Leveraging the technology…

…to multiply your chances

Sometimes we don’t put our work out there because we don’t want to cope with the rejection.

There are two things I’ve learned about that.

One is that if you don’t submit, the answer is definitely “no.”

The second is that it’s easier to take a rejection letter if you know you have other submissions in play. This theatre, publisher, art gallery, gate-keeper-of-choice turned you down. One or more of the others might say, “Yes!” That thought makes it easier to keep submitting when the rejection comes and is the best reason I know to have multiple submissions going at any one time.

Anything that makes it easier to submit is a very good thing.

So, today, I’m thankful for the growing number of theatres that accept electronic submissions.

I know a lot of playwrights who have been wary of sending out digital copies of their work. Maybe some of them still are.

The concern is that a Word document or a PDF is so easily copied. And so easily edited. Some are worried about losing control of their work, and some are worried about outright plagiarism.

All of that could happen, of course.

But let’s be realistic.

With the availability of scanners, what’s to stop determined plagiarists from loosening the little brads of your report cover, taking your script out of it, and digitizing it themselves? Yes, it’s harder. But not that much harder.

You’re not really protecting your work by sticking to hard copy. You’re killing a few more trees, making the submission much more expensive to you (report cover, paper, ink, envelope, postage), and making it more difficult and time-consuming to get it out the door.

Contrast that with what happens when the theatre allows an electronic submission.

You collect your digital files: the script, the bio, the production history, and whatever else this particular theatre wants. (You should have all of this sitting in a folder on your hard drive, ready to go. If not, why not? Don’t have any way to create a PDF? Try CutePDF, a good free solution.)

You make any adjustments necessary to fit the submission guidelines. (Maybe they want a blind copy or a longer or shorter synopsis than the one you usually use.)

You address and compose your email, attach your document, and click “Send.” (If your email program allows it, request a Return Receipt so you know the transmission is received.)

You’re done! It’s a half-hour, at the most, instead of the other way’s half- to two-day process.

And the poor literary manager at the other end can read scripts on her eReader instead of lugging them home in back-breaking bundles.

There’s no contest.

More of my stuff gets out to more places because a lot of the friction has been removed from the process.

When I first began submitting electronically, I was a bit hesitant. Now, I love it when they offer that option.

The limits of learned behavior

Don’t be a squirrel

Why is it that squirrels can outwit every mechanism to protect a birdfeeder devised by man… (Don’t believe that? Watch this.)…but persist in waiting until just the last minute to run across the road in front of a car?

I refuse to believe the Geico ad that suggests it is purposeful mischief. (Word is the gecko’s union is contemplating a job action over the use of unorganized squirrel labor in this commercial. When the inflatable rat goes up at the next camera location, the menagerie will be complete.)

Apparently, there are limits to a squirrel’s ingenuity. Those crafty little brains haven’t learned to judge speed and direction of a moving vehicle–or that there are consequences for misjudging it. Dire consequences. I guess they hear the engine or feel the vibration, and the alarm bell goes off in their heads. So, they dash right out into danger.

They don’t learn from their mistakes, I suppose, because the mistake is fatal. Maybe their companions learn. There are always companions. Like sorrows, squirrels ‘come not single spies but in battalions.* Maybe the companions learn, but I doubt it. The next time Buddy Squirrel hears a car coming he probably doesn’t think, “Uh-oh, better not run across the road! Remember what happened to Chester!”

I guess he could. One squirrel looks much like another to me, so maybe Buddy runs the other way. However, there are always squirrels dashing across the street in front of my car, and I am always hitting the brakes, so I don’t think they are grasping the concept.

The running is a survival mechanism. It stands them in good stead most of the time. It’s just not working for them in traffic.

Today, I am wondering what survival mechanism aren’t working for me, anymore. What learned behaviors–learned so early that I think they are just part of my personality–are getting in the way of my success?

