Playwrights Urged To Unite In Protest

Ninety-nine percent of theatres who consider original, scripts or who sponsor play contests, stipulate that submissions must be previously unproduced--- in that one requirement laying down an insurmountable barrier to play development.
These theatres claim to support emerging playwrights, but they, in fact, do not.
Most play publishing services will not consider a play unless it has been produced multiple times. Most nationally recognized theatres will not consider a new play for their season unless it has been produced several times.
This is not an unreasonable requirement. Publishers and prominent theatres are looking for plays that have had multiple trials by fire and have come through those trials with all dross burned away and only pure gold remaining.
A serious playwright's goal, therefore, is to have his or her play produced multiple times, hoping to advance from smaller venues to larger ones, each time making those adjustments that will clear the dross and polish the gold.
How can this happen when almost every theatre or contest limits submissions to only those that have never been produced? If a playwright achieves production in one contest, boom, he is done. Under current standards, by winning once, he has eliminated himself from further production elsewhere.
The time has come to send a unified voice of reason to theatres and contests. I recommend that whenever you encounter submission requirements that allow for only unproduced plays, you send this letter:

Dear Theatre,
For a new play to successfully achieve publication, professional production, and artistic prominence, it first must be produced in multiple venues until it gains perfection and recognition.
When theatres limit submissions to only unproduced plays, they prevent further development of a script, and fail in their support of emerging playwrights.
On behalf of all playwrights, may I respectfully urge you to change your submission requirements to allow previously produced plays? Perhaps your submission requirements could say that only plays "previously published, produced by a professional theatre, or produced within 100 miles of" your theatre, would be ineligible.
In that way you would be supporting the multiple production development of new plays while still insuring that your theatre presents hitherto unseen material in your audience area.
Respectfully,

If play contests and theatres that accept new plays begin receiving this request from playwrights throughout the U.S., they will eventually effect a change in their submission requirements, and developing plays will not be dead in the water after one production.

This Blog Is Going On Hiatus

Frankly, there is not much that I can say that would be fascinating to others. I suppose I could treat this blog as a journal, but my daily thoughts and feelings go into the actual "works" that I write and email conversations I have with my friends, which are somewhat privileged. My journal entries would be something pitiful, such as, "Rain today. Planted radishes." So many experts say one must have a blog in order to sell books. Believe me, what I have been blogging so far--to 14 people who never check the blog anyway--is nothing that would sell my books. Nor, do I intend to write over and over again how wonderful my books are. So, this blog is officially going on hiatus until such time as I have fascinating things to say on it.

Frightened by my own inadequacies

Slowly over the past few months, I have written a narrative play titled SLEEPER. It wasn't as immediate as other projects, and so I picked it up and laid it down often, adding to it in random moments.

I finished it a week ago and laid it aside to let it gain a little distance. The manuscript sits in a neat pile, every day reminding me of its existence. I should read it now, and get to working on rewrites. Of course there will be rewrites and rewrites are always an improvement, but I am frightened of picking it up and reading what I have got on paper the first time around and discovering that it's no good.

I'm mostly a humorist. I usually write light, funny stuff. SLEEPER is not funny. Not only is it not funny, but I intended it to have an emotional build to a highly dramatic climax. Will my attempt to write something serious and dramatic proves to be inadequate? What if there isn't so much as a kernel of what I want it to be? Nothing there that even several rewrites could fix?

It sits there looking at me. I wonder if it's got any potential? I wonder when I'll get around to reading it.

Defining Discourtesy

I posted on Facebook recently, "Courtesy trumps all." The post garnered a number of comments from people who agreed with me. Without exception then mentioned that "please" and "thank you" always were best for people to remember.

That's certainly true, but I find that many discourteous people hide behind a smoke screen of please and thank you and get credit for being polite people.

The discourtesy I dislike has to do with what people actually do--or don't do.

I think I wrote about this recently, and I'm repeating myself. I'll have to learn to deal with it. Is dealing with it simply ignoring discourtesy, telling a person they're being discourteous, or shunning the person in the future?

Courtesy trumps all.

I think many of my friends fool themselves into thinking their friends are good friends.

