The Write Life

Most of the time I devote this space to all things Grinder, but this month I'd like to take a small detour, and talk a little bit about my writing. 

Writing is and always has been a primarily creative outlet for me, rather than a source of income. I try to write every day, and I can't go too long without writing, even if I try not to, or even if it's not convenient to do so. I always have a notebook in my pocket, so that I can write whenever I do get the chance. For creative work I compose exclusively by hand, pen to paper, writing in cursive (if you don't know what cursive is, ask your parents). Over the past year or so I've taken some steps to further develop the writing-as-business side of things, as I struggle, however slowly, to take my creative career to a new level. 

One of the first things I did was to give in and finally start paying for a website once again. I hadn't paid for web hosting since the old Grinder era crashed back in 2010, but now I am the proud owner of https://www.grinderproductions.ca/, a place where I can showcase both my ongoing productions in the new Grinder era, as well as all of my 60+ plays that I feel are worthy of public performance. I still keep my old Grinderwriting page for anything I write that isn't a play, like my Technical Theatre Production books, but I haven't added much to that site in quite a while. I also took the plunge and created this page, featuring most of my plays, on New Play Exchange, an online platform for discovering new dramatic work, searchable by people and theatre companies who are actually looking for new plays to produce. 

The second thing I did was get serious about submitting my plays to contests, commissions, reading windows, and other opportunities. On January 1st I promised myself that I would submit ten plays to contests or other opportunities every month, and I'm pleased to say that I did just that, and submitted over 130 scripts over the course of 2025 as of this post. And I did it whilst following the submission guidelines specific to each opportunity, not submitting to any contest that only accepted snail-mail entries (there are are more than you'd think) and not submitting to a single thing that required a submission fee. 

Given that most of these opportunities receive hundreds of submissions I'm not holding my breath waiting to hear back from them (most don't even bother to let you know your script was rejected) but I did get a couple of wins, oddly enough for the very same play. Regular readers of this blog might remember our trip to the Grand River Arts Festival with Shackled to a Corpse back in September. Last month that play also appeared in an evening of staged readings from Cast Iron Theatre in Brighton, England, officially making it the only play of mine that's been performed in two different countries. For a script that I didn't think was one of my best, this little piece of political satire has turned out really well. 

Finally, I took a couple of steps to improve as a writer. First, I signed up for an account at Read My Play, a script exchange forum where playwrights read and provide feedback on each other's work. I now upload almost every new play that I write at least once, so that at least one person (who also writes plays) can read it and offer some constructive criticism. 

The second, and far less spectacular thing that I did to improve as a writer was to sit down with my mother's high school English textbook and force myself to confront a lifelong phobia of parsing and grammar. Grammar is something that I really struggled with when I was in school, and I cried oceans of tears over my inability to diagram a sentence. Now, with the rise of AI, perfect grammar is within anyone's reach. As a writer, I'm mortified at the thought of using AI (it's plagiarism, at best) so if I want to keep up with everyone else I need to learn how to tell a dangling participle from a gerundial infinitive, and a subordinate conjunction from a copula verb. It's not easy, and I still have a long ways to go, but at least I now have some notes, gleaned from the lessons of a less-cynical time, and I am beginning to grasp the basic structure of the tool of my trade. 

I don't know what my writing goals will be for 2026, though I'll probably try to keep submitting plays to at least ten things every month, now that I'm in the habit of doing so. Continuing to submit plays for feedback, and then taking that feedback and using it to make my plays better, should become just as routine. Grammar training will continue, and I just might tackle one of my other sources of school-aged trauma, and no, I'm not talking about math (that's one dragon I may never manage to slay). Non, le traumatisme auquel je risque d'être confrontée ensuite, c'est ma capacité à parler français comme une vache espagnole. Maybe by this time next year I'll be able to write that sentence without the help of Google Translate (which probably uses too much AI for my comfort too).  

This is Daisy. She is not Spanish. Or French. Or thrilled about having her picture taken.

Otherwise, we'll see. I freely admit that I still have a long ways to go as a writer, and I doubt that I'll ever make a living at it, but over the past year I've come to enjoy the journey a whole lot more. I'm actively pursuing things now, and creating new material at a pace that makes sense for me. I may not yet fully understand all the things that make The Write Life a success, but I'm making progress. For someone like me, that's a big win.