Intermission
a creative coffee break from writing the play

This is a little disgusting, I ‘m sure,  that my dog has a thing for things that have been in my ears. Occasionally, we will find Q-Tips strewn about the house, and I’m pretty sure it’s not me or The Beloved leaving a trail of some kind.

Last night, as I was having a phone conference with MBH about our TV pilot, I realized said dog was
happily munching away at something. I never expected my earphones to die such a quick and meaningless death. Needless to say, the situation made me a little cranky, which MBH quietly endured through our call.

We’re in the midst of writing the pilot script for our original half hour television series. Yeah, okay, it’s a sitcom. We’ve spent over a year working out characters, episodes, story arcs, etc., and finally started writing the first episode. We’ve segmented the episodes into four parts: teaser, Act 1, Act 2, and closing tag, each with their own associated minutes. Once we had the outline for the pilot, we decided to experiment by splitting the writing between us. I wrote the teaser and Act 1. He wrote Act 2 and the tag. And then we put them together to see what kind of creative mess we had made. Each of us deviated from the outline slightly. Our script clearly had difference voices for one character in particular, yet we had a very workable first attempt. We had to step back a bit and discuss the story and and the arcs of the initial episodes. We made small, surprisingly organic, changes, which we hope results in more compelling storytelling. Our goal, beyond the obvious completion of the scripts, is to somehow develop a third voice between our very distinctive writing styles. We decided the next step was for one of us to take the script alone and weave it all together, and incorporating the changes we talked about. I got that assignment because I have more time at the moment. Maybe below the surface of that decision was MBH thought I was cranky and needed something fun to do. It is fun, creating a new world.

Most of January has been spent retracted inside my, uh, turtle shell. The norovirus paved the way to a respiratory thing. I’m running a bit in slow motion and there’s much to catch up on. The play I’ve been writing is not yet finished. Normally I write about ten pages a day on average. This month the page count has been about four a week. Not that I count pages. As my energy returns to whatever normal is, I’m sure the writing will as well.

My morning routine is, after feeding previously mentioned dog, and our more behaved cat, is coffee and newspapers, followed by exercise (weights and cardio on alternate days), three to five hours  playwriting, and the remainder of the day dealing with the assorted important details of things like, uh, work. Sometimes work or other projects force the writing to the evening. Soon, I suspect the writing will move to the evenings more and more. I am the sort of writer who has to write. Eaten earbuds aside, I get pretty unbearable when I’m not writing.

The Beloved and I have postponed celebrating New Year’s for a couple of weeks. We’ve been at home, in a quarantine of sorts, recovering from a norovirus, not really registering what’s going on around the world.

Yeah, sure, I have a new found appreciation for why these viruses are so potentially deadly for people who are old, or have compromised immune systems, or for infants. Forget bird flu, people, it’s the noro-roro-whadyaname-em-things that are gonna get us. Okay, a little voice of doomish, I know. I’m still recovering, and I wouldn’t wish one of these viruses on my worst enemy. Honestly. I’d worry about the karmic ramifications.

We were home a good 24 hours from our wonderful holiday with The Beloved’s family, and I was rejoicing quietly over the fact this was my second winter season of traveling wherein I managed to avoid an influenza. See, I had a five year period there where I kept getting what the docs kept calling the flu, and each year it came on harder and lasted longer. After some very scary times, oh really  nevermind, who cares? I wrote about it all in a play anyway. Metaphorically.

So, anyway, The Beloved left work early, not feeling well, and our night ended with a trip to the ER, which included blood tests, an IV for dehydration and morphine for pain. When the second doc arrived to release The Beloved back to home care, he tried to keep as far away from us as possible while proclaiming The Beloved had "acute gastroenteritis." Innocently, I inquired after the virus the first doctor had mentioned. "Oh yes, we’re talking about the same thing." "Ut oh," I thought, and knew, despite any precautions I might take, I’d already been exposed. Some twelve hours later, my symptoms arrived, and while I was aware my bout was not as bad as The Beloved’s, well, even this is more than anyone wants or cares to know, I’m sure. Any acknowledgment of 2007 has been shoved off until the idea of a romantic dinner once again sounds appealing.

I know I’m feeling better as I’ve been pondering the humor in a coming change in our lives. This change brings a bit of fear around a couple of things we’ve found hard to stomach. Yes, I do think illness can be a metaphor for what’s going on. I’m glad more often than not the last couple of years, there have been less trying metaphors cropping up.

