When my friend’s mother overheard me telling her daughter what to do, she went to my mother and complained that I was being bossy. But my mother understood, bless her. It was my job.

My friend had asked me to create stories for our Barbie dolls. In fact, all my friends asked me to do create stories for them.

And, quite frankly, I was in demand...

I would create sets and plot lines, and we'd act out scenes for eight hours at a time. Dead serious about character development, too - which is not easy when your actors are plastic. And I took it as a personal challenge to get my friends to like their Meg dolls as much as their Barbies and Kens. My solution? Create a fabulous story line just for Meg. Uh, oh. A guy doll for Meg? No problem! I grabbed my brother's G.I. Joe. Yes, yes, he was shorter than Meg, but Joe had way better pecs than Ken.

Also had another skill that made me the hit of the neighborhood: I was the only one who could do guy voices for the male dolls. Quite a skill for a five-year old.

Fast forward to my excruciatingly boring years at an all-girl Catholic elementary school. While there, my best friend and I created what we called, "The Story”. Used mostly as a device to daydream about boys, she and I would trade off telling "The Story” - an uncomplicated tale of two fabulously well-dressed, jet-setting female spies who traveled the world on the arms of their James Bondian boyfriends. One day I stopped the story line to pass it off to her to continue – as we always had - but instead, she said, "No, Meredith. You keep telling it. You're the real story teller."

That was an important day.

My big break came when our school offered our 4th grade class a chance to produce its own talent show. I immediately sat down and wrote a play, then cast my fellow classmates, directed my friends through rehearsals, and brought it to the stage. But it was a disaster…. and it was all my fault. Classic rookie error! I’d cast myself in the lead role. Figuring I’d written the lines, I was certain I’d remember them. Yeah. No.

From that I learned I had a lot to learn. But I also learned that I really, really liked directing human beings. They had their own voices, could make their own character choices, and the bendable arms and legs were a definite plus.

As I grew older, I developed another passion: history, figuring that major gave me a better chance at a normal income, I chose History as major at William and Mary, and, after graduation began to work at a small museum that was once a tavern. When the staff was asked to create public programming, naturally I wrote a play about tavern life and asked my college friends to join me. Best casting decision I ever made was asking a tall redhead named Chuck McMath to play the Stage Coach Driver. He said yes. And a year later, I said yes. Did I mention I'm really good at casting?

When Chuck and I moved to Loudoun County, Virginia, I began creating living history programs for area museums, schools and libraries. Through our son’s preschool class, I met Laurie Farnsworth - the most amazing seamstress I've ever had the pleasure to know. Laurie and her friend, Dolly Stevens, had just formed a theatre company: The Growing Stage. Would I like to help with costuming? Indeed I would.

While working with The Growing Stage, I spent a lot of time observing Dolly's brilliant directing techniques. Then Dolly hired Tom Sweitzer out of Shenandoah Conservatory to direct one of her shows, and I watched Tom's brilliant directing process. Then Tim Jon — a Loudoun County Radio DJ who'd spent eighteen years of his life as a professional actor — started producing Shakespeare in the area, and I watched his brilliant process.

I appreciated every minute of these unofficial internships. Each director was unique, but each one was generous with their time and talents, and each changed the lives of everyone with whom they worked.

In the meantime, I'd continued to write plays. There was one play I was particularly happy with: it was based on true stories from the pages of Loudoun County Civil War history. Had no idea what would happen to it, but I knew it was time to try it on the stage… as long as I stayed out of the cast.

Fast forward: Through Tim Jon’s company, Not Just Shakespeare, we learned the professional actor's approach to Shakespearean text... and several more of the Bard's dirty jokes. From Tim I also learned actors' preparation and the efficacy of improvisation.  Tim has a deep respect for an actor's process, and he excels in teaching actors how to build three-dimensional characters. Tim's use of improv encouraged me to experiment over the years, and that's been a gift. Around this time, I was taking Master Improv Classes with Tom Sweitzer, so, together, these two have had a huge influence on how I use improv while directing.

For instance, when actors over-focus on remembering their lines or stage movement, improv is a great way to shake them loose.  When I was directing my play, Arms and the Highlander*, we were working through the first scene - where a young woman was beginning to fall in love with a British soldier. Colonial soldiers were looking for him, and when they came knocking at the door, the British soldier pulls out a knife, preparing to defend himself. Instead, the young woman pushes him behind a door and lets in the searching soldiers. It was crucial the actress caught the gist of the moment, because the audience wouldn’t be able to see the British soldier's tension — they could only see the young woman's face.

But there was no tension in the room at all.  

So I stopped rehearsal and asked the British soldier to act out what would happen if those Minuteman found him hiding behind the door.  Okay. Granted there was no real knife, but they got into a serious brawl that ended as Minuteman disconnected the British soldier's thoughts from his actions.

The actress got it, and played the tension from there on - and she was brilliant, and the scene began to glow. Improv saved the day once more.

Another huge influence has been the actors themselves. When you have a talented actor, there are times you just stand back in awe... and learn as much as you can from them. Without question, the actor who's influenced me most was my own mother... that beautiful woman who happily defended me from my friend's mother when I was five years old. Maxine Bean was an amazing actor - a child radio star in St. Louis, Missouri, and the star of many college productions at Grinnell. After my father passed, she came to live with us in Loudoun and worked with me in area theatre: favorite roles include the "School Marm" in Dolly and Tom's, TREASURES: The Musical Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and the starring role as "Miss Violet" in Tom's and my PORCHES. She was incredibly generous on stage - this is a little hard to describe, but every actor who worked with her knows exactly what I mean. But she was deeply serious about the craft, and so there were limits to her generosity. In one production, an actor suddenly stole a line from her - stealing the huge laugh my mother's character was meant to receive. Maxine didn't lose a beat on stage, but when she got backstage with that actress, she looked her straight in the eye and growled, "NEVER do that again"... and she never did.

