Never relent (circa 2009)

Tomorrow begins Painful Writing Ordeal 3.0. This play has gone through more rough waters than the two before it, and still it has persevered. Reading back parts of the last revision, I've begun to develop an affection for it hitherto absent. In my own personal awards ceremony, I will give it a medal of honor.

I've also begun to realize that I'm soon going to toss another virgin play into the maw of the Theatrical Industrial Complex — a machine mostly indifferent to new work. It doesn't help I have a writing style the majority of its officers seem unmoved by.

I'll run this poor play through the gauntlet, and if it, too, does not win a full production by next fall, I will have to consider other options. Wearily I wince, knowing that means self-production. I see how others in my shoes have done it, and perhaps I will have to follow them. I'd rather just write these things and have someone else take care of it. But that someone may not be in existence.

All I can do at this moment is apply massive heat and pressure to the last draft until it is a finished piece. Though it's painful, I enjoy this process, and I honor that thing its creates. To me, that thing is unassailable.