I’m not a resolution maker. I learned over twenty years ago, that I can resolve at any time to create new habits of thought and behavior. And when I fail, if I fail, I can pick myself back up and begin again. Each day I set my intention for the day before it begins, and reflect at the end of the day how my intentions held forth. For a handful of years, I’ve used New Year’s Eve, to reflect on broader intentions for the coming year, and I enjoy writing out my dreams, thoughts, and goals. Instead of Dec 31st, this year, thanks to the norovirus, I’ll wait until Jan 17, the anniversary of the last drink of alcohol I had, in 1985. I should be more than ready and re-energized for the kind of pondering I do not feel up to right now. Somehow it seems a fitting date this year. Thanks to the noro. Yeah, I keep saying that.

Over the last couple of days I’ve managed to watch an entire season of Ugly Betty, which, to my surprise, I enjoyed immensely. I also watched Superman Returns, which I enjoyed because I could fast forward through the boring parts, and The Family Stone. The latter a bulky, confused movie I found absolutely delightful. And I type this post, as The Beloved watches some silly football game downstairs, and I have Monk on the TV upstairs. An irony about the noro-thing: Not many people who know me realize what a germ-a-phobe I really am. Being sick for months at a time can do that to a person. I try to keep it private. Monk can be annoyingly narcissistic about his phobias. Of course, I cannot hide it from The Beloved, who to my good fortune is (again an irony here) a food safety expert. She lectures me that soap and water is still the best safe-guard against germs. Alas, soap and water are not always available in a timely fashion, and so she indulges me by bringing home samples of anti-bacterial hand washes I carry around with me. I am easy to please. And now you know way too much.

 As I’ve bleached the bathrooms, the doorknobs, the railings for hopefully the last time, I’ve begun to muse about the over-writing, or re-writing, of plays. How, uh, "sanitized" plays can become so they are devoid of the original passion which inspired their birth. And that is a topic I hope to get to soon.

Moments that are satisfying, because these moments do indeed exist, are found when someone understands what I have imagined in my head and conveyed to the page. The ideal someone comes from the audience, watching the play being performed. Yet, clearly, these someones can be directors, actors, dramaturgs, set designers…anyone who after investing their time, discovers their investment has been fruitful, and he or she “gets it.” It, of course, being the play.

People don’t always understand what I’ve laid before them. Usually during the workshop process. I’m able to work with their confusion and make the play as I see it in my head easier for them to hear. Play “development” can be fun when I can see what is not working and fix it. Development is not fun, and becomes incredibly frustrating, when no matter how fast I twirl myself around my pen, nothing in the play seems to work for people hearing it. Including myself. I am not anti-development by any means. I welcome it. I refuse, however, to be perpetually in development, and reserve the right to know my own play, even if I’m the only one who does. (This week, I’m feeling a little Scarlet O’Hara-ish, shaking a fistful of dirt, proclaiming my determination.)

I have long maintained taking in feedback is an art form in and of itself. Developing a play is an imperfect process.

I learn from both good and painful discovery, because, well, my life is process of learning from everything that happens to me, and around me. It is my nature to evaluate, to analyze, to observe, to discard, to glean, to apply, to understand. And as I go along, I find more and more, I know less and less.

I had a very profound experience last week, talking with a literary manager about a play of mine. Since this conversation, I have been pondering a great deal about workshops, development, feedback, critique, plays, productions, no productions, theatres, risk, lasagna,1 on and on ad nauseum.

Two years ago I finished a play that I loved. The play is unwieldy, indirect and mystical. To say the play is theatrical is redundant. All my plays are theatrical. There were some notes I got, from those respected people giving me feedback, that gave me pause because I received them consistently. The notes did not bother me because I felt the issues were part of the play itself. The play has gotten a lot of “reads” and I have gotten some very fine, impressive rejection letters. The play has opened some important doors for me. Yet, here the play still sits, unworkshopped, unproduced, etc., etc., etc. And so, I pulled it back out and decided to apply the notes that remained, to a re-write of the play. Something must indeed be wrong and I must fix it.

Before this re-write, there was the aforementioned literary manager, whose theatre selected this play for a series of staged readings. (These readings come into fruition early in 2007.) I dutifully sent her the re-write when I completed it, and she and others dutifully read it. When we spoke on the phone last week, she very kindly asked me what went into my decision to so radically re-write the play. Because I did. I turned it upside down and around. And after my overconfident relief in re-writing subsided, I knew deep inside my Creative Self, I had made a terrible mistake. I knew I had lost something very special and magical, and that it didn’t matter how well written the revision was, or how I could make it sparkle, it was not the same play by any margin. The literary manager person listened to my intellectual explanation, and then asked me if she could tell me what she saw in the earlier version. Of course. And she did. And I nearly wept, as I was deeply moved by her having been understood my play so clearly; my voice heard. I decided to throw away the newer version.