I’ll tell you one that most women of my age–and maybe any age–have to fight against. The ‘Be a Good Girl and You Will Be Rewarded’ myth. Tricky, that. Because certain aspects of “being a good girl” are helpful. It’s not always bad to be polite, to be accommodating, to use gentleness instead of force.

Sometimes, it’s not enough, though.

Sometimes, you have to have another club in your bag. And sometimes you have to club somebody with it.

Metaphorically speaking. Do not run out and hit anybody with a 5 iron!

I’m not advocating violence–or non-violence. I’m just saying, if you’re not making the progress you want to make, it might be helpful to look for the patterns. Wonder about the things that you are doing ‘instinctively’ and see if you can change them.

In other words, quit dashiing out in front of cars!

* Shakespeare! Hamlet, Act IV, Sc. 5

That’s me!

Branding, Intellectual Property and Google Alerts

This Tuesday’s Tip is about Google Alerts. Get one, use it, pay attention to it.

What is a Google Alert?

It’s a way to let Google do some of the work of keeping you updated and informed.

You can set up a query for anything, and Google will email you a summary of links of instances where your search terms appear on the web. On an ongoing basis.

Say you are fascinated by–I don’t know–koala bears. You can set up a Google Alert for the term “koala bear” and get a daily, weekly, or real-time email of websites where that term appears. You can choose to be informed about every website or only news stories, blog mentions, videos, or books. You can choose to let Google determine the best matches and email you only those, or you can opt for all results.

As an artist, this can work for you in three ways.

The first, perhaps, is obvious. Research!

Writing about koala bears? Let Google do some of the grunt work, and have new info delivered to your inbox daily. Of course, you will still need the library and reference books, but a Google Alert can save you time by letting you know there’s a new book being published next week. You can be the first to request it on Inter-Library Loan. It’s like your own personal research assistant for content.

It can help with market research also. If you’re trying to put together a book proposal for a non-fiction work–the definitive treatise on koala bears–you’re going to need to include research on the competition. How many books about koala bears are there anyway? Maybe you should write about apple cider instead.

The second reason has to do with branding. Whether you are doing business under a company name or your own, it’s probably a good idea to know how else that name is being used. In my case, it turns out there are quite a few other Elaine Smiths out there. (I’d have bet on the Smiths, but the Elaines were more surprising. I don’t meet too many Elaines–Seinfeld and The Graduate notwithstanding.)

Quite a few of the links in the Google Alert I have on my name are one-offs.

Obituaries head that list, of course. Surprisingly, they are often encouraging. In fact, I hope I do as well as the Elaine Robb Smith who passed away in 2009 and was described thusly: “”Even into her 90s, Elaine Smith could do a smooth time step, tapping her way down the hall of her adult-care facility using her walker.”

There are, however, a small circle of us who make recurring web appearances. There is the Elaine Smith who is a member of the Scottish Parliament. There is the Elaine Smith who designs outdoor pillows. There is the Elaine Smith, who, sadly, recently also passed away, who founded Therapy Dogs International. There is Elaine Smith, House Member of the Idaho State Legislature.

I don’t know if I have anything in common with these ladies other than our name, but it’s kind of fun to see them surface time after time in news stories and to follow their careers at this anonymous distance. (I did once write to Representative Smith of Idaho, because she was courageously standing up for women’s rights, and I thought I would just say thanks.) Fortunately, they all seem to be eminently respectable, hard-working, contributing members of society. I’m not sure what I would have done if a porn queen popped up. Fortunately, I’ve never had to decide–but it would have been a branding issue, for sure.

Almost certainly, these women know nothing about me (unless they have their own Google Alerts), but most days, I see them mentioned in my inbox.

And that brings me to the third, and possibly most important, reason to have a Google Alert on your name.

The concept of intellectual property is going through massive mutations in the hearts and minds of internet users. The laws, however, remain the same. You write it, you own it. It should not be copied, distributed, posted, etc. without your permission. No independent artist, however, can safeguard their work completely. We don’t have the time or the resources. But a Google Alert can help.

