Chair at the Table

If you’ve been around the arts for a while, you know that it’s a world managed by gatekeepers. Actors know this from trying to impress and agent to a casting director to a director or producer to get a small role – just to have a foot in the door, a chair at the table.

Writers know this well trod path to the gate – the agent or the editor – who sends you back, “no, not you!” to the starting line. So too for playwrights and screenwriter, for artists and dancers and anyone who has a gift and wants to share it.

And maybe you pass the gate and your art sees publication, performance, applause. Then we have the gatekeeper, the critic, who evaluates and dissects.

And all of it is nothing but opinion. Someone’s opinion about your art at this particular time and place.

All artists feel they must participate in this – to get recognition and applause and approval or validation. Because “that’s just how it is.” This is the game we chose to play.

For too many years I’ve been under the illusion that the world of art, theatre, film–any endeavor of heart and soul–operates like that childhood game of humiliation, “musical chairs.” That’s where a group of kids circle a set of chairs hoping to get a seat before the music stops.

The catch is that there is one less seat than the number of children. And that’s the way the art word tends to be these days as theatres close and the remaining theatres rely on the tried and true plays and playwrights – or divert their resources into other offerings that seem to be more lucrative.

Meanwhile another round of musical chairs begins. Each round of the game, one chair gets eliminated, so there is always less. Some child will always be left standing alone.

Round and round vying for the limited open seating and each time there’s one less space. If you’re lucky enough to nab a chair, someone else must lose.

This is a game that teaches scarcity. When art should be bountiful. This is a game that teaches a “do anything” to get an open chair attitude (drag your feet, put your hand on a chair so you can pull the chair towards you when the music stops, push and shove to get that open seat). And maybe by design, it teaches embarrassment and mortification for the ones left out.

I’ve come around to this belief: There is room for everyone at the table when we all work together to make the table bigger. And we should always strive to make the table bigger in some way.
That open chair is yours, so never be afraid to pull it up, sit down and participate.

Empty Bucket Syndrome

Do you find it challenging to talk about your work? I sure do. I meet with a colleague often and he will inevitably ask, as if unfurling a magic carpet, “so what are you celebrating this week?” And he genuinely wants to know. About the good things going on with my work. While this is a great conversation starter, it freezes me. Inevitably I find I am scooping around in a metaphorical empty bucket for something, anything, to offer him. I stammer a few things, offer a small smile and a shrug, and hope he moves on. I’ve come to describe this as the “empty bucket syndrome.”

It’s not that I don’t have celebrations. That week I might have written a lot, finished a play, worked on a 10-minute, took a long walk, and completed a blog post or two! But when asked, these seem small and insignificant. It’s not like I won a major award or got an agent or won a fellowship. In my mind sharing these petty things with my colleague (even though he wants to hear about these things) puts me at risk of judgment.

This reluctance to share celebrations stems from a complex interplay of upbringing and personal disposition. Raised in an environment steeped in middle-class caution and modesty and a firm belief that no one should “stand out” or “be better than others.” I learned early on to keep my successes hidden away, lest they invite scrutiny or disappointment. In a household where standing out was met with skepticism and admonition, I internalized the notion that my achievements – my celebrations – were best kept to myself.

This reluctance to celebrate oneself mirrors the silent suffering of Catholic saints. Raised on the dramatic stories of those holy people who concealed their hardships behind a facade of serenity. Like them, I found solace in keeping silent, believing that by keeping my victories hidden, I could shield them from the inevitable critiques of others.

Critique and the fear of judgment looms large in the empty bucket syndrome as well. The prospect of having my ideas dissected and criticized by others fills me with apprehension, leading me to keep my creative endeavors close to the chest. In doing so, I avoid the risk of failure or disappointment, preserving a sense of control over my own narrative.

But this reluctance to share successes comes at a cost. By denying yourself the opportunity to celebrate, you undermine the value of your own achievements, perpetuating a cycle of self-doubt and self-criticism. And ultimately you deprive yourself the validation and recognition you deserve. Even in small celebrations validate you.