In The Cat In the Hat Comes Back, solutions are applied to a problem that grows bigger, and more insurmountable with each application. Finally, something we can’t even see comes along and everything is righted again.

I know less and less about my craft.

Deep inside my Creative Self, I feel something has happened to me I cannot yet see, much less name, that is very important to me a playwright. Something has been ‘righted’ in some way. I’m scared. I’m excited. And I can’t wait for what comes next.

Despite the fact I could whine about a lot of things, I shall restrain myself, because all in all, the evening of staged readings went well.

My toughest, most sophisticated audience member is, always, the Beloved. I confess I feel rather successful when she has understood what I have tried to say, in however long or short a fashion. And tonight when she shed an unexpected tear, I knew the play had hit all its marks.

Yeah. Somethin’ like that.

Peace.

My playwrights’ group is involved in a series of staged "one night only" readings of our plays. We’re each taking an evening individually, and this month, being December, we are doing an evening with something from each of us. A loose holiday theme. Adults only, I’m sure.

I don’t have a stock of short plays. That meant I had to write one for this month’s evening. Recently, another group member had written a stark, compelling portrayal of a Christian fundamentalist family grieving over their son, literally ripped apart in Iraq. It’s his Iraq anti-war play. His play inspired my short play, about a couple whose only daughter, a soldier, is killed in a meaningless accident in Iraq.

Short plays are hard to write. I used a ten minute play format, a la Gary Garrison’s The Perfect 10. The first draft, I’m sure, was more a kind of tone poem than a play. I knew I had hit on something, however, during the first cold read of the play, and the group was clearly moved. I re-worked the play several times until I felt I had as close to a play as I could muster for ten minutes. I’m not entirely satisfied I’ve written a play. I am sure the audience will pay attention, if only for the compelling performance by the lead actor.

I wrote the play for two of the group actors. One, a seasoned actor in his 80′s. The other a very unseasoned, young woman in her 20′s. I wrote to both of their sensibilities, strengths and weaknesses. The younger actor’s lack of range serves the piece well. And the older actor’s emotional depth serves the grief and occasioned humor perfectly. They are a dynamite combination. It is great fun to occasionally write for actors you know.

We had the first rehearsal yesterday. As the director took the two actors through their first read through of the play, the older actor kept stopping expressing a lot of concern about the audience having to work too hard. The panic appeared in my gut, and rose to my throat, and I contemplated running from the room, ripping the script from his hands. Instead I sat and watched the director calmly and firmly take him through the script to the end. And then through again, and again. The actor became calmer as he went through his paces, and the panic in me left. I realized I had never, in the few years I’ve known him, seen him behave so insecurely before. He was worried about his performance. Because I love this man, I made two changes to the script, adding a total of eight words, to make him more comfortable. The changes accommodate the script-in-hand reading, and I don’t think, yet reserve the right to change my mind, I would use them for a fully staged production. While we have lights and sound for the reading, we (thankfully) have no props except for tables and chairs as needed. By the end of rehearsal, I was feeling great about my cast, and thankful for a serene director. Watching actors get their footing with a script, in preparing for a performance or a production, is quite nerve racking. For me, anyway. The script necessarily comes apart in that early part of the actor’s process. I haven’t gotten used to it yet, and don’t know if I will.

One more rehearsal, then tech, then the performance.

In an evening of mostly comedic plays, mine is the serious one. That tells you everything you need to know about me.

Last night, the Beloved and I saw Jersey Boys. It’s what the Beloved calls "a thirty dollar musical," something fun and not to be taken seriously as musical theatre. We sat behind Bob Guadio. We watched Bob watch Bob on stage. We agreed the musical would not have been as fun without Bob to watch.

I could say it’s the Beloved who drags me to these things. If you’ve been reading this blog at all, you know that’s not fair. I have a soft spot for musicals. It’s true.

The main element I appreciate about musicals is how they compress time on stage. A dramatic event can be relayed in very few minutes, and in that extremely short time I know exactly what a character wants and a how the story has moved forward to another place.