Cautionary tale:

I said earlier that I see the other Elaine Smiths appearing in my inbox with fair regularity. Usually, when I get my daily Google Alert, I scan it, checking them off in my mind.

There’s the pillow lady. There’s the dog lady. There’s the member of Scottish Parliament.

I check it out, check them off, and move on with my day. One day, however, a couple of years ago, I got my Alert email, and the internal dialogue went like this:

There’s the pillow lady. There’s the dog lady. There’s the member of Scottish Parliament. Huh. That sounds like my play. That is my play! That’s me!

A small theatre was advertising a reading of my play.

Now, I had submitted the play to them. They, however, had never approached me for my permission to do a public reading or even informed me it was happening. In the theatre world, this is a BIG no-no.

I would never have known without the Google Alert.

I give the theatre the benefit of the doubt. It may have been something that slipped through the cracks. Possibly, several people each thought somebody else had been in touch with me. I got in touch with them, and they were apologetic. They offered to cancel the reading. Since there are not usually any really good reasons not to have a reading, however, I told them they could proceed. No real harm done, except that I might have been able to be there if I’d known about it.

On the other hand, it could have been a production, and that would have been a big problem.

So, set up a Google Alert on your name and on your titles. Pay attention to it. Make sure that when your own work pops up in the middle of the snippets about therapy dogs and pillows and the Scottish Parliament that there’s a chance you’ll know it.

The world in motion

Constantly.

Something I’ve noticed since we moved to Florida from New York City: the natural world moves.

There’s a lot of activity in NYC. People are constantly scurrying here and there, running for the subway, flagging down a cab, squeezing into an elevator. Pedestrians and taxis and buses and cable cars and subways and ferries. And, of course, they all move.

But the environment is fairly static. Rectilinear. The prevailing impression is of hulking, stationary objects hemming you in. Great, solid constructions of stone and glass loom over you. Other than the occasional pigeon, there’s not a lot of motion that isn’t man-made. (Okay. There are occasional rats on the subway tracks and roaches — but ugh! And shiver. We don’t dwell on those.)

But here, everything moves all the time.

I wake up in the morning, and the sunlight reflects off the creek onto the ceiling, and the whole house shimmers as the water moves. Looking out the windows, the leaves flutter in the breeze, the Spanish Moss swings from branches that bend and sway. A cardinal skips from the ligustrum to the sweetgum tree, and a squirrel strolls past the glass door on the patio. Chances are there will be a butterfly on the gardenia and lizards scurrying from one place to another.

It’s an extraordinary thing to be surrounded by such constant motion. A little vertiginous, even.

But I’m getting use to it.

It’s all constantly changing.

Full of motion and miracles.

Like life.

Awesome customer service

Unbelievably awesome!

Unprecedentedly awesome.

Is “unprecedentedly” a word? It seems unlikely. Perhaps its use here is unprecedented! Real word or not, however, it conveys my meaning–which is that I have never before experienced the kind of customer service provided this week by the gentleman who is painting the exterior of my house.

First of all, he did all the normal things right: gave us a verbal estimate that was a good price, followed up with an email providing proof of insurance and a formal written estimate, and offered to begin sooner than he originally said was possible. The latter, of course, was due to a cancellation by another client, so I don’t really count it heavily on the awesome side of the scale, but he was low pressure about it (which I like), provided references immediately upon request, and was patient while I checked them and worked out a scheduling difficulty.

Then, he showed up on time and got right to work pressure washing.

So far, this is good business but not extraordinary, right?

And then something happened.

He was about halfway through the pressure washing when we discovered his machine wasn’t pulling enough water. And then we discovered it was because there was no water. The aerator was empty. The pipes in the house had nothing but air in them. Oh, no!

We had been having a problem with one of the pumps that pull water from our well, so we shut it off. Months ago.

And we’d forgotten about it. There are only two of us in the house, and we don’t use that much water. The drought has ended around here, for now, and we haven’t had to water the lawn. Consequently, the other pump–the one inside the house–has been enough. We had totally lost sight of the fact that we’d shut off the outside pump.