If you suffer from the empty bucket syndrome, I feel your pain. My reluctance to celebrate myself, especially my creative work, offers a form of self-preservation—a way to protect myself from the judgment of others and the sting of potential failure. Yet, in doing so, I deny myself the opportunity to fully embrace and appreciate my own worth. As I continue to grapple with this internal struggle, I recognize the need to break free from the shackles of self-doubt and self-criticism, and to embrace the joy and fulfillment that comes with celebrating oneself.

Happy writing.

The End is the Beginning

ACCELERATE YOUR PROCESS WITH THE ENDING
Ever hike along a trail and stop to wonder if it will ever end? Perhaps up until that moment the cool leafy shadows inside the thick forest confuse you, worry you, and your legs ache with the climb, and your lungs take stronger pulls at the mountain air. And then, almost by accident, you emerge from the trees, the vista opens up and you see the winding trail ahead, and you see exactly where that trail ends. Ah, bliss.

Last week I entered a phase of my process I will call terra incognita, a strange place of indescribable wonders, such as: a sense of satisfaction, an inner joy, a feeling of completeness. You discover these three wonders of the world, and the entire continent of terra incognita by completing a major creative work ahead of schedule! And then the inevitable “now what?” takes hold as you stare at the contours of the continent you’ve reached.

How did I arrive at this land of the unknown? It was unexpected. As if I had taken the Drake Passage by accident and went round “the Horn” without even knowing I was sailing that way. But let’s dissect the voyage:

  1. I set out to write an ending if it was the last thing I did. This project started so well and the vast yawning ocean of the “middle” lay ahead but I said, wait a second, I want to know how this will end. Let’s invent the ending now, NOW, rather than write it all in sequence. So I skipped ahead. In a play you almost don’t have to set it up too grandly, simple stage directions to get you started: where is this set? Ah, I choose this place. Then list who is present. Good. Now we just write the interactions, the needs and desires, and the moments. Choose the right time to write lights out. and End of Play!
  2. Construct a frame for the middle, the scenes that you need to fill in the character’s journey from where you left off across the yawning middle to join that “end.” I listed the scenes in no particular order, such as “I need a scene with X and Y where this occurs.” or “A scene with A and X where the conflict comes to a head around this event.” These become the tent poles or bridge girders needed to fill the gap.
  3. Write these scenes in any order, you will rearrange them later with the other completed scenes. You don’t have to worry at this point because you have the ending as your anchor on the other side. I liked this part because I treated each gap scene as a fun object to play inside – because I wasn’t worried about what the ending would need to be. So: freedom.
  4. Reassemble the gap scenes in the play draft and see how they flow. Rearrange the scenes if it seems like the arc of the play needs it.

Why did this accelerate my process? After considering, I realize that my usual practice is to write linearly. I need to proceed front to back, a to b to c all the way to z. I will usually hang myself up somewhere around M, N, O where I stew and ponder and worry and anxious myself into inertia. Because I don’t know what happens next! The paralysis of wondering “what is the next perfect line? What is the first line of that next scene? Where is that scene set?” hangs me up for long lengths of time. The rest of the pay hangs fire until I resolve the dilemma of what happens next?

Creating the ending early pushes all the anxiety away because I know where I am headed, I know what the characters change will need to be. Any scene written then means I already know where it needs to go.

SELF PROMOTION

Why do so many artists cringe when they hear “self promotion?” I sit with all my words around me, writing what I want and even liking what I write and what those words create, but shy away from getting others to look at or read or perform my work.

I spent nearly 20 years hiding away from putting my work out there: applying to residencies, entering playwriting awards, submitting to theatres who wanted to see new scripts. Just recently I began to pick apart my protective shell and come up with some reasons.

