Callbacks!

I auditioned for the solo of my choir's Little Mermaid medley for our upcoming spring concert, and only learned at the last minute that by auditioning for the solo, you are automatically guaranteeing that you are going to go on tour. All soloists, and handbell ringers, by volunteering for those positions, are needed on tour to provide consistancy. Thank God I have a steady enough job, that I can take a week off in advance for this tour and not lose my employment.

Anyway, I was about fourth or fifth in a line of about thirty to thirty-five girls total, all of whom have seen the movie since they were five and whose greatest wish since that age has been to BE the Little Mermaid in all of her red-headed-rebellious-sixteen-year-old-fishy-glory. When I started singing, I was taken aback because the pianist was playing the song a lot slower than I was expecting it to be sung (making it more ballad than Broadway), which cramped my "acting" attempts at first, but eventually I caught on to the rhythm and finished the song with an appropriately belting last note ("I want mooooOOOOORRREE!"). Once I was done, I walked out of the room and down to the busstop. I thought I aced the audition, but only for about a hundred feet, and then I started thinking about all the things I must have done wrong with it. I was stilted for the first few long lines, my last note wasn't loud enough, I didn't act the part as much as I wanted, maybe I used too much vibrato and was a little too opera...

Needless to say, the first thing I did this morning was check my e-mail for a message from the choir director - and lo and behold: he chose five girls for callbacks, to come back and audition for the role next Wednesday. And I'M ONE OF THE FIVE! Good news: I still have a big, big chance to get the role - and he's stated that he wants the song to be very belty and Broadway! Bad news: Now I have to wait and pine and rehearse and worry FOR ANOTHER WEEK. Gah!

As for my writing, listening to a certain song from Dreamgirls somehow gave me the inspiration to start up again on my "Safety Boyfriend" screenplay, which has reminded me how much I love writing screenplays, which has me more than ever convinced that it's what I want to do for a living.

I'm actually seriously considering moving to L.A. after I graduate, and just going for it. I know it's cheesy, but in all the biographies and stories I've read of people who've made it, they all got it because they went for the throat and took a huge risk. They knocked on the Big Man's door and gave them their script, or started as the lowliest of the production company's receptionists to climb their way up, or pulled every string they owned so that someone would listen. I know I'm a great writer, and I've loved movies my whole life and I don't think there's anything else is this world that I could be as good at than screenwriting. I also think that I don't have much of a chance if I stay in Edmonton as a librarian while writing screenplays on the side.

I think this is what I would like to do - go to LA, and wait tables or fold khakis for the Gap or send millions of e-mails in an office building while writing like a madwoman at night, research the industry and take my screenplays to every agent or director or production company I can. There's no better time to do it than after I graduate - to take a risk while I'm young and foolish and resilient so that if on the unlucky chance I end up a catastrophic failure I can still recover, try out grad school again, and write novels in the evenings after cataloguing books in the afternoon. I have a family who loves me and would support me if I really needed it (although I would make every effort to make sure I didn't really need it until I actually really needed it, of course), which would not be the case if I waited for ten years until I had job security and tried it out at thirty or forty.

So far, though, even the thought of moving out of my parents' house gives me the willies, but I'm going to spend the next year and half thinking this over, saving my money, researching the movie industry, becoming less of a lazy-ass writer, and looking up Los Angeles busroutes - oh yeah, and learning how to live on my own. I'm going to need to do that, heh heh. I'm so ignorant of even basic things right now - like paying income tax, or rent, or painting a fence or cleaning a bathroom....

I have a year and half to learn these things. Wish me luck.