I know I am a working writer who has achieved some success, which should mean that I spend my days floating on small clouds formed from my confidence. But I still spend a fair amount of time questioning my skills and fearing and my own mediocrity and wondering whether or not I am actually a good writer, or just like you know, an okay one, and whether or not I will ever dig deep enough into myself to write something brilliant but what is brilliant, that’s so subjective, and WILL I EVER GET INTO NEW DRAMATISTS and WHERE IS MY THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR DRAMA and DO I EVEN DESERVE ONE and so on and so forth, LIKE YOU NORMALLY DO.
But this morning, I feel like ten million bucks. A while back, The Young Actors Studio in North Hollywood asked me if I had any short plays for teens, and I gave them approximately eight thousand. Last night, they presented them for parents and friends. A few of the plays I hadn’t seen or read in so long, I couldn’t even remember what happened / how they ended. The kids / teens / gorgeous young adults who are about eleven times cooler than I ever was at that age performed BEAUTIFULLY. The plays sung. My brain butterflied and exposed.
I squeezed them all after, and floated home on aforementioned confidence clouds. And so: Don’t try and please or impress the entire world when there are people right in front of you who love what you do. Let them love it. Then give them more.