Anna Deavere Smith from "Letters to a Young Artist"

FAITH

Dear BZ:

"I have fought the good fight,

I have finished the race, I have kept the faith."

II Timothy 4:7

No doubt about it, more important that the race and the fight is faith. Whatever that means, spiritual or otherwise. It's crucial to keep the faith. Never stop believing.

Faith requires discipline and a lot of imagination.
ADS
Baltimore, Maryland
September 2003
(pg 173)

rejection

I got a letter from The Public Theatre today. They are not going to pursue "Hauntings". This is actually okay. I mean, I got to send my work to The Public Theatre. That's a big deal on it's own. It just means it wasn't the right time or place. At least something was wrong. But at any rate, I am going to continue working and sending stuff out. Someone will want to do this play.

thank you, Neil Gaiman

Last night, when Bill and I were in Little Rock, we were in the parking lot of Bed, Bath and Beyond, we were listening to NPR, and they were talking about Neil Gaiman's newest book, The Graveyard Book, and had some interviews with him about the book and the process of writing it. This is what he had to say about coming up with the idea of the book and kind of poking around at working on it:

"I knew I had a book," says Gaiman. But when he sat down that afternoon to write he came to a difficult realization after a page and a half: "I am not yet a good enough writer for this idea," Gaiman recalls thinking.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95835164

I had a moment of comfort from hearing that. I have a couple plays that have been hanging out in the back of my brain for literally years. I pull them out every once in a while, get maybe an extra half a page out if I'm lucky, and then set the plays back in the back of my brain.

But now I know WHY I haven't been able to get any further on these two precious plays: it's because I'm not ready. I don't know when I will be ready, but I have a feeling that when I'm ready, I'll know.

So I just have to be patient.

Also, my play reading last month went spectacularly. Honestly, I couldn't have asked for a better experience. The Green Room (http://thegreenroomtheatre.com/) was amazing. Tyson and Derek are consummate professionals and the actors were amazing as well. The space is wonderful. The Green Room is the site of the Brew and View, so it has the seats set up still like it's a movie theatre. There's a large black void above the stage where the screen was, and that has a ton of potential. There weren't a ton of people there each night, maybe about 30 people showed up in all, but the audiences were very helpful with their comments. I even got a standing ovation on Saturday night! It was just beautiful.

And I got wonderful feedback and I am going to be working on revising the play. There's not major changes, just little things to make it tighter.