The Force returns

I didn't get any writing done today. And that's okay, because I spent the day doing something much more rewarding.

I went to the Arizona Thespian Festival and presented my playwriting workshop, The Hero's Journey: Playwriting Lessons from Star Wars. Talking to students is always great fun, but this year it was even more fun than usual.

Why? Well, that's kind of a funny story.

When I first gave this talk--at the Colorado Thespian Conference back in 2016--over 100 students showed up. It was a madhouse. There weren't nearly enough chairs so kids were standing in doorways, they were sitting on tables, they were sprawled on the floor. But the energy was high and our conversations were lively, a real two-way street.

Fast forward to 2023. After several unsuccessful attempts, I'd finally gotten approval to present the workshop at the Arizona conference and I had high hopes that I'd get a similar attendance to the one in Colorado.

Well, I didn't. Only about 20 students showed up.

Don't get me wrong. Every student is important, and I'd happily give the talk if I had an audience of one. But I'd asked for a large room, seating maybe 100 to 120 people, and those 20 students chose to sit so far apart from each other that it was impossible to have a productive dialogue.

The next year, more kids showed up. Around 30, I'd say. The conversations were livelier. But the kids were still lost in the huge, cavern-like space.

So this year, I asked for a small classroom. (There was no festival in 2025 because the organizers moved the event from November to January.)

Well, when I showed up at the Phoenix Convention Center this afternoon, I was disappointed to see that they'd given me a large classroom again.

But then the kids started filing in. And filing in. And filing in. By the time I was ready to begin, close to 50 students had arrived. If I'd been given one of the classrooms, we would have been spilling out into the hallways.

The second session just as crowded.

That was the good part. The bad part was that, as with the previous two conferences, my room was right next to a very loud dance class.

Good thing I have an equally loud voice.

Fortunately, nearly all of the kids sat near the front of the room so it was much easier to have a conversation. They also asked very smart questions. Instead of trying to understand the Hero's Journey better, they questioned its very structure. 

For example, when I talked about the Save the Cat moment, an event near the beginning of the story in which the hero does something small but heroic to win the audience's sympathy, one student wanted to know if that still applies when the hero is a bad guy (echoes of Joker, perhaps, or The Wolf of Wall Street).

Another student wondered how things change if the hero doesn't succeed in achieving their goal at the end of the story (The Empire Strikes Back or Zodiac).

Still another student asked about alternative templates. She felt the Hero's Journey didn't fit the story she was working on and wondered whether there was another template she could use.

I answered these questions the best I could. But they got me thinking that instead of covering two movies in depth, maybe I should focus on one movie and use the rest of time to explore one or two counterexamples for each of the story beats.

Oh, one last thing. I've had a lot of great interactions with students over the years but one of my favorites was the time a student came up to me after the workshop and told me she first fell in love with theater because of the fun she had performing in The Enchanted Bookshop.

Well, the same thing happened again this year, only this time the play was The _urloined Letter.

Tomorrow I'll get back to writing. But I'll be doing it with a newfound excitement because I know--now more than ever--who I'm writing for.

Fear of Clowns to be published

Just five days into the New Year and I've already got my first acceptance. Heuer Publishing just informed me that they'll be publishing my ten-minute comedy Fear of Clowns.

This is an old one. I wrote it in 2011, and it received its world premiere at the Millibo Art Theatre in Colorado Springs the following year. The play went on to get productions in Maryland, New York City (my only off-off-Broadway show!), and even London. (These photos are from the Maryland production.)

But then I didn't know what to do with it. Submitting a ten-minute play to contest after contest is incredibly time-consuming, barely worth the peanuts in licensing fees it might earn.

I figured the only way to make any money from Fear of Clowns was to get it published. But Pioneer Drama Service doesn't publish ten-minute plays, and I didn't have an in with anyone who does. So I set the script aside and forgot about it.

Then a year ago, I realized that Heuer, who already publishes my full-length plays The Last Radio Show and Kill the Critic!, has a ton of individual ten-minute plays in their catalog (yes, sometimes I'm a little slow on the uptake).

The key to their success in this often challenging market? Simple. They offer their customers a package in which they can license an evening's worth of ten-minute plays for one low fee. The plays don't even have to be from the same playwright.

Fear of Clowns may be over a decade old, but its story is timeless. The play was inspired by that old joke about a man who visits a psychiatrist for his depression. The good doctor tells him to see Pagliacci, the world-famous clown who's sure to make him laugh. The man sighs. "But I am Pagliacci," he says.

