There are times in life when you must wait your turn.   The worse thing to do while you wait is to sit and do nothing. And doing nothing can be very tempting (and easy) because creating something new from scratch is like climbing a rocky mountain. But regardless of how hard it is and how easy it would be to procrastinate, waiting is a time when you must plant seeds and push yourself to be more creative. It is in this place that talent is nurtured and refined so that when your harvest comes in, you can reap what you sow.

I feel I am in that waiting place right now. I have started writing a new screenplay this past month which has just began to form and take real shape, but I have found myself distracted, unfocused, even discouraged.   I’m finding it hard to work when I’m waiting to hear about my other scripts out there. Harvest time is coming, but it is not now. That is not the season I am in. And you may not be in that season either, but please take heart.   It takes a bit of courage to be creative because as you work through your art, you may think you have nothing to say or may feel why would anyone care about what you are creating. I’ve said this before – if you have a passion, some talent and people around you who can guide/support you, do not give into the negative voices. Let it be about the work and the love of the work, and not the accolades. Work on your craft – that is what truly matters. It is easy to give up and much harder to carry on (especially when you’re in that waiting place). But it is when you are in the trenches, digging yourself out, that you can produce something that will matter.

Before winning the Kairos Award, I had entered countless number of contests, had reached out to producers, agents, managers, etc…, had done re-write after re-write on script after script for many, many years. And finally I had a break-through with a major win in the Kairos Award for my screenplay Play Ball. Kairos lead to other doors opening, several people took an interest in the script and then in August of 2014 Pâté Productions optioned it.  Play Ball plans to go into production later this year….and so I hope it does…and I wait.

My screenplay Who is Molly Steele? was a finalist last year in the Chronos Prize and there has been strong interest shown on this script, but nothing official yet. And so I wait for Molly Steele to land herself a home with a production company. I’m confident she will, but it is not yet her time, not her season….not yet.

Last month I did re-writes on my play Animal and sent it out to 3 different theatre companies/contest. They included: Woodward/Newman Drama Award at The Bloomington Playwrights Project in Indiana, Theatre Conspiracy in Florida, and Theatre New Brunswick. I’ll be sending the play out to more theatre companies all with the hopes and dreams that someone will pick it up. It’ll be months before I hear anything so in the meantime….I must wait.

So if you’re in that waiting place, don’t despair, just get determined. Do the work, plant your seeds, watch them grow…and then wait for the harvest.