Once we all figured out what the problem was and verified that the pump wasn’t working correctly, I would have expected the painter to say, “Call me when you get it fixed,” and disappear for weeks.

What he actually said was, “You need a new pressure switch. I can fix that for you.”

And he did.

He took off for Home Depot, bought the parts, came back and spent time in the hot sun doing something that was not at all part of his job.

Of course, we told him to add the cost to his final bill, and even then the job came in under budget!

I call that unprecedentedly awesome customer service.

The pump is working now. It comes on when it is supposed to start and shuts off when it is supposed to stop. It’s much quieter than it was previously. We’ll be able to use the sprinklers if we need them.

Oh…and the paint job? It looks great!

If you are in the Middleburg, Fleming Island, Orange Park, Green Cove Springs, Jacksonville area and you need a painter:

Russell Rowell of Perfect Painting.

Shoot me an email, and I’ll give you his number.

Meanwhile, I’m thinking it makes sense to always ask ourselves how we can go the extra mile. How would things change if we all assumed we were responsible for everything around us going well?

One hundred percent responsible.

For everything.

Think about it. Because Russell has set the bar pretty high.

We have to do better than this

Compromise is not a dirty word

Columbine. Gabrielle Giffords. Aurora, Colorado.

We have to do better than this.

I spent a good portion of my growing up years in the rural South. People had and have guns. When there are rattlesnakes and water moccasins, rabid raccoons, even alligators on the doorstep, they are useful tools.

But we have to do better than this.

I’ve heard most, if not all, of the arguments on both sides of the gun control issue. The Second Amendment constitutionally protects the right to bear arms. ‘Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.’

Please understand that I am not trying to pry your precious hunting rifle out of your hands when I say that you can have no reasonable response that refutes the following statement:

People without guns kill far fewer people.

When did the “well regulated” part of the Second Amendment fall by the wayside?

The shootings in Aurora will bring this debate back to the top of the political wrangling.

And they should.

I don’t know the answer, but we have to find a better one than we’ve got now.

Compromise is not a dirty word.

Back in the Wild West–or, at least, in the literature and cinematic depictions thereof–the marshal, intent on civilizing a town and making it a fit place for families to live, would begin by requiring the cowpokes to take off their gun belts when they came to town.

A little regulation. Not confiscation.

Turn ’em in when you ride into town. Pick ’em up when you ride out.

Where’s Gary Cooper when you need him? Can’t we apply a little common sense here?

I went to grad school in Denver. I’ve driven through Aurora. I’ve been to the mall. I may even have been to the movie theater. I’m just going to sit here for a while and wonder when–and if–I will be going to any movie theater again.

While I’m doing that, Roger Ebert’s column in the New York Times is worth reading. You can find it here.

Morning Pages and Forward Motion

A Friday Re-Find

It’s been 20 years since The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron was first published. Almost 4 million copies have been sold. (I bought at least 5 of them myself. They make great gifts!) So, it seems like most of the readers of this blog will have, at least, heard of it.

It’s worth reminding you about it, however.

Of all the self-help books I’ve read in my life–and I have read a few!–The Artist’s Way is the most transformative. You are reading this blog because of Julia Cameron–(and because of my good friend Hope Nunnery ,who first gave me a copy of Ms. Cameron’s book).

Hope and I embarked on the odyssey of the 12 week workshop outlined in The Artist’s Way with the idea that it might improve our acting skills and help us with some of the things we felt were holding us back in our acting careers.

Hope is now a recording artist with a fabulous and critically-acclaimed CD to her credit, and I have a completed novel, a sheaf of short stories, and an award-winning full-length play.

I can’t speak for Hope, but that is not what I expected when I began doing my morning pages and going on my artist dates. But it has been a wild and fulfilling journey.

I get lazy sometimes. I forget to do the morning pages, or I lose confidence in them. What constantly astonishes me, however, is that every time I go back to that practice, I also regain forward motion in creativity and in the practical aspects of getting the work out into the world.

