The Farewell Scene

I've been working on a new play for the past couple of months (entitled "The Treachery of Images" - and yes, I stole it from Magritte), but I am now very close to finishing it. I know that after just a couple more rewrites it will be time to step away. I know this because I've started to reach the stage where I start second guessing things I was very happy with all along...a clear sign of rewriting for the sake of it. Many years ago, while at art school, I learned a very valuable old Chinese adage: It takes two people to paint a painting - one to paint it, the other to say stop. And so we must part. But, as always, it is with mixed feelings. On the one hand, I'm getting a little burned out from going over the same scenarios again and again, and long to start something new. At the same time, I've spent countless hours alone with these characters, delving deep into their lives and personal problems, taking their journey with them. We've been almost inseparable these past two months or more, and even when I wasn't with them, they were always on my mind (cue music). So there's always a little sadness when we have to part company, our once intimate relationship having run its course.

Perhaps not as sad, though, as the realization that now the real hard work begins...marketing it! Oh what fun that will be: the query letters, the 10/15/20 page dialogue samples, the mailing, the emailing, the waiting, the form letter rejections, the nibbles of interest, the waiting again, the hopes, the disappointments, the highs, the lows. In short, the...oh, what's the word I'm looking for?

Oh, yes...drama.