How to utilize time and space on stage consumes me. In a happy way. I try to find ways to tell a lot in a short period of time, in the most concise way I can. As a result, my more recent plays are not linear. Women don’t think linearly, you know. We experience things more mosiacally. The new play I’m writing is a mosaic in structure. Kind of like a musical without music.

My favorite musicals are Sweeney Todd, Merrily We Roll Along, and Sunday in the Park with George. Well, okay, pretty much anything written by Sondheim. I didn’t say this before:  when we saw the horrible Mary Poppins in London, the next night we cleansed our stage palettes with Les Misérables. There’s nothing like a good rousing anthem about overcoming oppression.

Twice last night, I had to get up from bed to write down ideas I did not want to lose. A good thing, too, as I had forgotten these important ideas completely until I walked into my office this morning, saw my scribbles on the white-board, and two emails I’d written myself in my inbox.

I’m in the middle of finishing up a re-write of another play, written a year ago. It’s been a year of something nagging at me, telling me something was not quite right. As a staged reading for this play has been looming, and I was struggling for how to approach the re-write, I sent the play to an accomplished playwright. In fifteen minutes, I had the answer for how to find my way into the re-write. Whether that was her wisdom, or my willingness to hear, doesn’t really matter. I suspect both. The problems she pointed out, made me laugh at myself, and she noted that a dramaturg is often a kind of therapist to the script. Well, that’s a paraphrase of sorts. Worked for me, and I am grateful to her.

The re-write meant I combined two characters into one, and brought another character into more prominence within the story. These changes strengthened the main character, and I believe, the play as a whole. As a result, some of the mysticism present in the script had to go, and I was very sad about that. Also, an idea about family formed through friendships was necessarily diluted. And, yes, a lot of little things changed, and minor moments even became bigger ones. I found several areas where choices made were given to secondary characters instead of main characters, and those areas were also corrected. (I hate that I do that! I think I’m finally learning…)

The night before I left for London, I sent the re-write to MBH. This is the testament of a friend, who in the midst of his own projects and great time pressures, read my play and gave me detailed notes on my return home. I could tell, while he thought the re-writes were good and strong, he missed the mysticism of the last draft. (And so he told me.) I miss it too. It no longer is the same script, and the mysticism does not fit the story.

MBH pointed out a couple of places where I ended a scene late, and diluted what the characters were going for. I kept a log of his notes in my Notetaker file for the play. In the process of transcribing those notes, more inspired ideas came to me and I tracked those as well. At this point, I keep a check-off list in Notetaker, to ensure I hit all the notes I want to hit.

I’m excited about the new version of this play, the nagging feeling now
put to rest. It is the play I meant to write the first time out with it. Here’s hoping the theatre putting up the staged reading
will feel the same way, after I send them the revision in a few
short days.

It is easy to remove beloved ideas, lines, characters from one play when you know they can be resurrected into another.

My first acting gig was when I was eight years old. I played “The Blue Fairy” in my third grade production of Pinocchio. I was cast for my looks, certainly not my talent. Besides, I wanted to play the puppet boy. Sure, I looked awfully pretty in the blue dress my mother slaved over for me, and I was the only actor allowed to wear shoes because mine sparkled. Looks alone, however, could not carry me through part. Sadly, suffering from grave stage fright, I could not laugh on cue. And, it’s true, I still cannot. A few years ago, I hung out with an actors group who got together to read plays. They let me read the stage directions. I’m pretty sure they still meet secretly without me. I am a bad actor, and I remain in awe of those who can bring characters to life.

My first play in a real theatre was circa 1972, on a high school outing to see Cyrano de Bergerac, at ACT in San Francisco. I was swept away with Cyrano, Christian and Roxane, and thought, “I want to do this.” No, definitely not act. “This” as in create the experience for those of us watching the stage. Soon afterwards, I read Albee’s The Zoo Story for the first time, which cemented my desire to write plays. Two very different theatrical experiences, indeed.

It would, however, be many years before I finally turned to writing plays with any seriousness. Is there a contradiction there, somewhere? Plays and seriousness?

Cheers…I am off to London to mark a birthday.

Friday the 13th is just a day on my calendar. Much like a lot of other days. My mother would refuse to leave the  house on these Fridays. I confess I tend to do the opposite of what my mother did.

My buddy Dr. Deb, however, has me thinking about what superstitions I employ as a playwright. I don’t really have any. Really.

Except that, when a play is being performed for the first time, don’t tell me “it’s going to be great.” What kind of comfort is that? You wanna jinx everything? Jeez, step ten feet away from me, now!

