My 10th year sales

Pioneer was right.

In their annual letter to writers last year, they said that as tough as last school year was (I saw a 13% drop in productions, with nearly all shows cancelled in the second half of March and April), they warned that the coming year would be worse.

I'd hoped it wasn't true. Like most people, I'd thought that the pandemic would peak in the summer but that things would be back to normal by the time school started up again in September.

Of course it didn't happen that way. As everyone knows, we had a whopper of a wave that started in November and didn't end until we started to see the effects of the vaccine in February. (Thank you, researchers!). The result: almost an entire year's worth of school and community theater productions were wiped out.

Fortunately, there were a couple bright spots. One was the growing popularity of virtual theatre through streaming apps like Zoom. The other were all those brave directors and students who managed to maintain all those social distancing procedures necessary to keep live theater, well, alive.

Still, things weren't great. I had a total of 158 productions--a 49% drop from the 310 productions I had last year, which was a 13% drop from the 361 productions I had in my best year of 2018-2019.

That's not as bad as it could have been, but most of those productions were for shorter plays or fewer performances than my usual mix, resulting in an even more painful drop of 69% in revenues.

For the fourth year in a row, my bestselling play was The Enchanted Bookshop with 39 productions. That's a huge drop from the 121 it got last year and the record-setting 156 it got the year before that, but it's still pretty impressive for a large-cast play in the middle of a pandemic.

It was the first full year for the musical version of that play, The Enchanted Bookshop Musical. With 21 productions during the year, it moved into second place. This one actually has 12 productions booked for next year, so I'm thinking it may do very well next year.

You're Virtually Driving Me Crazy! was released in August and came in as my 3rd most popular play for the year, with a respectable 20 productions. That's not too surprising because it was adapted from You're Driving Me Crazy! for virtual performance during the pandemic. It'll be interesting to see how well this and Pioneer's other Zoom-friendly plays do as schools open back up.

An Enchanted Bookshop Christmas is my most recent release, coming out in September. It had 13 productions, which isn't too bad for a holiday-limited play in the middle of a pandemic. It actually was my biggest moneymaker for the year because it sold a ton of scripts. A play's first full year is usually its best year so with schools opening up again I'm thinking it could do gangbusters in the next twelve months. 

You're Driving Me Crazy! also had 13 productions. I don't know if the bulk of these were also virtual productions but I wouldn't be surprised if they were. At the very least, three of the four scenes that make up this driver's ed-themed collection of short plays are very small cast (two or three actors each), so schools who did perform ut live may have chosen it for that very reason.

On the other end of the spectrum, The _urloined Letter, my oldest play, got zero productions, and Babka Without Borders and Wicked Is As Wicked Does each got just one production. Things were so bad, in fact, that because of cancelled productions, two plays--the aforementioned Babka Without Borders as well as The Stinky Feet Gang--actually made negative royalties for the year.

But there is a light at the end of this seemingly endless tunnel. The vaccine is now widely available, cases are way down, and most schools are preparing to reopen for live instruction in the fall.

And this month alone, I made more in royalties than I did in the first seven months of the 2019-2020.

A very bright light indeed.

Wandering back to the Springs

I miss Colorado Springs.

Don't get me wrong. I love Phoenix. In fact, I wouldn't live anywhere else (unless I get really rich and can move to the Amalfi Coast). But Colorado Springs is better in some important ways, and one of those ways is its theater scene.

Although Colorado Springs has a population of only 300,000, the city has a wealth of professional, amateur, church and children's theaters. I've been involved with several of them, but I've never had anything done by one of my favorites, Springs Ensemble Theatre (otherwise known as SET).

Until now.

My 10-minute play The Wanderer has just been selected for their Fatherhood Out Loud Play Festival on--when else?--Father's Day Weekend (June 18 to 20).

The play has only been done twice before (kudos to Springs Ensemble Theatre for not insisting on world premieres): Once at Oakland's Pan Theater in 2012 and once at Connecticut's Stonington Theatre in 2013.