So, I suggest–if you haven’t already read/done The Artist’s Way–give it a try. It’s a book designed to be used as a 12 week workshop. You can do anything for 12 weeks. Go to JuliaCameronLive.com, and get an overview.

If you’ve done it and forgotten about it, dig out your copy. Refresh your memory. Do those morning pages, and see what happens.

You could be amazed!

Celebrating the MotH*

No, I am not a lepidopterist.

Thankful this Thursday for a handy husband, the Man of the House. As annoying as he can be (and all those who have ever been married understand whereof I speak), the cost of renovations over here at Casa Lagarto would have been far greater if not for the MotH’s abilities–and willingness–to pitch in and fix things. Plumbing, light fixtures, drywall, roof leaks–nothing seems beyond him.

The MotH is a retired Broadway stagehand–a member of the illustrious band of brothers and sisters known collectively as IATSE: the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. Furthermore, he is a member of Local One, the New York local branch. Rock on!

I’m telling you, these guys and girls are a can-do bunch.

It’s fashionable in certain quarters to complain about the theatre unions, and the stagehands come in for quite a bit of the flack. Any actor who has been scolded for moving a chair knows what I mean.

But they keep the show running, the scenery (and sometimes the actors) flying, the props at hand, the trapdoors opening and closing, and everybody safe.

You like that chandelier in Phantom… , the spectacular skating track set of Starlight Express, the ice skating in the Radio City Music Hall Christmas show?

Thank the stagehands.

And now, one of them is spending his retirement working every bit as hard far off the stage as he ever worked on and behind it. And in far weirder conditions.

This week, he had even planned to be in a canoe under the dock running a PVC pipe to serve as a conduit for the electrician who is going to clean up the wiring down by the water. At the mercy of tide tables and spiders and the frustratingly hilarious fact that when you hammer something from a canoe, you tend to float off from within striking distance of the nail. (We know this from previous experience. Don’t ask.)

He’d have done it, too, if it had not turned out to be possible to pull up some of the boards.

He’s saved us a lot of money. The house is prettier, safer, and more efficient.

I can hammer a nail myself, and I could probably figure out the other stuff if necessary. I am very glad it isn’t necessary, however.

* MotH: Man of the House

Organized lightning*

“The peril the wind sings to in the wires on a gray day.”**

Today, I am wondering about electricity.

As Dave Barry says, ““We believe that electricity exists, because the electric company keeps sending us bills for it, but we cannot figure out how it travels inside wires.”

I sometimes think–

On second thought, that’s not really true. I almost never think about electricity. It just works. Or it doesn’t–usually during a big storm or, inexplicably, on three consecutive sunny Saturday mornings last May.

However, today, I was thinking about electricity, because it is Wondering Wednesday, and as I was wondering what I was wondering about enough to write about today, I remembered something that happened many years ago during rehearsals for the Women’s Project’s production of Heather McDonald’s Dream of a Common Language.

Dream…is a beautiful play. Set on the eve of the First Impressionist Exhibition of 1874, it explores a topic that was relevant in 1874, relevant at the time of the production on which I worked, and still, sadly, highly relevant now: the way in which the work of women artists is devalued and marginalized simply because they are women.

Anyone who has been following the resurrection of the sense of outrage felt by women playwrights at their drastic under-representation will be both appalled that such organizations as 50/50 in 2020 and the Women’s Initiative at the Dramatists Guild are still necessary and thankful that these organizations as well as the Womens’ Project and New Georges still exist and still work to redress the balance.

All the philosophical, political and societal underpinnings of the play, however, are not really the point of this post. (So that’s a rant for another time.)

What I found myself laughing about yet again, all these years later, as I was digging through my brain for material, was this single event early in rehearsals.

See, the Dream… cast includes a child actor. In our case, J. R. Nutt — who I am happy to see has continued his career into young adulthood — no easy task — way to go, J. R.!

