrey Cephaly has written a great Substack on How to Write the 10 Minute Play - I highly recommend her Substack every day, but especially this one.

TOUCH a new play by Lori Goodman directed by Janice L. Goldberg will run at The Tank, 2/20 - 3/16. With the inimitable Carole Foreman in the lead role! Sit w/me 3/8

Take a Poetry Workshop with Only Poems.

If you’re not already subscribed to Mark Ravenhill’s free newsletter for his 101 exercises for playwrights, you might want to click here to do that. If you’ve missed them til now, reach out and I’ll send you a pdf of the 1st 53, and a pdf of 54 - now. That way you don’t have to search through the endless Twitter-verse for them (they are there, but out of order).