It's my only drama. Opening in the waiting room of a police station, it centers on an old man who was arrested for shoplifting a lady's watch and his workaholic son who's trying to understand why he did it. 

The play was inspired by my own father. And no, he never stole a watch--or anything else, come to think of it. But the thin ice that the father and son tread in their 10-minute very much resembles our own relationship dynamic.

Due to the pandemic, SET still isn't performing live, but that's a good thing because it means anyone in the world can stream the show. You can buy your tickets here (cheap!). But don't wait too long. The video isn't available after closing day. 

And if you're a playwright with a short mother- or father-themed plays, make sure and bookmark SET's website. Their Motherhood Out Loud and Fatherhood Out Loud festivals shows are an annual thing and they accept submissions from anywhere The deadlines are February 28 and March 31. 

Saving the novel

I haven't plugged books here before, but I'm so excited about one I recently picked up that I just have to share it with you. It's Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody.

Regular readers of this blog know that I've been an avid disciple of the Save the Cat! books for a long time. I first came across them fourteen years ago when I tried to break into screenwriting. They quickly became my bible for structuring all my stories, not just screenplays.

Other books have covered similar ground, but Snyder's take was more detailed and user-friendly. He provided specific page counts for each of this fifteen story beats so that you can see how closely your story paces with existing movies. He defined ten popular story genres--from Monster in the House to Fool Triumphant--and described how the beats varied for each genre. And his books were just fun to read, with a jokey, light-hearted style and catchy, unforgettable names for many of the story concepts (I still refer to "Whiff of Death" and "Pope in the Pool" in discussions of my own stories).

I especially loved his second book, Save the Cat! Goes to the Movies, because it described the specific story beats of fifty famous movies, giving readers an intimate look at how masters of the craft structured their stories.

Sadly, Snyder passed away all the all-too-young age of 51 in 2009. But he left behind a legacy in Hollywood that's hard to match. Blake's template has become the de facto standard for commercial films.

Of course, novels aren't expected to follow this structure as closely as movies are. But you have to give your novel some structure or it'll just drift from event to event with no tension or sense of direction.

Author Jessica Brody
(Photo Credit: Brian Braff)

Save the Cat! Writes a Novel provides that structure. Brody--who's had her own success in the YA field with books like I Speak Boy--offers the same fifteen-beat template as Snyder but adds her own quirky humor while showing how those beats are met in novels like Misery and Bridget Jones's Diary. It took Snyder two books to cover that much ground for films.

Now I'm not one of those writers who believe you have to slavishly follow these templates. Do you absolutely need a B story? I don't think so. Can the Theme Stated come later, say halfway into the story? Probably.

But deviate at your own risk. Over the years, I've read many, many manuscripts for friends and acquaintances, and one thing has become painfully clear to me. Every poorly written story--whether novel, screenplay or play--fails because it leaves out one of those fifteen story beats.

Sometimes it's the Debate. Instead of rejecting the call to adventure, the hero jumps in willingly--even excitedly. Not good if you want to maintain a sense of tension.

More often it's the Midpoint. This is where the stakes are raised, where the hero first gets that whiff of death. Skip this beat and your readers won't even care what happens at the climax because they don't know what your hero is risking.

Save the Cat! Writes a Novel isn't a book you're going to want to read straight through. There's just too much detail, too many helpful tips to remember. Instead, keep it at your side while you're writing so you can dive in when you hit a wall and find out how the masters got around it.

It won't just save the cat. It'll save your butt.

Badger Crazy

A very nice high school student emailed me today saying that she'd played Kat in her school's production of The Butler Did It! earlier this year and wanted to direct a scene from You're Driving Me Crazy! for her theater class. The only thing is she couldn't decide which scene she wanted to do. Could I send her the scripts?

I wanted to help, I really did. But with the pandemic cancelling 80% of all school productions this year, playwrights and play publishers alike are struggling. We really need every script sale we can get.

Not to mention the risk that once a PDF of a script is out there, it's all too easy to make copies and/or forward it to other schools or theaters (not that any of you lovely people would do such a thing). And any electronic script I had would be an early version of the play and wouldn't include all the required legalese. So I had to decline.

