The Excitement of the First Play
Any writer who has had their work published, broadcast or performed will remember the excitement of the first one. For me that was back in 1973 when BBC Radio 4 broadcast my play “Happy Deathday To You”. A wonderful experience hearing my words spoken by actors and seeing my name in the Radio Times. There have been many more successes since then – radio and theatre plays, TV scripts, novels and short stories, but the magic of the first one will always remain.
However, putting it in context, there have also been many rejections, probably more of those than the successes. Some projects I abandoned as they were clearly going no-where, other were turned down by commissioning editors. For me, the trick is to learn from those unsuccessful projects and simply move on.