He probably doesn’t remember this. I think he was only 10 or 12 at the time. It is, however, one of my priceless memories of the experience.

It was early in rehearsals. Talented, creative actors with good hearts wanted to make sure that the child among them felt comfortable and at home. They took special pains during a break to reach out to him and include him in the conversation. He had done some work previously, but he was relatively new, still, to the theatre. It was entirely possible that he would be confused by some things.

Our leading man assured him that we were all there to help him out. If he had questions, he should come to us. We would happily answer anything he asked.

J. R. said, “We-elllll…….” and we all cast our minds back over Equity rules and theatrical procedures. Would we be asked to explain the break schedule? The stage manager’s role? Or would it be craft related? The best way to learn lines, perhaps? Given the leading man’s fatherly tone, I even considered the possibility of a question about sex–which would have presented certain problems, I guess, of appropriateness and, even, jurisdiction (his mom was around, of course)–but none was forthcoming.

What he actually said, after gazing speculatively around the circle of actors and crew, was “We-ellll…….you know…I don’t really understand electricity.”

I wish I had a snapshot of the faces in that circle at that moment — although I guess I don’t really need one, because I have never forgotten it, and it makes me giggle even now.

We were all so sure of ourselves, armored in our superior age and experience, and then this kid comes up with “I don’t really understand electricity” and a hopeful, anticipatory air, certain that we would explain it to him. After all, we’d just assured him he could ask us anything.

Seven or eight people then had to confess, sheepishly, that none of us really understood electricity either.

I did go home and look it up in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Perhaps it will come as no surprise to you when I tell you I still don’t understand electricity.

I do now have a Master Electrician lined up to do some work on Casa Lagarto. I have hope that he has, at least, a basic understanding. And I wonder if J. R. understands electricity these days, or if he has given up wondering and just flips a switch like the rest of us.

* George Carlin – “Electricity is really just organized lightning.”
** Janet Frame

Weeding sorties

The value of incremental progress

I am not a champion gardener. If you’ve been following this blog, this will not come as a big shock to you.

And I believe I mentioned before how I live in a sub-tropical climate. Plant life has a tendency toward the over-exuberant. Unless it’s dropping dead from heat stroke or complications due to my lack of green-thumbness. Mostly, however, it is over-exuberant. There’s a vine thing, for example. . .well, let’s just say, it won’t surprise me if it creeps in the window and strangles me in my sleep one night.

Anyhow, it must follow as the night the day *(I knew I could get Shakespeare in here somewhere!), that Weeding 101 would become a required course.

The problem is it is also extremely hot down here. Extremely hot. Hotter than hell, eggs frying on the sidewalk, where’s a cooling shelter hot.

I am a person who likes to finish what she starts. Preferably within minutes.

Back when I was doing a lot more programming than I do now, working on large and complex projects with shifting requirements and ‘scope creep’ of epic proportions, I was most often hired by Tony Coretto, the CEO of PNT Marketing Services, Inc. Tony is a most excellent boss. In the midst of chaos and looming deadlines, he would talk with unfailing optimism about “incremental progress.”

I’m sorry to say that I never totally appreciated the value of that way of looking at things until it came to weeding the flower beds in a hot, humid July in Florida. It is not possible–unless you have greater masochistic tendencies than I do–to eliminate all weeds in one marathon session. A person can, however, make incremental progress.

Going out before the sun is high enough to beat down on the flower bed, you can work for a half hour or so in the shade. Taking out the weed whacker in the late evening, around 7, there might be a breeze coming off the water.

It will never all be done at once in one shining example of impeccable landscaping. The campaign is not one of shock and awe. It’s guerilla warfare with intermittent weeding sorties.

Incremental progress.

And you know what?

It turns out that’s the only way to finish any piece of writing. A little at a time.

So this Tuesday’s Tip is to make a sortie. Set a timer and write for five minutes. Ten minutes. One minute. Any increment at all leads to incremental progress.

* Hamlet, Act I, sc.3

Elaine Smith Writes

Anything She Wants