The Boring Part

Tuesday I settled down to the really boring part of being a playwright: mailing out scripts. Deadlines end of or first of the month. The Submission Process. It does feel like submission, like crawling on your knees up to the throne of a distant faceless power, and placing a manila envelope with the manuscript at its feet, whimpering, "Choose mine, Great One! Choose mine!" I go through the lists, read the guidelines, decide if I have anything that is suitable, print and/or bind a copy, insert cover letter & resume, add postage-- gads, the postage has gone up again, but how much has it gone up? Then schlep the scripts to the post office because this is the Cruelly Changed World and you can't just drop a package in the mailbox because it might be a bomb. I look at my scribbled-on records. Should I really send a script to a contest that last year didn't even send out a rejection email with a list of winners? Maybe it doesn't really exist. Check web site-- it claims to exist, but the latest update is nearly a year ago, maybe... toss a coin. Heads I send, tails I skip. What if I won this contest.. no prize but a production. Could I afford to fly to see it? If not, what's the point? But what's the point of writing if you're not going to try to get produced...
I love my Stagepage web site. Unlike my mailed manuscript, if my posted play is read, there are tracks left behind to prove that someone was interested.
Tuesday night I called Larry Stark to see how his recovery is coming along. He told me a saga of medical miscommunication and accidental judgements, I said I might take notes and use him as a source for a comic monologue or two-- but nothing seemed to lend itself to shaping. Talked too long and got to bed in the wee hours-- a bad habit I'm trying to break.