  1. I protected myself from rejection. If I didn’t submit anything I would never receive that rejection from the theatre.
  2. I saved myself a lot of time – submissions take a lot of time – to get a cover letter, a log line, a proof-read draft together. All the mechanics and technologies that go into a submission can seem daunting. And I let them daunt me.
  3. I gave up on the dream of seeing my plays on stage because the risk seemed to great.

Further, I never talked about my plays with others. If they asked, I would say, “going good.” But never had any results to show after years and years.

Today I am promoting myself. I have this website and I have begun uploading my plays here. I started with the most produced play I have, Random Theft & Other Acts, which has seen three productions. And will be adding more over time. I uploaded Random Theft to my page on New Play Exchange as well. People who are looking for plays can then download this to read.

I’m most comfortable with these passive self-promotion techniques. The active self-promotions such as submissions, I began doing in early 2024. In the old days, submissions required printing copies of the play, writing a cover letter, sending either sample pages or the full script along with a stamped self-addressed return envelope. Time consuming and expensive in the long run.

Today’s submissions come with electronic forms and require a good PDF version which is uploaded or sent via email. Very easy and convenient.

Even though I spent 20+ years in marketing for software technology companies, my self-marketing comes in baby steps. I still feel the need to protect myself and the work, but it’s less about rejection and more about making sure it is the right time.

Perils of Process

Since I started writing I read voraciously about the “every day” writer. One who sits down at the paper or screen every day at the same time and writes for so many hours and, after that time, the writer sets themselves free for the day. Tennessee Williams was one of these writers. He faced his blank page every day and hated it sometimes and did it every morning. Or so he said. And his prolific output would bear this out.

Then there was me and my kind. Most of my writing happens in my head, in the churnings of my mind. It invents all the plots, the characters, sets up scenes and creates dialogue, designs the sets and sees the stage lighting. Without a single word written on paper. Like the trees vs forest argument, are you a writer if you have no words to be read or spoken?

Unfortunately, all that good stuff never shows up on any page and therefore cannot be communicated to any actors who may want to become those characters and say those lines. Can one be a writer without actually having written things to show for it? In one sense, no. I would feel like an imposter. And that created anxiety and self-defeating internal monologues.

After beating myself up mentally for a while, the internal pressure would build because of course I wanted to write these things down. That is the passion bubbling up: to write! So when the pressure built to a certain degree, I would start a binge – writing all day and night, and sometimes into a new morning – getting as much down on paper as I could because who knew when the binge would surface again?.

I call that, as many do, being a “binge writer.”

For the last year I have been putting building blocks in place to change these binge behaviors into something that looks a little bit more like a regular process. And though it’s still somewhat chaotic, I feel like I have established something that works for me. How do I know? Because I’ve written more words on screen/paper in one year than I wrote in the 10 years previously. And by doing some things to create a process, I feel more like a writer and not an imposter, and I’m able to say, yes I am a playwright and writer.

What have I changed about my behavior of writing?

  1. Make appointments to write – not just a calendar, actually set up times with other writers where you can share a space and write silently together. You’re all in it together for that amount of time. Do it on Zoom or in person. Schedule these times in advance so you know your writing times a week ahead. It works.
  2. Just write whatever is in your head starting with, “I sat down at x o’clock . . .” and do it as stream of consciousness and see where it takes you. If it’s not taking you anywhere, write that down, too. Turn to a character what does the character say in that moment?
  3. Say I want statements about your writing – not I should statements. So “I should work on that scene..” becomes “I want to work on that scene.” and the mind frame changes.
  4. Get an accountability partner who will text you the day before a deadline and ask, how’s it going?

Combined these things have made a process for myself. I feel more secure with the writing appointments – because I know I have a time set aside on Wednesday evening to do x, y, or z. So if I do not write on Tuesday, I don’t beat myself up because I know I have a time on Wednesday set aside. I give myself permission to take a day off.

Of course I may still binge, I don’t think I’ve cured myself of that, but I recognize it as something I do use in my process. And it is a process. Creativity has no template. Yours will be the way it is because it is yours.