“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”
– Henry David Thoreau

Well, hello there, Big Bad Blog World!  I haven’t seen you in a while.  Allow me to re-introduce myself.  My name is Melissa Halsey Caudill and I have not written a blog post in ELEVEN DAYS.  What?!  Eleven days??  Well, let me tell ya – these have been some busy eleven days.  I sure do miss writing on here…and I’ll be back to posting regularly pretty soon.  But, for now, I just wanted to pop back on here and give a quick update explaining my recent absence.

Last week, I was involved in a play called It’s a Wonderful Life – A Live Radio Show.  This was the George Bailey story we all know and love, but with a slight twist in that it’s performed entirely as a radio show.  Set in the 1940s, a group of four actors, a radio host, and a sound effects guy all meet together to vocally perform this timeless classic while “live” on the air in front of a studio audience.  I was blessed to work with an extremely talented cast and crew to put this together in a very short amount of time.  I was blown away by the talent that surrounded me on that stage, and the ability of everyone to put together such a fantastic show in less than two weeks.

Well, as part of this unique theatre experience, an offer was presented to local businesses.  Rather than our performing the scripted fake commercial ads that are included with the show, we offered businesses the chance to purchase an ad spot in our show and we (as in “I”) would write them their own personalized skit and jingle to be sung to a popular Christmas tune.  Much to our surprise, many businesses took us up on the offer and I found myself with about 20 commercial spots to fill in a matter of days.  Much to my relief, my female costar and theatre company owner, Kim-Noel, picked up the slack and, between the two of us, we met the deadline.  And, even if I do say so myself, they were actually pretty good!  Making sure to include lots of humor, yet keeping with the 40s theme while marketing current-day products and services, turned out to be a challenge – but one that we rose to and met.  I was so incredibly proud of the end result.  Watching my co-stars sing the words that I had written, and hearing the laughter from the audience because of it, was a thrill like no other.

So, while I have in fact been absent from the blog, I have not been absent from writing.  I hope my regular followers will stay tuned and keep checking back in for more work soon.  For now, I’m basking in the glow of the end to my week of furious deadline-driven writing and enjoying a much-needed respite.  But no worries – you can’t keep this mouth shut for long.  As said in my best Arnold Schwarzenegger voice, “I’ll be baaack.”

I just had to take a page from Mr. Thoreau as he so eloquently put it in that quote I posted at the beginning of this blog.  It was time to stand up and live for a bit.  But you can bet your patootie that I’ll be sitting back down again here soon to write about it.

See you soon!

***

“Either write something worth reading, or do something worth writing.” 
– Benjamin Franklin