Can you believe that I am 57 years old, and I am still experiencing new things by putting myself in new situations? I think the reason for this is because, even though I can spend hours sitting still and meditating, or sitting on a lawn chair in the back yard talking to my wife forever, as general rule, I get bored easily. So I look for things to do to stimulate myself and keep my hours busy.
I now know that you are never too old to realize your dreams. My biggest dream has always been to get a major piece of writing professionally published. And I just did it.
I wrote my first play about six years ago. It was produced by a local theater group, and it was fun, and then it was over. It was a wonderful experience at the time, but, it was over very quickly, and, in the end, was ultimately unfulfilling.
I began writing my second play about two years ago, and today, I have signed a publishing contract for it with a large drama publishing and promotions house, it is copyrighted, and it is stage debut will be in March, 2012.
This play is going to go places, and I have handled it much differently that I did my first one. And, to be honest with you, it was easy.
Right now, I'd like to take any of you who might be potential playwrights or novelists or whatever who have a desire to be published and walk you through the steps that I took to do so with my play.
Magazine articles are a little easier to get published. What I did was I got a hold of a book called The Writer's Market, read through the submission guidelines for many of the magazines listed there, targeted a couple of them, and submitted my articles to them. Some get accepted, most do not.
But for bigger works, I didn't have a clue what to do, and nobody seemed to be able to help me out. Nobody knew what to do to get pubished! Either that or nobody wanted to take the time to explain it all to me.
So, this is going to be the first in a short series of articles that will explain, step by step, how I successfully went about getting a publication and promotion contract for my latest play.
Ready?
Here goes.

To me, the easiest part of the entire process with writing Blessed Event and getting it published was the actual writing of the play. I love to write, but I know, from years of experience, that I cannot force myself to write.  When I do that, I come up completely blank, or the writing that I create seemed forced and artificial.
Sometimes, I write a page or two in ten minutes, and then that's it for rest of the day. The well's dry. There's nothing more there.
Other times, I can sit for a few hours and end up effortlessly producing thirty pages of stuff. (Notice that I didn't say good stuff. Just stuff...And by the way, I never throw out anything that I write. NEVER. I keep it all, and, sometimes, I take what I once thought to be a bad piece of writing, re-work it, and then get it published as a magazine article or a short story, or whatever.

Very rarely when I writing do I have any sort of plan or order. Only once in a blue moon do I begin writing something with a definite destination in mind. My main objective as a writer is to create full and vivid characters. Then, the characters literally take over, and the story goes wherever they take it. I know that that sounds pretentious and false, but, for me, it's the God's-honest truth.
It took me a little over two years to write the first draft of Blessed Event. I would write and write and write for days on end, and then I'd get sick of it and stick it into a drawer for a month or two.
After a hiatus, I would pull the manuscript out again and read it. Then, I'd sit down at the computer and continue.
When I got done with it the first time, the script was ninety-two pages long. That's a LONG play, but I was ready to share it with other people.
So I got together a bunch of my friends with whom I have shared many theatrical experiences. I gave them all a copy of the script and assigned them roles. Then, I emailed everybody on my address list and invited them to The Main Street Café in Willimantic, CT for a reading of the show.
The reading was held in a closed room in the pub with the cast and small audience plus food and drink. Before the reading began, I addressed the entire group and said that I wanted their honest criticisms of the show.
The reading of the play took two and a half hours, and when it was over, I was the first to comment. I stated that the thing was way too long. Much longer than the average audience could sit through and give the stage its complete attention.
That comment helped others gave courage to others to speak up with their comments, both negative and positive, about the show.
Believe it or not, I took many of those comments and went back and rewrote the entire play. I would drop individual lines, revamp sections, and even completely delete entire scenes.
I would rewrite the thing, and send it out to friends who have great dramatic instincts that I trust (actors and directors), and who would freely tell me what they thought.
I did this a total of seven times until I finally decided that the show was good enough to move forward.
It was time to move onto the next step.