News on my screenplay A PROMISE I MADE TO MR. BAGELS –

Dear Romeo ,
Congratulations!  We are very proud to say that our jury loved your screenplay and awarded it as a Finalist!  This means that you are still in the running to WIN!

It’s always gratifying to get an email like this, especially just before Christmas.  It’s a nice little gift of encouragement that landed into my lap.  The winners will be announced on January 8, 2025.   The higher you place, more value is given to your script and more opportunity for a producer or company to reach out to you.  It’s all about exposure – getting someone to pay attention to you.  It’s about timing and talent and the right person at the right place.  It’s also about confidence and not getting too down on yourself.  Rejection is a huge part of being a writer…an artist.  And more often than not, Rejection is my middle name…but so is Persistence and Hope and Doubt and Possibility and I can go on.  It’s about a lot of things.

Screenplay Festival has been in operation for over 20 years and my hope is on January 8th, MR. BAGELS will find a way to make it to the top…or close to it.  But when it comes down to the finalists and choosing winners,  yes – it does come down to talent, but more often than not, it’s who’s reading it and who’s persuaded by your script.   So you have to let it go.   Being a finalist, you’re already a winner.  Celebrate for now and wait with great anticipation to see what will come in the new year.

As 2024 comes to a close, two of my plays ANIMAL and my newest play WAVES are being considered by a handful of theatre companies.  Again, this is the waiting game and it takes sometimes several months before you hear anything about whether a company might be interested in staging your play.  In the meantime, in the new year, I will be holding my first official reading of WAVES.  This will be the first time I hear the play read out loud with actors supplying their voices.   It’s a chance to get a sense of how the play flows and what the dialogue sounds like.  As a writer, I love to just sit there and listen and see what lands.  During the months it took to write WAVES, I’ve played all the parts out loud and in my head.  It sounds a lot different when you match other voices to those parts.

As I look back at 2024, I want thank everyone who takes the time to read these blogs.  I read every comment made on this website, every like or comment made on facebook or personal messages sent to my inbox.  It’s been a melancholic year for me, but I found a way to write something I’m proud of in WAVES.  And I’ve begun thinking up new ideas for a play – one that I hope will be more of a departure from what I’m used to writing.

I leave you with a quote from actress Mary Tyler Moore, who had a hard, but successful life.  She suffered with diabetes and at one point had an addiction to alcohol.  Her one and only son died of an accidental gunshot wound to the head.   Shortly after his death, she began making a film called Ordinary People where she plays a distraught mother who loses her son.   She used all her pain to play that part and it’s one of her best performances.   This quote by Miss Moore is about failure and using your pain.  Cheers to you all and onward to 2025!