But I recognize that many schools are struggling too, so I offered to mail her one of the free printed scripts that Pioneer Drama Service provides me.

I also did a Google search and happily discovered that a high school in Plainfield, Wisconsin posted a video of the play just a couple months ago. (That town, by the way, has a personal connection for me as well. When I was a kid, my family and I would often drive through it on our vacation trips up north.)

Actually, the play they performed was You're Virtually Driving Me Crazy!, the virtual adaptation that Pioneer released last year. But as I've explained elsewhere, the differences between the two are minimal. And this particular production is really good, with lively performances and all of the action being set inside actual cars. (One of the benefits of social distancing: it forces you to get creative.)

So I emailed the student a link to the video. I hope it helps her. And, if you've been considering this play--one of my most popular works during the pandemic--I hope it helps you too.

But if it's at all possible, please buy a perusal copy. Pioneer's E-view system makes it fast and easy. And it'll help keep them and me in business for when the world finally does open up again.

Thanks for your support!

Trouble in British Columbia

They say the show must go on, and that's never been truer than now with the COVID-19 pandemic making its way around the world and schools having to find new ways to keep their theatre programs alive.

Oak Bay High School in Victoria, British Columbia, took on another whole set of challenges when they decided to film their production of Trouble in Paradise Junction for online streaming. Not only did they have to learn how to do the camerawork and editing themselves, but their rehearsal time was cut from their standard twenty weeks to just five.

There is one big advantage to filming it though. It allowed them to perform the scenes in various locations throughout the school rather than just on the stage, giving the show a more cinematic feel.

The streamed performance can be viewed on the school's YouTube channel, but it's only available from 5pm to 11pm EST today or tomorrow.

For the complete story on this ambitious production, check out this article in the Oak Bay News.

A look ahead to 2021

As a writer, I always find it hard to set concrete goals for the year. A story idea that excites me now may not excite me three months from now, when I finally have time to work on it. 

And then there are the vagaries of the publishing world. So much of what we decide to write depends on what we've been able to sell. 

So I'm a little torn about this coming year. I have some ideas what I want to accomplish, but I have no doubt most of those goals will change before the year is half over.

But having some goals are better than having no goals. So consider these a snapshot of where I am today--and nothing more.

My new year's goals

1) Sell a middle-grade novel series

My agent is pitching two of mine right now: The Enchanted Bookshop and Edison Young. 

If I sell either one, then I'm going to be VERY busy. Publishers want to have the next few books in the pipeline before they launch the series in case the first one's a hit. And although I've mapped out where I want those series to go, I've only just begun the next book in each series.

2) Write the first book in a third middle-grade novel series

If I don't sell either series, then I'm going to need something else for my agent to pitch. That's why I'm currently adapting another play of mine as a novel (actually more like a chapter book).

Which one? None other than Wicked Is As Wicked Does. Although it hasn't been as successful as I'd hoped, I love the characters, and the story hints at a whole post-fairy tale world that would naturally lend itself to a series.

That title, though, is a little long. So I'm just going to name the series The Wickeds, and give a more detailed title to each book.

3) Write another school play

Plays are what launched my publishing career, and some of them are doing very well so I'd like to keep that going.

But which play? Well, I've got an idea I've playing around with for a few years, and it may finally be time to put it to paper. I don't want to give any details yet (nothing sabotages your excitement for a new work like talking about it), but I hope to share some once I get the first draft written.

4) Buy all my books from independent bookstores

This goal has nothing to do with my writing career. But it does have something to do with the community I want to be a part of.

Book publishers have actually done pretty well during the pandemic. But bookstores have not--independent bookstores even less. People stuck at home have found it all too easy to buy their books from Amazon and have them show up at their doorsteps a day or two later.

But that's not the way to promote a vibrant literary community.

The east valley of Phoenix, where I live, has a wonderful independent bookstore in Tempe, called Changing Hands Bookstore. They promote local authors, hold writing classes, sponsor book clubs--all the things needed to keep a literary community alive. They've also adapted to the pandemic pretty well, shifting over to contactless curbside service for those not ready to venture into the store itself. 