Take, for example, a person who never answers emails or returns phone calls. Let's call him John Doe. When I express the opinion that John does not think much of me because he does not give me the courtesy of responsiveness, these friends will say, "Oh, no, pay no attention to that. He's really a nice guy, he just isn't good about responding to anyone's emails." I beg to differ. John IS like that. He doesn't bother to answer emails; what's nice about that?

Or take the lady who is habitually late for meeting with her friends, sometimes as much as 45 minutes. When I remark that she is not very polite and apparently has a low regard for her friends, I get, "Oh, no, Jane isn't like that, she's an extremely polite person; she just has trouble getting places on time." I beg to differ. Jane IS like that. She has no problem making friends cool their heels and wait for her. What's polite about that?

People like that get away with being discourteous because they have friends who insist they "aren't like that." Why are these friends fooling themselves? What people do is what they're like.

Who is the better man?

This puzzles me: Take two brothers, Pierre and Alphonse, both artists.

Pierre painted charming pictures of his picturesque seaside village, and sold hundreds of them a year for a goodly price to tourists. His charming paintings sold so well that over the years he and his wife lived in comfort in a nice home. Their children grew up and married and Pierre knew the satisfaction of using his painting income to help give them a start. Pierre finally retired to a comfortable leisure of fishing and taking his grandchildren to the beach.

Alphonse, on the other hand, refused to paint "charming" pictures for the tourists. He had a vision and he followed it on canvas after canvas--all unappreciated for their lack of prettiness and meaning. Undaunted, Alphonse painted his vision with a frenzy. He never married, never worked at gainful employment. When he was close to starvation, he crawled to Pierre's door, was taken in, fed, clothed and brought back to health, whereupon he would leave the stultifying bourgeoise atmosphere of Pierre's house to continue painting his vision.

They are both dead now. Pierre's grandchildren are prosperous, well-settled, and have fond memories of the old gentleman, whose charming paintings may still be found in second-hand stores. Alphonse has no grandchildren, but he has been discovered by the art world, and art dealers are making huge amounts of money selling his paintings. He is famous. Books are written about him.

Who is the better man? Are we judged by the life we live while we are alive? Or if our life was miserable, can all of our poor choices be disregarded if we leave a legacy? And what legacy? Pigment on canvas or loving descendants?

Now this is the true Joan thinking: Why can't the Alphonse's of life paint charming pictures half the day and "visionary" images the other half? Should a writer who writes advertising copy during the day and "the great American novel" at night, loathe the work that gives him heat, food and security to write at night?

What's help worth?

I was reading something today that reminded me of an opinion I have long held (also reminded me of a "what if?" situation for a novel plot) for some time.

You know when there's a death in the family or someone's been in an accident or in the hospital or some such, and everyone calls and says, "What can I do to help?" If things are not too bad and you can cope, of course you would rather do things yourself. But if you're really strung out, you grab for kind offers.

So you say, "Yes! Thank you, Helma, you can help! If I shoot you a list of telephone numbers, can you call all these people right away and tell them Uncle Henry died and when the funeral is? We have only two days until the funeral so they have to be notified right away. And can you ask Jim and Hank if they will be pall bearers? Thank you sooooo much!"

The next morning, after spending the night helping Aunt Minerva select a suit and take it to the funeral home and visit the pastor and reserve the church, you call Helma and ask if she had any trouble contacting anyone, and she says, "Oh, you know, I had to drive the girls to their ballet lesson and Herman got home late from work so supper was late and by then it was 9:30 and I thought that was too late to call, but I'll get on it right away this morning."

So at noon you call Helma (between ordering flowers, finding soloists, and contacting the Church Circle for lunch) and you ask her how it went, and Helma says, "Oh, my, I'm sorry, you hit me at such a busy time. I'm on it right now, though; I've set aside time."

You tell her forget it, you'll do it. Your voice is grim. And five will get you ten she is offended and says something like, "Well! That's the last time I offer to help!"

Something like this has happened to me several times and I've learned my lesson. Let people view me as someone who won't accept help from her friends; from now on I'm only accepting help from what? overachievers? true friends? non-morons?

