Writing by the Numbers: my audience numbers so far (since 1990)

Those of you who know me will not be surprised to learn that I keep a big spreadsheet that tracks every script and book I've written (62), how many productions each has had, how many people have seen it, and how much money it's earned from both productions and publication.  Since 1990.

Beyond just the basic obsessive/compulsiveness of it, I do it because it helps me gauge the effectiveness of my marketing and writing efforts.  In some fields, you can just look at your salary or your annual review with your boss, and feel like you've been making progress (or not).  But I don't have a boss, and the money is so bad in theatre, that the numbers generally aren't enough to help you want to keep going.  Having a sense that I'm actually reaching people with my work gives me a boost.  And having real numbers helps a lot when it comes to setting goals for marketing at the start of each year.

It'd been at least a year and a half since I fully updated the spreadsheet (it takes a while), but I finally got around to it last week.  Here's where the numbers stand right now:

• To date, I've had about 300 productions and readings of my work.  300 feels like a good number. 
• My work has reached more than 84,000 people, and it breaks down like this:
• More than 9,400 have seen my full-length plays
• Almost 10,000 have seen my one-act plays
• More than 41,000 people have seen my ten-minute plays.
• Altogether, at least 59,000 people have seen my work on stage
• I'm pretty sure my radio plays have reached more than 23,000 people.
• 2010 was a pretty good year--my work has been seen/heard/read by over 7,000 people this year.
• My short play, Christmas Breaks, has been seen by the most people, more than 5,800.  Reading the Mind of God, a full-length play about the astronomers Kepler and Tycho, comes in a close second.
  
• My lifetime earnings from writing continue to remain a fairly modest number, especially if you spread it over 20 years .  The amount the scripts have earned varies wildly, from almost nothing to a few thousand dollars (that's counting prizes/fellowships).  2010 was my best year so far, in terms of writing income.

None of these numbers are exact.  Whenever I end up dealing with a theatre who produces my work, I make sure to ask for attendance figures.  But with the productions of published work, that's impossible, so I estimate 40 people per performance, which is safe, but probably on the low side.  With the radio plays, it's hard to guess, but most of the stations are very small, so I estimate conservatively.

There are multiple ways to view these numbers.  In some sense, they pale in comparison with the number of people I'd reach from just one of my scripts being produced for film or television.  Writers whose work appears for long (or medium) runs at larger non-profit or commercial theatres could reach my lifetime audience in less than a year.  The same goes for money--I have friends who have earned many multiples of my lifetime playwriting earnings from just one book deal.

But for scraping and clawing out productions and publications of a bunch of plays (and one novel), almost exclusively in small theatres and schools, these numbers feel good to me.


If you happen to be one of the people who have seen or read my work over the years--thanks!  As you can see, I don't take audiences for granted.  You're a big reason for why I do this.


I'm also curious--do other writers/playwrights keep track of stuff like this?  Let me know if you do.

2009 Output

Since I tallied the input for 2009, I thought I might as well give the output.  This was a particularly good writing year for me.  I wrote:

• A final version of edits and proofing on my new novel, Moving (A Life in Boxes)
• A rewrite of my new full-length plays, Constant State of Panic (which opens in less than 2 weeks in DC)
• A new half-hour comedy one-act (for students), Reassembling Sasha, now published by YouthPlays.
• Another half-hour comedy for students, The Next Big Thing.  (Scheduled for publication early in 2010)
• A new ten-minute play, Schedule-Meister (still unproduced)
  
• A complete middle-grade novel, Buried Treasure.
• plus a bunch of freelance business writing (that helped pay some bills).

Production-wise, 2009 wasn't bad.  The year saw a bunch of productions by schools, through the various publishers that handle my work.  Theatres doing my work included:

• Confirmed Sighting by University of Maryland, Baltimore College.  (The script won their competition.)
• Stop Rain in Boston, by the Actors Refuge Repertory Company
• Recognition in the Boston Theatre Marathon, by the Wellesley Summer Theatre
• Lies, Lies, Lies and Counting Rita in Los Angeles, from Theatre Unleashed
• My radio plays Love and Lightning and Tundra Games were rebroadcast by Shoestring Radio Theatre in CA.

Den of Iniquity and Counting Rita were both published in Best of anthologies from Smith & Kraus. 

Overall, I'd say that a minimum of 4,000 people heard, read,  or saw my work performed this year (and probably a lot more if you count all the productions at high schools and competitions), which is okay.

I'm guessing that 2010 is going be a lot better--I already have four productions scheduled (3 in January alone).

2009 Inputs

I'm a numbers guy (as many of you know), so I tend to keep track of how many books and plays and movies I take in each year.

Here are my totals for 2009:

Books read:  51 

I have friends who read a lot more books, but this is more than I usually read.  I read dozens that I liked a lot, but a few of my favorites were:

The Book Thief and I Am the Messenger by Marcus Zusak
The Giant's House: A Romance by Elizabeth McCracken
Goat Song: A Seasonal Life, A Short History of Herding, and the Art of Making Cheese
by Brad Kessler


Plays read:  12

Favorites included:  Breath, Boom by Kia Corthron and The Song of Extinction by E.M. Lewis.

This is a pathetically small number, I know, but I was reading a lot novels and non-fiction instead of plays this year.  In 2010, I plan to read a lot more plays.


