A Day Off… Sort Of

It’s Friday, and this week that meant a day off from my real job for me.  Finally, a chance to sleep in and not be too tired when I start my practicing.  Unfortunately, that’s not exactly how it turned out.  I woke up at 8:00 (when you go to work at 4:00 a.m., 8:00 is sleeping in) only to find that my wife was sick and staying home from her job today.  Bummer.  So, I’ve decided to take a sort of break from practicing today and take care of the poor girl.  I thought about having the cat do it, but he didn’t seem enthusiastic.

Dickens writing. I've heard of this guy

So what do I mean by “sort of break?” Well, instead of the usual locking myself in my office and jumping around and yelling that I usually do, I’m going to use my time today to rewrite some scripts.  I’ve already got the rope script pretty good, just needs some rewriting since I altered the ending.  I’ve started writing the egg and silk trick as well.  The ball, fruit, and flute doesn’t have a lot of dialog besides, “hey watch this weird thing.”  That just leaves the rings, cup and ball, and the mouth coil.  These won’t be too bad, only the cup and ball requires a lot of talking.  The other two are mainly exposition.  The hard part will be getting the Elizabethan dialect and vocabulary right.  I had no idea how difficult this would be until the other day when I did the rope script.  My thoughts on scripting magic have always been “keep it simple, no B.S.”  But, in order to make it sound right in the context of a Renaissance faire, it’s got to be anything but simple.  Not only do I need to “fancy it up,” I also need to watch my vocabulary, not use certain words or expressions and use words or expression that existed at the time.  Luckily, there are several websites I’ve found that have been very helpful.  Like this one.

It’s off to write then, and, of course, take care of my darling wife.  Wish me luck!