Rituals are another matter. Like, again, on the aforementioned “first time,” please don’t talk to me. Or expect me to talk back. I’m trying not to puke, and it takes a lot of concentration.

One time, as a member of a deeply troubled group, I instigated a secret cleansing of our theatre space, when She Who Sucked The Life Out Of Us went to Edinborough to suck the life out of the Scots. We burned sage, and uh, danced in a circle or something. Fully clothed. Uh huh. Yeah, something like that. Pushed out all the Negativity in the theatre, so that the next production would have a fighting chance. It was cool. We bonded.

I don’t have the superstition that insists, “I do not talk about what I’m writing about.” If I don’t talk about it, it’s because I just don’t like to, more often than not. I want all my creative thought focused on writing, not on talking about writing. Sometimes you can talk your story to death and bore even yourself. Once I have a story frame, and the play is set in my own mind, I talk about it to MBH, of course. Also when I’m workshopping the work, weekly. How can you not?

Sometimes I wish I had a ritual like Paul Shelden did. He’d light a cigar and drink champagne at the end of completing his novel. I’m more likely to see an afternoon matinee, or eat a double chunk chocolate cookie.

I might have private “creation” rituals when I start a new project. I just might. Yes, indeed. Rituals, however, unlike superstitions don’t require implementation. Nothing bad happens to me if I don’t perform them. A superstition requires attention or else you invite disaster. Like, or example purposes only, if you don’t kiss your script and sprinkle it with glitter, before handing it over the Postal Service, you can kiss that particular opportunity good-bye for sure.

Some theatre superstitions are outlined here:

• Steppenwolf’s Archive
• Superstitions and Saints

• AT RISE:
  It’s yesterday. I’m in the dining room, on the phone, talking to a Great Friend. The doorbell rings.
• ME
• Hang on, UPS is here.
• Opening the door, my skin shivers as I see three SWAT guys holding AK-somethings.
• SWAT GUY
• Ma’am, we need access to your backyard.
• I step aside, and, voiceless, motion them through to the back of the house.
• ME
• There are cops with guns here. I’ll call you back.
• I hang up the phone, and take my dog upstairs and lock her safely in the bedroom. From the window, I see dozens of SWAT guys with AK-whatevers, positioning themselves around a house catty-corner to mine. I return downstairs, as the three SWAT guys tromp back out the front door.
• SWAT GUY
• Thank you, we’re fine.

• This is not a play, p.2
• They exit. I return upstairs, to let the dog out and watch a SWAT conference in my next door neighbor’s yard, down below. The doorbell rings again. I retrieve the dog again. One single SWAT guy holding an AK-whatever stands on my front porch.
• LONE SWAT GUY
• Did anyone tell you what’s going on?
• ME
• (shaking head ‘no’)
• LONE SWAT GUY
• There was a shooting in Bay View, and we tracked the shooter to a house behind you.
• ME
• Thanks for telling me.
• Lone Swat Guy walks through my house, out onto the deck, and into the backyard. I dial my Beloved at work. As she answers, the doorbell rings. Panicked, I only say one thing.
• ME
• I have to call you back.
• UNIFORMED COP
• We’re evacuating you and your neighbors.
• I grab my cell phone, wallet, a small notepad, keys, and my dog. My pen is already around my neck. It hangs on a chain. The four other writers in our little enclave, working at home, are also ‘evactuated to street level.’

• This is not a play, p.3
• FAVORITE NEIGHBOR
• I head the dogs barking and the shouting, but I assumed it was the construction guys.
• ME
• The guy got into the house with the pit bulls in the yard?
• Over the next couple of hours, one by one, my writer neighbors leave to run errands and wait the siege out elsewhere. My sweet dog helps ease me into conversations with cops. A couple of animal control officers show up to check on the pit bulls. They cannot get to the dogs without getting in between guns, so they wait along with me for the all clear.
• The ordeal lasts over five hours. I cannot leave, and wonder why the other writers complain about the inconvenience. For one writer, this event is old hat to him. He’s a former Special Forces type of guy. I wonder about the other writers who leave. I wonder why I don’t, and why I don’t take my normal walk down to the cafe. I cannot leave. I am obsessed with people’s behavior. I observe my neighbors, the cops, the animal control people, and my own behavior, reactions and thoughts.