Plays and readings watched:  29

I know people who see 100 plays a year, but this was a good amount for me.  (Back in the days before kids, I might see 75 readings and plays a year.)  Favorites included Sleep No More from Punchdrunk and the ART and SpeakEasy's Boston production of Reckless.


Movies watched:  52

Most these were via Netflix.  I didn't see any great movies in 2009, though I liked Up in the Air quite a bit, and was really struck by The Garden.  And I'd highly recommend Iron Ladies of Liberia. We did watch the entire new Battlestar Galactica series, which was tremendous.  And now we're hooked on Veronica Mars (just starting Season 2).


I've got a big pile of books already waiting to be read in 2010 (I just finished Nick Hornby's latest, Juliet, Naked, and liked it quite a bit.)

Clarification on Yesterday's Numbers, With Thanks to Wendyll Berry

I finished re-reading Wendyll Berry's The Hidden Wound last night, which really got me thinking. Toward the end of the book, he wrote:

"I realized that the culture I needed was not be found visiting museums and libraries and auditoriums. It occurred to me that there was another measure for my life than the amount or even the quality of the writing that I did; a man, I thought, must be judged by how willingly and meaningfully he can be present where he is, by how fully he can make himself at home in his part of the world."

Which made my list from yesterday seem not quite as important (though I'm still a numbers fiend, and I'm afraid I just can't shake it). Mr. Berry reminded me of all the things I left out about what I did in my 30s. The numbers might useful to a student of writing, I suppose, to see that it's possible, over the course of ten years to write a substantial number of pages, mail them out countless times, and get scripts mounted on stage and novels published. These are good things to know.

What I left out, oddly, was how grateful I am for the chance to write each of my plays, novels, and screenplays. Mostly this was possible because my wife had jobs that provided us enough income to live, while I stayed home and took care of the kids. I wrote about the things that I most needed to write about, and that's lucky, too. I wrote about faith, friendship, race, moving, love. Nothing I wrote was perfect, but it all helped me improve as a writer. (Note to students: improving as a writer does not mean that it suddenly becomes easier. It only means that I now have tools to tackle projects that weren't possible before, and barely seem possible now.)

I also left out the fact that I did a lot of things, other than writing, that informed my writing and who I am. I worked with my hands a lot--fixing up houses, laying pathways, digging gardens. I raised children and cooked dinners and dumped other people's garbage.

Wendyll Berry has me thinking a lot about community these days. I'm new to my town, so I'm still finding my way. I'm not sure how writing fits into everything, but I know these thoughts will be a part of what I write in the future.


P.S. Shame on Brookline Booksmith and the Brookline Barnes & Noble for not having The Hidden Wound in stock last night. It really is a must-read.

Numbers Guy: What I Did In My 30s

My 40th birthday is just a few weeks away. A milestone like this calls up a fair amount of self-assessment and navel-gazing. Working for myself means that I don't have a boss or supervisor to whom I offer reports of my progress or accomplishments. So in my case, I make lists to give myself an idea of how I'm doing.

So, how productive was I in my 30s? I didn't start any theatre companies (I started two in my 20s, along with a marketing newsletter for playwrights, and ran a nonprofit playwrights organization). In my 20s, I wrote a lot of screenplays and full-length plays, but in my 30s, my writing was more diverse.

Here's what I did in my 30s:

I wrote:
One novel (Tornado Siren, published)
Two drafts of a new novel (hope to finish it this year)

Three non-fiction book proposals. (none bought. Yet.)

Lots of rewrites of various scripts.

2 ½ full-length plays: Pieces of Whitey (produced), Constant State of Panic (incomplete), God’s Voice (workshopped but not produced),

1 one-act play: The Sky is Falling (produced and published)

16 ten-minute plays: (15 of them are published and/or produced)

1.5 screenplays (The Three Great Loves of Christopher J. Tomaski, 1/2 of another)
4 outlines/treatments for screenplays

a Dramatists Guild magazine article

Also I started:
the Rhombus playwrights group in Boston
the online playwright submission binge.
(tried to help start the Kansas City Playwrights Cooperative, but I think it didn’t make it.)

Published a bunch of issues of Market InSight for Playwrights (and then sold it).

I submitted:
854 play scripts
515 queries for plays
171 queries for screenplays
28 screenplay script submissions
75 queries for book manuscripts or book proposals
a handful of book manuscripts.

All these submissions resulted in:
145 productions and readings of my plays
27,058 people attended these shows (approx.) Another 4,000 or so heard my radio shows
8,675 high school students bought my published scripts (resulting in $6,396 for me) and used them in competitions
1 screenplay optioned, and it came very close to getting made.

All the book, play, and screenplay productions and sales earned me about $14,057


I read 463 books
I watched 199 plays and readings (this # is low, because I lived away from big cities for a while)
I watched 615 movies

Moved 5 times. (bought 5 houses, sold 7)
Adopted our son.


That's about it. I'm not quite sure what to make of it all. In terms of writing output, I generated 7 full-length works, which seems close to what I'd like. Moving as many times as we did makes it hard to be as productive as I'd like. And having babies in the house can also cut down on time.

Though I didn't earn much money, when I look at the number of people who saw my plays, I feel pretty content.

The truth is, I can always find people who are more prolific or more talented than I am. In the end, the trick for a writer is be simultaneously content that he's done as much as he could, and be determined to do more and better work in the future.

Now, I'm looking forward to some time to think about what might come in the next decade.