Let’s begin with the good news.  I received this email below from the Austin Film Festival where I submitted my play ANIMAL in their Playwriting Competition:

Thank you for submitting your script, Animal into the 2021 Austin Film Festival Playwriting Competition. I am pleased to inform you that your Play advanced to the Second Round!

YIPPPEE!  ANIMAL lives to see another day of judging.  Austin is a huge festival that received in total over 13,000 scripts (!!!) competing in dozens of categories…and one of those categories is a Playwriting Prize.  Then my joy was cut short as I read the next line of the email and my heart sunk:

It did not advance to the Semifinalist Round but, keep in mind, your placement represents a distinction achieved by less than 20% of this year’s submissions.

There were 766 plays submitted to Austin and ANIMAL landed in the top 140 of that pile.  Not bad.  It shows the play has legs and so there is reason to take pride in this result.

I have never been one to pretend all is great or be afraid to call out the truth especially when it comes to this creative, and often frustrating journey of writing.   Yes, the actual work does give you a high, especially when you feel a script is clicking along and you really sense there is something special happening.  But yesterday was disappointing.

On top of the ANIMAL news, I received three rejections for my screenplays BREAK AWAY and LET IT SHINE.   In Austin’s Screenplay Competition neither script made it to the 2nd Round.  And in the Slamdance Screenplay Competition, BREAK AWAY did not make the Quarters.   Just one gut blow after another.

So the discouragement was brutal and it was hard to continue working on my new screenplay A PROMISE I MADE TO MR. BANGLES.   I got really quiet/depressed after this news, then I needed to vent, which I did with a couple friends and now I sit here writing this blog to let you all know that to ignore discouragement or pretend you are not feeling it, is foolish.   Acknowledge the hurt because that is when we learn something about ourselves and we hopefully grow.   But don’t be afraid to sit with pain and all its colors.  It’s okay to feel crappy in the moment.  I didn’t feel much of a writer yesterday – that’s the truth.  I felt like a failure.   Unworthy.   One starts to question:  Am I any good?  Does anyone really care about what I write about?  Do I even care anymore? Why should I subject myself to these awful feelings?

And then I came across this wonderful quote from scholar Neal A Maxwell:

Boom.  And then I thought of what other courage looks like.    There are places in the world – third world countries – where people are facing life and death choices every single day.  They have no choice but to be courageous.  So my word for everyone today is:  perspective.

I can’t fathom that kind of courage because the fact is, it may take some courage to write…but to sit down and write is more about being stubborn, consistent and remain ferociously passionate as I (and most writers) work through, criticism, crazy doubts and boredom.

Speaking of courage, this past month, I took my mom off one of her medications – a mood stabilizer called Epival.  It’s a great drug that helped her out of the manic episodes she was having last year.  This drug re-balanced her, but lately I’ve felt that she no longer needed the drug and it was doing more harm than good.   The mania she was experiencing was due to another drug she was taking, but now is not.  So, this past month, we got her off Epival.  The withdrawal was awful.  Several days my mother was trembling all over and feeling like she was losing her mind again.  And yet, each day, this woman would get up, cook, read, watch some television, exercise and spend time in prayer as the withdrawal symptoms attacked her (it’s like fighting a demon). You don’t think she felt some kind of discouragement during this battle?  But to me, it was and continues to be, her courage that stands out.  She acts on that courage every waking moment.  What demons are you fighting today and what courage is just waiting to burst forth from inside of you?

These are the themes I will always write about and confront.  Whatever you’re facing, don’t shy away or run from the anger/sadness of it all, but remember the world around you.  Remember perspective.   Reach out to someone and talk to them if you need to vent and then maybe you can face the next day with just a little bit more courage.