Organization is Tough

I, who value organization above many other things, have an organization problem. It's the reverse of what many writers deal with. My muse hands me inspiration and fantastic ideas for novels, short stories, plays, columns, every time I turn around. I can't seem to stop thinking "what if" when I drive past a lady standing on a boulevard with too many packages, or see ladies in the grocery store intent on displaying their canteloupes, or watch two feisty robins chase a hawk, or see a squirrel cross the driveway, or..... Yes, of course, I jot them all down. I have masses of jottings and mini outlines. But they pile up. And sometimes I feel as though I am spending too much time jotting when I should be writing. Worse, when I select a jotting to be fleshed out, I am torn by all the other jottings that are just as interesting and I sometimes start to work on two of them--an hour on one an hour on the other. What I really want is to be locked in my nice warm cave with my computer with no interruptions, no cats, no need to clean myself, and a little conveyer that sends in food every once in a while.

What's the play about?

I came across a playwright who could not respond to "What's the play about?"

"It's about traditions," she said.

The conversation did not get any better after that. She assumed my literary IQ was room temperature and went into a long artistically overblown song and dance about people who expect a plot. A plot! Good heavens no. I expect an arc. I expected her to have sufficient literary IQ to describe her play, plot or not. For instance: "Richard examines his toes for two hours and concludes that Amanda left him because they were ugly." Or how about this? "Three men reveal their empty lives while waiting for a fourth, who never shows." Or this? "Marianne goes slowly insane while locked in a pink room with nothing but memories of her failures."

Is My Book Worth It!

I'm on a humor discussion board at Amazon, and so many of the posts are self-promoting. Well... yeah... why not? However, the problem, in my estimation, is that we authors may say our book is hilarious, laugh-a-minute, the height of humor, totally enjoyable, and so forth. But is it? (Sure it is. I'm the author and I say so.)

My books have gone through a certain amount of editing and rewrite, and rewrite, and rewrite, but are they good enough yet? This is e-publishing folks, and e-publishing is SELF-publishing. Many inexperienced and untutored writers write "the end" on their dashed-off novel and launch the puppy the next day, complete with all it's warts. How is a potential reader to know crap from pure cream?

Potential Reader has no way of knowing. So my solution is to put my ebooks up for sale at 99 cents. Surely I will get more readers that way, because I'm assuming a reader's attitude will be, "Well, shucks, it's only a buck; what have I got to lose?"

Writing a Children's Play

I finished the second rewrite of THE MAGIC FLOUNDER this morning. It's a one-hour children's play based on the old tale about the magic fish.

An interesting stylistic decision comes with writing children's plays based on old tales--how archaic is the language going to be? The playwright can commit to very modern dialogue idiom, which makes for a jazzy play, but in some cases can destroy the original tone of the story. Or the playwright can commit to a certain "once upon a time" dialogue style, but in some cases that can make the characters seem artificial and unbelievable.

In THE MAGIC FLOUNDER, I kept to older style, but tweaked a few noticeably dull phrases closer to this century.

99designs

The web site 99designs is an absolutely wonderful place to solicit and receive all sorts of design submissions for a book cover project. I've used it twice now, and have been very satisfied with the results.

What an author does is pay money upfront (usually $295.00 for a decent contest) to 99designs. Then you describe what you want and your particular preferences and wait for the design submissions to roll in. It takes 2-3 days before you see much. After that, as designs are submitted, you may comment on them. Feeding off your comments, designers will often submit new versions of a design with changes as you suggested. At the end of seven days you declare a winner and the designer sends you the design in the format you need, and 99designs pays the designer. And no, you do not have to declare a winner. If you get nothing you like, 99 designs will give you a refund.

The only drawback, and this isn't really a drawback, is that some of the designers are not as connected as they could be. You could say, "this design is nice but it won't work because you have pictured an elegant slim lady and the book is about a fat sloppy lady." And so they put up a new design with some elements changed, but still an elegant slim lady. And you say..... and so it goes through many repeated fat sloppy comments and elegant slim re-submissions.

