Playwright Submission Binge #20 starts today!

Today marks the start of the 20th online Playwright Submission Binge.  The Binge is an online community of more than 650 playwrights, dedicated to the discussion of marketing of plays and scripts.  It's grown into an extremely supportive group over the years (I started it 10 years ago).  Twice a year, the group gets together for a month-long Submission Binge, where we take the challenge of sending out a submission a day (script or query), every day, for 30 days.  After we send out the material, we report back to the group about why, where, and what we sent.  It's a great way to make marketing chores a lot more fun, and also ends up sharing and exchanging a lot of valuable information on submission opportunities.  (Don't worry, we don't kick people out if they don't really manage to send out a submission every day.)

You can check it out here:  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/playwrightbinge/.

For the record, my Binge submission today (Flight) went to the Bloomington Playwrights Project, to their Woodward/Newman Award.  The winner gets $3,000, production and travel funds.  The postmark deadline is today.  (I would have completely missed this if someone on the Binge list hadn't posted about it.) There is a $10 fee that is waived for Dramatists Guild members.

Playwright Submissiong Binge (#19) Starts Tomorrow!

Twice a year, a bunch of playwrights take up a simple challenge: submit a play day, every day, for 30 days.  Once a writer submits, he or she reports back to the group what was submitted, where, and why. Over the years, a supportive online community of playwrights has grown up around the event. Tomorrow we start Binge #19. It's a great way to make your marketing chores a lot more fun and, because people are so generous, a great way to find out about possible submission opportunities for your plays.  It's free and low pressure. (There are more than 600 people on the Yahoo group now.)

Come join us at The Binge.

Last Day of Binge #10

Today was the final day of the 10th Playwright Submission Binge. This is a (Yahoo) group of writers who agree to take on the marketing challenge of submitting a play every day, for 30 days. I started this group about five years ago, as a way to make my marketing chores a little more fun, and to build an additional sense of accountability. Over the years, the group has grown to more then 300 (though only a fraction of those actively post and binge). We do submission binges twice year, once in the spring and again in the fall.

For Binge #10, I sent out 26 scripts and 53 queries, and I actually managed to submit every single day of the 30 days (I don't always succeed in this).

About a year ago, I asked folks how much success they'd from past binges, and just from 14 writers we'd had 140 productions and 31 awards (which includes honorable mentions, finalists, etc.) from binge submissions. I'm sure the number is much higher now. This year the group submitted many hundreds of scripts and queries to theatres all around the world.

The best part is that it's turned into this very supportive community of writers, who interact all year about writing and marketing for theatre.