For this play, I flipped things around. A clown visits a psychiatrist, but instead of depression, he suffers from a very unusual fear: he's afraid of people.

It's a very funny play, but it's sad too, and in it, I do some things with the offstage sound effects to heighten that sadness.

I've got one other ten-minute play that might be worth submitting to Heuer. I may write more. But first I want to see how this one does. If it does well, it may just open up a whole new (old?) field of playwriting for me.

Fear of Clowns probably won't come out until this fall. But if you'd like to take a look at it ahead of time, email me. I'll be happy to send you a free perusal copy.

A look ahead to 2026

Like I said in my last post, my playwriting career is on fire. Nine years after it was first published, The Enchanted Bookshop is still pulling in over 100 productions a year, while three of my last six full-length plays are also huge hits. And it look like my royalties for the 2025-2026 should be about 30% higher than the were the previous year.

So the key to 2026--and getting closer to my ultimate goal of matching my old engineering salary with my playwriting salary--is to keep doing what I've been doing. And that means write, write, and write.

Here are my specific goals for the New Year:

1) Finish five plays.

Last year, I wanted to finish six and only finished four. This year, I think I'll again finish four but I'll shoot for five. Manifestation and all that.

Of course, if I threw in a couple one-act plays, I'd easily reach that goals. A one-act only takes me a month or two to write compared to three to four months for a full-length. But my full-lengths are the ones putting up the big numbers so for now my plan is to focus on those.

Five full-lengths. It could happen.

2) Publish five plays.

Last year, I wanted to publish six and only published five. This year, I really do think I'll publish five.

I've already got one in the editing queue at Pioneer Drama Service (Mouse in the House). I'm waiting to hear back on my ten-minute comedy Fear of Clowns, which I submitted to Heuer Publishing in July. I'll submit Survival Island! to them as soon as they make a decision on Fear of Clowns. I'll be submitting my latest full-length comedy to Pioneer this month. And I'll be ready to submit my airport comedy Thirty Minutes Till Boarding to Pioneer shortly after it receives its world premiere in March.

So I could hit that goal just with what I've already got written (or nearly written).

Of course, if any of those get rejected, I'll be a setback. But I'll still have time to complete one play and get it through the submission and editing cycles before the end of this year.

Keep your fingers (and toes and eyelashes) crossed!

3) Brush up my Shakespeare.

I've got to be honest. I've never been a big fan of the bard. And it's not for lack of trying. I saw many, many Shakespeare productions over the twenty-some years I lived in Colorado Springs. TheatreWorks did a particularly good job with them through their end-of-summer Shakespeare in the Park program.

And I've always recognized old Will as a great writer. As a writer myself, I really need to know him better. It's just that I've always struggled with the language.

But this year I realized that if I really want to "get" Shakespeare, then I've got to put in the work. And I finally want to.

First up is Twelfth Night. I've got the PBS recording of last summer's production in New York's Central Park queued up on our DVR. I've got a copy of the original text. I've got a good modern language translation. Now all that's left is to go through them, side by side, until the story and the characters--most of all, the language--come alive for me as they have for so many others.

I can't wait to dive in.

4) Post more frequently.

I've tried multiple ways to market myself beyond what my publishers do for me. But almost none of them have been successful.

About the only one that has been is this blog. I frequently receive emails through the links I provide in my posts and on my contact page. I also see my comments about my plays quoted in newspaper articles and promotional materials put out by the theaters producing those plays.

Sure, I've kept this blog going for 15 years. And I've fulfilled my original vow of writing at least one post every month. The problem is that I tend to write them in clumps. I'll put off writing for weeks at a time, then dropping three or four posts at one time.

I believe this feast or famine mentality is making is tough for my readers to keep up. So I'm going to do better. I'm going to make time to post as soon as I have something to post about.

I hope this ups my readership. I know it'll up my readers' sanity.

5) Don't sweat the small stuff.

I always throw in one touchy-feely goal each year, and this time I want to focus on how I react to setbacks, both major and minor. Like a lot of people, I get stressed out when things don't go my way. I worry about what's going to happen. And I spend too much mental energy thinking up ways to counter them.

Of course, most of the time, things turn out fine anyway.

So I want to start shrugging off those setbacks as soon as they hit. I'm sure this'll help with my stress levels as well as my health. And those are two very good things.