• This is not a play, p.4
• My dog gets treats, water, and I’m offered, but decline, a hot dog. A cop shows me a photo of his ever-so-pregnant wife posing with their cute labrador retriever.
• No one wants to tell me why the Bomb Sqaud is parked at the corner.
• A loud POP occurs when a smoke bomb is fired into our neighbor’s house, exploding their windows, trying to drive the shooter out.
• More time passes, as the cops search the house. The four o’clock wind has risen up, and it’s getting cold. They do not find the shooter. They search more houses. A cop walks through mine.
• COP
• All clear.
• Me and the dog are allowed back inside. The Beloved, who has natural dramatic timing, arrives home five minutes later. The dog and I are exhausted and soon are asleep.
• These are the basic events.
• It’s the behavior observe, which I will use in a myriad of ways down the road.
• I observe behavior. This, I often think, is what makes me a playwright.

…they are only abandoned.” I’ve heard that quote attributed to John Guare, and a number of other playwrights. It’s a great quote, whoever said it.

The art of playwriting is not to abandon the play too soon.

The re-write of my latest play was “finished” last week. “Finished” meaning there are still re-writes of this re-write to be accomplished. I’ve got two sections with some important exposition that need to be revealed more ingeniously. My friend, MBH, after he read the newest version of the play, said quite plainly, “pages 60 through 64 put me to sleep.” Ah…of course, thank you! That scene on those pages, as well as another scene, where the characters, “talk, talk, talk,” will ultimately be replaced by some, uh, drama. My goal in upcoming re-writes are to create scenes that reveal the same information in a way that keeps the audience, uh, awake and engaged in what’s happening onstage.

Eons ago, I thought re-writing meant polishing up a draft. Polishing, for those of you don’t know, is when you change a word here and there, remove a line or two, add a tiny bit of clarification to a draft. I now approach re-writing as throwing out whole chunks, sometimes all, of what I’ve already written. The main story itself remains the same. How it gets told is refined. Hopefully smarter ideas get revealed.

In the case of the current play, I had a very complicated subplot involving blackmail of the main character. I had to dump the subplot. When I first began writing the play, I thought the blackmail was necessary to answer why this man would keep a seemingly simple event a secret from his wife. After hearing the play twice, in different evolutions, it became very clear the heart of the play got diluted by the blackmail stuff going on. In taking out the subplot, everything changed between the married couple. The play is more intimate; the events more harrowing and poignant.

I just had to dig deeper into my own emotional and creative reserves to get at the characters’ truths.

I do a funny thing in my early drafts. I insert the most non-threatening reason or event or emotion. I don’t do this on purpose. It happens because sometimes I am afraid to get to the heart of the matter. A clear example is in a play I wrote about suicide. In the original version of the play, the main character is worried about her ex-girlfriend killing herself. The other characters in the play included stories about three important friends in her past who had killed themselves. In the final version, the main character must decide if she is going to join her mother, her brother and her best friend, all of whom had killed themselves. Uh…this is a rather dark comedy of sorts. At any rate, I hope you get the idea of how much more central the theme of the play became when it became much more personal to the main character. And so, in the current play, I gave the main character an out with a blackmail scheme, instead of calling his character acutely into question.

I’ve set the current play aside for a couple of weeks to work on some other pressing ideas. My hope is once I’ve re-written those expositional scenes, I will be able to “abandon” it,  and it to send out into the world.

I don’t want to write the most boring non-threatening thing. It happens. When I don’t recognize it, someone else will. Hopefully, I’ll listen and write a better play.

That’s the goal, isn’t it? To write the best play possible.

If you are looking for a seminar on "how to write a play," this blog is not the place.

There are other places you can go, like Richard Tuscan’s "The Playwriting Seminars."

There is no great book on playwriting, except maybe, Lojas Ejri’s The Art of Dramatic Writing.

And, of course, Aristotle’s Poetics.

Stuart Spencer’s The Playwright’s Guidebook is pretty good. Albee likes it.

Jeffrey Hatcher’s The Art and Craft of Playwriting is decent.

There are tons of ‘em. All you have to do is search Amazon books, or go to the library.

The best book on writing ten minute plays, if that’s your thing, is Gary Garrison’s The Perfect Ten.

For good measure, read Gary’s The New, Improved Playwright’s Survival Guide: Keeping the Drama In Your Work and Out of Your Life.

A lot of people think they can write a play. The best play you’ve written is not your first, or even your second. There just aren’t that many Margeret Edsons of you out there.

Take a class. Learn play structure. Yes, there’s a structure. You can’t throw it away until you know what it is.

The best advice I can give you, which most of you won’t take:  See as many plays as you can.

What kind of playwright never attends the theatre?