"My Dear Miss Boodle...half of writing is rewriting..."

Recently I posted on social media that I had completed a draft of Live in 3,2,1..., the play I'm writing as Love Street's final production of 2024. It's true: I have a 100-page draft, and this time with only roughly 160 pages of meanderings and false starts that got thrown out before I typed "End of Play." Then, as I usually do, I ignored the play for about five days before giving it a full read-through with (slightly) fresher eyes.

I didn't like what I saw.

When I envision myself as a playwright, I like to imagine that inspired words and characters are flowing from my brain through my fingers and that the first situations and bits of snappy dialogue that come to me are inspired gold. I like to imagine it, but it's not true. Know that if you seen some of my work onstage, that piece has gone through revision after revision and rounds of feedback and collaboration. In some cases, it barely resembles the play of the first draft. 

So it is with this script. I hope to have a first "public" draft soon, but this ain't it. As disheartening as that realization can be, I am reminded of the words of author Shannon Hale: "When writing a first draft, I have to remind myself constantly that I'm only shoveling sand into a box so later I can build castles."

Let the castle construction commence!