I AM A PUBLISHED PLAYWRIGHT!

So, bonjour bonjour!

I was in my looong class today when we were delightfully given an hour free with a partner to do this acting exercise. My friend asked if it was alright if we checked our e-mails since she had a piece of business to resolve and that was fine by me so I checked mine as well...

...only to find in my mailbox this e-mail from Playscripts, Inc., to whom I'd submitted my "Wallace's Will" back in...mid-June maybe? that they're going to publish my play! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

I was flabbergasted and elated and in shock and overjoyed and needed to dance, so I ran up a flight of stairs to my advisor - this wonderful middle-aged gentleman named Bob who is always a little nervous but so very warm-hearted - and told him the news and he allowed me to embrace him (which was good because I seriously needed to hug). He then told me a little about the company - v. good, v. reputable, apparently v. big deal - he showed me a few of their scripts that he had on hand and said that once all contracts were signed, etc. to tell him and he'd tell the college and they'd be delighted to take credit for it and brag about what one of their students is doing and get some articles in the college and local Boston papers!

I'm getting 60% royalties on performance; 10% royalties on books sold. Which is very good. They're apparently pretty aggressive about marketing - which is a joy - although I'll probably contact all my alma maters and mention that their alumna (?) has a play that's just PERFECT for any school to put on (hinthint). And I'll probably contact booksellers here and in Boston to see if they want to arrange anything. And I'll DEFINITELY have an in for pursuing an agent now - consider the book and novella and now a play are out. And I have two other plays that are ready to be sent to Playscripts and two others I'm finishing for November...so....!

What's incredible, too, is that they've only had the play for at most three months (I'm trying to remember when I sent it in). This may seem a long time, but it isn't - replies can take upwards of a year, particularly if a submission isn't solicited (non-agented), as mine was. This is an uber-quick turn-around. The earliest I was expecting to get rejected was another four months from now - if then!

BUT, the most wonderful, wonderful marvellous happy splendiferous Lord-lovely thing is that - although I'd told myself that this was the year to get an agent, to start trying to get my plays published, to try to actually make a "go" of it in the professional world - quite honestly, in the back of my brain, I was thinking that perhaps I ought to bone up on my secretarial (lacka) skillz. Or learn how to brew a really good coffee. SO, to have this affirmation...! It's so very, very good; it's so very, very God.

The play itself can be seen in its entirety on YouTube (I own all versions to video - which is good). It's a single angle (the finished version IS for sale - four angles, bloopers, commentary, the whole shebang), but it still gets the idea across of what the play looks like.

Oh - sigh.

Let's just say that I was literally dancing around - nothing formal - just skipping, clicking my heels, whirling like a little girl with an invisible ribbon - ALL through Boston Common for perhaps half an hour - no matter if people were looking. And I was BELTING in the car show tunes - including "O what a beautiful morning" with the window down - again, all the world to see. And why not?

At 5:15 I left my looooooooong class just me, Emily, bored-student nonstrordinaire - but when I returned, I was something else. I was a playwright.

And I think of Shakespeare and Wilde up in Heaven, clicking beer mugs and cheering me on. And I think of the pink rose He gave me on my birthday (our own secret signal for "Hey, howyadoin-ness"). And I think of how there was a day - there MUST have been a day - when Shakespeare first set foot in London, having just come from the countryside, having been run out for fear of his life from Sir Thomas Lucy, having to leave behind his wife and child, having been run out from his job tutoring up North because they were being persecuted by Elizabeth's reign - arriving in London - all grease and grime and debris and mud and wonder and bustle and words and words and words - and going to the theatre, perhaps - probably already having written "Comedy of Errors" and "Titus Andronicus" and thinking he'd never written anything better - and watching someone else's work, and looking up at the buildings and down at the grime and the mud and feeling so very, very small - and yet with a secret fire within him, a SECRET within him, a gift within him that he might have felt might never be known - and I think of who passed him on the street, who ran into him, who sassed him, who fell drunkenly against him - never knowing that they had just passed the greatest playwright of the age - and he, not knowing, that there was more to his secret than even he knew.

"Lord, we know who we are, but not what we might be."

...wow...just...wow....

Mood: You seriously wonder?
Music: Creme de la Creme playlist - currently "Dancing" by Elisa
Thought: Oh, God - really? Me? *waves a little flag* "Yaaaaaay!"