Just Write

It sounds so simple. . .

Hello, friends,

It’s Friday, which means Insiders get something special!

Each Friday, Insiders receive a themed newsletter:

• Friday 1: Character takeover

• Friday 2: Peek behind the curtain

• Friday 3: Serial Story Chapter

• Friday 4: For What It’s Worth

• Friday 5: Wild Card Friday

Last week, I had an accidental crying day. I wasn’t sad—not to begin with, anyway; I had plenty to do and a lovely quiet house, with a pup snuggled next to me and a purring kitty nearby.

But then I decided to watch Love Actually (as one does!!) and cried through the end (as one ALSO does!!). Afterwards, I watched Somewhere in Time (another tear-jerker) and then—oh, sure, let’s watch tick, tick . . . BOOM!

Now let me be clear. I love this movie. I love Andrew Garfield, a truly talented actor. I adore anything Lin-Manuel Miranda writes. But Jonathan Larson has been breaking my heart on the regular since I saw Rent for the first time in 2005.

Incredibly, I really didn’t know anything about Larson or Rent when I joined my mom, my sister, my daughter, and two of her friends in an impulsive late-night jaunt to the movies one cold November night (I think it was the night before Thanksgiving). But I was immediately captivated; it broke me in a way I needed breaking. I wept at the end. I was never the same.

A few years later, I was privileged to see the play with the original Mark and Roger (Anthony Rapp as Mark Cohen and Adam Pascal as Roger Davis). By then, I knew so much more about Jonathan Larson. I had read about his journey to write and produce musicals, his struggles to keep going in the face of extraordinary challenges.

A tiny glimmer of this struggle is portrayed in tick, tick . . . Boom! Larson has just showcased his futuristic rock opera Superbia, and although the show earned critical praise and garnered Jonathan an encouraging voice mail from Stephen Sondheim, no one is interested in producing the play.

Devastated, numb, he asks his agent, Rosa, a question most creatives understand.

Jonathan Larson: Okay, so what am I supposed to do now?

Rosa Stevens: You start writing the next one. And after you finish that one, you start on the next. And on and on, and that’s what it is to be a writer, honey. You just keep throwing them against the wall and hoping against hope that eventually something sticks.

Just. Write.