For me, directing has always been a heady mix of my passion for storytelling and the constant pursuit of learning - earning how to be a better writer, a more helpful director, and a more creative producer. I’ve appreciated every director with whom I’ve worked, every class taken, every rehearsal attended, and every actor and crew member’s efforts. And I remain particularly grateful to all those friends from my old neighborhood who wanted me to boss them around. This one's for you.

* My adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man.

A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down. If it is a good book nothing can hurt him. If it is a bad book nothing can help him.
– Edna St. Vincent Millay
 
So why in the world do authors do it? Why, after her one-hundred and first rejection letter, did Madeleine L’Engle take A Wrinkle in Time to the hundred and second publishing house? Are writers simply arrogant? Patently optimistic? Grotesquely naive?   Yes, yes, and yes. But the full truth is this: we write because we must.

We write, though the words go slipping through our fingers like wet soap, though the feelings of a girl living in 1863 are interrupted by a cellphone call, though the agent doesn’t want us, though the publisher let us go out of print... We write because we must. And when we visit bookstores and stare at the rows of name-brand writers whose publishing houses buy them shelf space and and oodles of marketing, we weep at our pitiful condition.

But the act of writing always brings us back from the edge of the abyss.

Something that begins as a single thought eventually rises up to stare back at us fully formed — walking, talking, thinking, feeling  — in a world created out of nothing.

When we write, we’re a perfectly balanced ball spinning on the tip of God’s finger.  Perpetual Motion. Time machine.  Pleasure beyond description.

Arrogant?  You bet. The sort of rollicking arrogance that comes from knowing the pen is mightier than the sword. Optimistic? Always. We are addicted to hope. Naive? Oh, yes. Entirely. The rejection letter is always a complete surprise.

Will we start again writing despite it? Of course we will. We must.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime. - Mark Twain

I was reading “Seven Life Changing Lessons You Can Learn from Mark Twain” and thought, Hey, this my life, for pity’s sake. My weird little theatre life, with its broad, odd, wholesome, creative, charitable views of the world - found all because I chose NOT to vegetate in a little corner of life.

And those that join me in organized chaos have the pleasure of inhabiting dozens of people and perspectives, new worlds and old, and all sorts for magic and mayhem.

I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.

Well put. For the pleasure of inhabiting a completely different perspective for a time, an actor will risk self-respect and criticism, face sleep deprivation and midnight terrors. and live through some terrible things. And the things that happen to them in real life? Those feed into the actor’s art and enhance the richness of every character portrayed.

When I was first published, I thought all I'd ever do is write...  book after book, attend signings, speaking engagements and Book Clubs, submit another manuscript to my publishing house, and start all over again. 

A good life - very good life - but then...

1. A story came to me that begged to be a play. It’s impossible to explain, other than to say the characters didn't want to live in a book. They wanted to be brought to life. So I wrote a play for the first time in many years, and a local company decided to produce it.

And I added “play writing” to my daily list.

2. Then my book publisher disappeared. Specifically, the Editor who loved, loved, loved my work and promised to publish everything I sent her for the rest of her life... changed jobs two months after my books came out.  And the new Editor was taking the company in a new direction, and my next manuscript came back in the box unopened. And historic fiction became something beneath securing evening cleaning staff on their list. And I knew I should get my manuscripts out to another publisher, but there was something about theatre. Seeing those characters brought to life was amazing.  And I loved what every acctor brought to the table – this ever-changing dynamic.

So I decided to take a break from the publishing world and moved “play writing” to the top of my daily list.

Years later: I manage my own production company, Run Rabbit Run. I work with fabulous people, do speaking and teaching engagements once in a while, and submit plays for production or go ahead and produce them myself.  This is working well for me, but every once in a while I think about the characters in my unpublished books. If you’re a writer, you understand. They're lonely. They want to be heard, and sometimes they’ll whisper to you: “HEY, why don’t you trying getting me PUBLISHED  again, JERK!” Or something like that… never listening that carefully.

Then along came eBooks!
A sea change in publishing occurred. As of 2020, Amazon appears to be calling most of the shots, and their Kindle platform is calling 83% of eBook shots.  But still there’s that icky “self-publishing” thing, right? Well, apparently in the last year that’s changed too. In fact, the publishing process is being reversed as we speak: eBooks that sell well are being picked up for “real” publishing by the majors.

Hmm… Suddenly I’m looking like a pretty good bet here, because I…
– Design websites and love to learn new internet tricks. I am, in fact, a Net Geek;
– Love creating video promos, graphics and taking great photos;
– Dive easily into every aspect of marketing (my focus during my Masters in Arts Management studies);
– Have a group of previously published works with solid reviews;
– Never stopped writing, so I have a stack of unpublished manuscripts to send out, as well. Oh, and plays! And nonfiction! And…  heyyyyy, this could work!

But now the reality check: the eBook formatting process isn’t easy (a lot of people opt to hire someone to do this for them, and, after mucking around, we’ve been tempted), but I thank heaven daily for my Software Engineering husband, and it’ll get easier after the first one.  Next problem: It’s true  99% of eBooks just don’t sell, but there’s no harm in trying, and I do appear to have better odds than some. Besides in this day and age, $20 is $20, know what I’m sayin’?

Finally, I’m one of those people who have always appreciated being my own boss, and eBooks are giving me the chance to manage my own publishing experience and along with the reader's experience. How can I say no to that?

Thus, I decided: to Kindle.  And we will see.