Now I love Amazon as much as the next guy. And I have to admit I bought way too many books from them last year.

But no longer. This year I'm going to buy 100% of my books from Changing Hands or, if I decide to go used, from one of the many independent bookstores on Alibris (they need love too!).

Summing up

I think that's enough goals for this year. Like I said, I'm sure they'll change as the year progresses. But at least I have a plan for now. Something to shoot for. Something to keep me going when the going gets tough.

After all, you don't have to reach your goals to be successful. You just have to keep reaching.

A look back at 2020

Longtime readers of this blog know I don't do resolutions. I do goals. They're more practical. More useful. More motivating.

For the purposes of this blog, my goals are mostly writing-related, but sometimes I throw in a health-related one as well. Because, after all, you can't be at the top of your writing game if you're not feeling and living your best.

Well, last year, I tried something different. Instead of broad, all-encompassing goals that were largely out of my control (get an agent!), I set more specific goals that were entirely within my control (submit queries to 100 agents).

I shouldn't have bothered. Why? Because I ended up reaching my real goal for the year, and did it well before meeting the arbitrary but exceedingly ambitious submissions goals.

1) Complete my first chapter book

Success. I finished the first in my (projected) book series based on my play The Enchanted Bookshop. This one had the three main Lits--Dorothy Gale, Tom Sawyer and Pollyanna--splorging into the novel Treasure Island in order to get gold that will help Miss Margie pay her rent.

2) Complete a second entry in the chapter book series

Failure. This didn't happen. I started a second book, this one based on Around the World in Eighty Days. I thought I had a concept, but I quickly ran into some hurdles I couldn't jump over and decided to come back to the story a later time, when I felt more inspired--or at least more jumpy.

And no, that time hasn't come yet.

3) Submit the first chapter book and series concept to 20 publishers

Failure. Middle-grade novel series are the domain of large publishers and most of those won't even glance at your manuscript if it's not represented. So I decided to hunt for an agent first.

4) Submit the chapter book to 100 literary agents

Success--sort of. I didn't make it to the full hundred. In fact, I only made it 37 before I reached my real goal for the year: landing an agent. As described elsewhere, the most excellent Stephen Fraser of the Jennifer DeChiara Agency offered to represent me in March and he acted quickly in submitting The Enchanted Bookshop to several large publishers, followed a few months later by his submission of my Edison Young series to many of the same publishers.

Turns out that even if I hadn't received an offer, it was unlikely I would have hit that magic number because I was limiting my search to agents that focus on children's literature and there's barely a hundred of those in the whole biz.

5) Submit the TV series to 100 managers

Failure. I didn't even send one. But that's okay because Stephen's agency has a staffer who specializes in selling their properties to Hollywood. The books series comes first, of course. But it's good to know that if it's a success, there's a pathway to bigger things.

6) Submit the TV series to 100 agents

Failure. See 5) above.

7) Write one more TV series episode

Success. I completed the origin story for the Lits in an episode featuring the indomitable Don Quixote. But until the books series finds a home, this script has nowhere to go.

8) Walk half an hour a day

Success--and then some. What with my day job and my writing time and my family time, it was nearly impossible to squeeze in some exercise time.

Then the pandemic hit, and I was forced (encouraged? allowed?) to work from home. That saved me a whole hour of commuting time every day, and I used half of that time to start working out on our elliptical a rather pricey purchase that had mostly sat unused for the year since we'd bought it. (The other half hour a day? I'm learning Italian through Duolingo.)

And, man, did it help! It got my blood pumping, shaved twenty pounds off my weight and even dropped my blood pressure by a few points (not as much as I would have liked, but still).

Four successes out of eight goals? Not too bad, I guess. More importantly, I'm excited for the new year. Due to the pandemic, publishers are slow in their responses and even slower in laying out cash for a new series. But now that a vaccine had been released, the end of that very long tunnel is in sight.

May all of us get there. Together.