Sometimes you work like hell to achieve a certain goal.  You sweat, you wrack your brains, you refuse to be discouraged,  . . .and then your big break comes out of the blue by pure luck.

I had rewritten and rewritten the script to Blessed Event somewhere around eight or nine times. I had solicited comments on it and suggestions on how to better it from every good theatrical mind that I could find. I subjected it (and, vicariously, myself) to public scrutiny. I lobbied hard and begged influential friends to lobby along with me in order to get an established theater group to produce a dramatic reading and then a series of stage productions for the show. And my big break came one day from a very unlikely source.

A friend of mine who is vice-president of The Windham Theatre Guild (The theater group that produced the dramatic reading of the show and is producing the stage performances of the show this coming March) sent me an email after seeing the dramatic reading. In the email, she included the name and contact information of a publishing house that had been sending The Windham Theatre Guild promotional materials for plays for a couple of years. She said she wasn’t sure if this was something that I could use or not, but she sent it to me anyway.

I double-clicked on the link that was provided in the email, and downloaded five pages of information about JAC Publishing and Promotions. JAC is a publishing house that puts together a catalogue of plays for theater companies all over the world. According to the information that I downloaded, they will act as agent to the playwright, publish the scripts, charge, collect and distribute the royalties and promote the play.

As a playwright, I could submit my play for them to evaluate via email, CD, or hard copy. Along with the script, I needed to send a Character Description List, a property list, a costume plot, a synopsis of the play and a biography. The board at JAC would then read the play and come to a decision as to whether or not it was good enough for them to publish and promote.

Well, at first glance, it seemed like a lot of work to me, and…well…to be honest, I really didn’t have the time.

I was happy just knowing that the show was good, my friends liked it, and it was going to have its day in the sun onstage for three performances in March. Who could ask for anything more? (Think small and you have less of a chance of being disappointed.)

However, I kept the downloaded information on JAC in my desk drawer, and I kept the web site link on my computer.

After about a month of thinking about it every day, I found myself with some spare time on my hands, and I came up with a property list for the show.

About a week later, I wrote a brief synopsis of the plot.

A couple of weeks after that, wrote a bio and came up with Character Description List.

Finally, a few days later, I came up with a costume plot for all of the characters.

So then, lo and behold! I had all the requirements needed to submit my play!

Being the take-charge kind of guy that I am . . . I procrastinated for about two more weeks before actually submitted all of the material via email to JAC.

Why did I hesitate? Well, to be perfectly honest with you, I was afraid of rejection. What if they hated it and sent me another one of those “Thanks, but no thanks” rejection slips for me to add to my already HUGE collection from past submission trials with other written works?

I wasn’t sure if my ego could take it. Not with THIS piece of writing. This one wasn’t just an article or an essay or a short story. This one was something very special to me, and I had put a GIGANTIC amount of effort and sweat into it. 

Right there in the JAC literature, it stated that when you submit a script to JAC, you should lose your ego because only a small percentage of all scripts submitted gets accepted, and those that do usually need considerable alterations done before they are finally accepted for publication.

My play didn’t have a chance.

But, one day a couple of months ago, I was feeling a bit ambitious and adventurous.  So I wrote a cover email to the president of JAC, attached the script and all the other written requirements, hesitated for a few moments, took a deep breath…and hit the “Send” button.