When To Stop Writing

So many writing advice gurus advocate plugging away, getting words on paper, working through a "block." I wonder if that's totally the right thing to do? Doesn't it depend on what a person is writing? If one is writing a book on the life cycle of grub worms, then I can see value in plugging on. If one is writing comedy, well, maybe pushing it is okay. But if one is writing serious stuff where every word on paper matters and should have a gem-like quality, I wonder if the best course of action isn't to stop and put it away the minute mental fatigue sets in. Is something--anything--on paper good when next session you have to scrap and rewrite it?

Formatting & Writing

I finally finished formatting DEALER'S CHOICE for Kindle and CreateSpace. That's a tedious process. Worse, every time I go over the text, I find another few typos. Let's hope I finally got them all.

After owning a Kindle for six weeks, I finally decided to use it to download a couple interesting books--and found that it doesn't work! There's a flaw in the screen; only a little corner of it responds. I did the suggested resets, but nothing worked, and now I have to call in and talk to a real person. What I like about that service is that when you click that you want a response by phone, your phone is ringing. Right. Now.

Writers' Festivals

A writers' festival in my town, which was to happen in ten days, has been cancelled by the sponsors due to low registration. First of all, what a terrible thing for them to be forced to do, after all their planning and organizing which must have been going on for close to a year. No doubt there's some financial loss there, too. And then there's the effect that a cancellation will have on future plans by the group. Most alarming of all, however, is why? Why would a festival with fulsome reservations for two years running have next to no reservations for the third year? Timing of the festival? Appeal of the presenters? Choice of seminar topics? Promotion of the festival? Registration difficulties? Cost of attendance? Venue? Murphy's Law? As an area writer, I am concerned for finding the why. The answer could point to a problem that is affecting our entire writing community or it could be a learning situation for us all. Opinions from my watchers or my Amazon friends are invited.

Inspiration

While working on my notes for my presentation at the Rochester Writer's Festival I find that almost every point I make brings a flood of inspiration for more things I could write. The title of the presentation is "Write The Children's Play That Theatres Are Looking For." I don't stop and write down every zinger of inspiration, but I have stopped and written out two detailed outlines for children's plays.

Contractors

This thought is entirely out of the range of writing, but.... We've dealt with a significant number of contractors in the past ten months--tree removal, fence replacement, shingle replacement, new concrete driveway, floor sanding--and we do decide which one to deal with based on estimate, experience and all that, but it's interesting that both my husband and I will immediately reject any contractor bidding for a job if he or she interrupts us when talking about the project. A lot of it has to do with good manners, but there's also the fear that if a contractor can't hear our questions out when making an estimate, how much will he or she listen to us come the time to actually do the work?

MWA Newsletter

The Minnesota Writers' Alliance newsletter for April is going to be a great issue. Many people have contributed an opinion on how to find the time to write, and the variety of suggestions is especially worthwhile.

A Book-selling Dilemma

I'll be going to an indoor flea market within the hour, where many dealer friends and acquaintances will have seen the front-page article in "The Old Times" about my book, NICE GIRLS DON'T BITE. I was thinking of taking along a small number of copies of the book in case anyone wanted to buy one, but.... As I said, these are fellow antiques friends and acquaintances; do I have the nerve to say, "Sure I can get you a copy, that'll be $7.00 please." Besides, is it correct to sell a product at an event where one has not registered and paid the vendor fee? So I've decided not to take any books along.

I will, however, register and pay the fee to sell NICE GIRLS DON'T BITE and DEALER'S CHOICE at the big humongous indoor/outdoor flea market in August. If I'm sitting at a table with signage and prices prominently displayed, I won't have any compunctions about saying, "That'll be $7.00 please."

Inspiration

As I'm working on my notes for the 2011 Rochester Writer's Festival, in which I am presenting a seminar titled, "Write the Children's Play that Theatres are Looking For," I keep getting flashes of inspiration. In fact, twice now, while I was refining what I would say about where to find inspiration, inspiration itself zapped me, and I had to sit down and write a quick outline for a children's play. Twice.

The good news, under the heading of be careful what you wish for, is that I now have four plays, two novels, a collection of humor columns, and a collection of short stories all on the burner in outline form and the decision of which to get to first. This isn't because I can't finish a project, but rather because new ideas keep rolling in and to keep them from disappearing in my memory, I must write an outline.