It’s spring break, y’all, and the highway is calling. As you know, I’ve written an entire musical about someone who idealizes road trips (The Mad Ones, formerly known as for anyone who has been under a rock for the last year, The Unauthorized Autobiography of Samantha Brown). For this freewrite, let’s think about a road trip where the reality didn’t live up to expectation, where you (or your character) discovers something unexpected about yourself.
Appropriately, here’s some Jack Kerouac to get you going. I came back to this quote again and again when I was writing for Sam:
“I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was - I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost.”
Because it was so effective last week, I made you a road trip playlist. This one does have some lyrics. We’ll see how we feel about that. Because the playlist is 32 minutes, so is this sprint. I know those extra 2 minutes are going to make all the difference.