My weekly playwriting workshop, Words That Speak, now in its 22nd year, resumed this morning after a one-month hiatus when the last round ended. Usually, I accept eight playwrights; this time, I took nine, based on the quality of their work, including three new people. (And could have taken more, but eight or nine is really all that can work for a weekly writing workshop where everyone’s work will be heard every time.)

Some of these playwrights have been in the workshop for five, eight, or 10 years.

During the break, I heard one of the new enrollees asking one of the veterans about his experience in the workshop. He talked about the plays he’s written and the productions he’s gotten since starting with me.

“So the workshop helps?” she asked.

“Well,” he replied, “I haven’t gotten worse.”

It’s inspiration like this that has carried me all these years.

I wish the Beckett estate would lift the embargo so the first (and only) season of this could be released on DVD or streaming.

Well, I guess ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.

In order, they are: 1. be an heir; 2. marry well.

And either way, just admit it.

If you were going to name Los Angeles’ most highly regarded and famous writers, Ray Bradbury would be near or on the top of that list.

When you go to Baltimore, you can visit Edgar Allan Poe’s house. The same with the homes of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman and others. (In fact, Whitman has a bridge named after him.)

But, this being LA, now that Bradbury’s dead, the new owners have torn down his house. Because, well, it was just a house. Right?

Here are the photos.

Someone who is always late (like, say, a friend of mine) comes into conflict with someone who is always on time and kept waiting (like, well, me). Hilarity doesn’t ensue.

It’s not much of an idea, I know, but it’s certainly animating me at the moment.

My daughter and I are visiting my mother in southern New Jersey through next Wednesday. And I’m on deadline for a short play I’m submitting for an event next month.

My plan has been to finish the play today and send it off. My daughter asked me where I was going to work. I told her it didn’t matter, as long as people didn’t talk to me. My mother and my daughter were sitting up in the kitchen playing Rummikub, so I sat down in the living room with my laptop.

And sure enough, they came in to sit next to me and work on a puzzle.

And for my mother to ask me the same thing several times (she’s 89, with a strong need to know things).

And for my nephew to start hammering something onto the outside of the house by a window within my view.

But none of that was stopping me. It actually reminded me that I wrote one of my best plays — widely remarked upon by friends and even judgmental relatives as one of my best plays — while smoking a cigar and drinking wine and talking to an actor at the same time. And I usually write my plays while playing music. I’m used to tuning things out.

So I was feeling unstoppable, and pulling the play into the station as it were, when my mother went downstairs and turned on the television. Loudly. And I started overhearing what sounds like one of those Tim Allen movies about Santa Claus. Sample dialogue:

Father: “I guess I just have to go back and tell her I didn’t find Santa Claus.”

Tim Allen, with a chuckle: “Oh, but you DID!”

There was no writing anything on my play after that. At least, not while being within earshot of that. So now I’m writing this instead — and relocating upstairs.

Twenty-two years ago this evening, we opened Moving Arts. Throughout that time, our mission has been to premiere new plays by new writers. In 1992, we opened an evening of two of my one-acts. On Saturday night, 22 years later almost to the day, we open “The Gun Show,” a new play written by EM Lewis, a writer and friend (and former student) I admire tremendously. We’ve got a new artistic director who is talented and smart, and we’ve got an ongoing tradition of good plays done well by talented people. Tomorrow night will be no exception. It’s thrilling to me that this is the way we celebrate that anniversary: with another new production.

Tomorrow night I celebrate an anniversary of a very different sort. Twenty-seven years ago tomorrow, my girlfriend Valorie and I got married. Yes, on Halloween, and yes in costume. We dressed in replicas of 17th century French court clothes; my father was a clown and my mother was a witch (in costume, not in real life); my new father-in-law was Henry the 8th and my new mother-in-law wore replicated traditional Hawaiian garb. One friend came as a jester, the Roesbergs came as Groucho Marx and Mae West, my one brother was an Arab sheik and my other brother was a butler and my sister came as a cowgirl and the list of costumes goes on and on throughout the 200 attendees. We all had a fine, fine time. My wife and I produced that event and, years later, three children.

Whether for the theatre or the marriage, not every anniversary has felt like it merited an anniversary celebration. But especially when you realize that you’re in the third decade of each, you have to marvel at the accomplishment and be grateful for both.

Through an odd fluke of scheduling (including three different trips out of town in November), the “Words That Speak” playwriting workshop that I lead is off until November 29. This is highly unusual; in general, we meet every Saturday, and then take about a three-week break after eight sessions. There’s an occasional Saturday that gets scheduled off — but 10 weeks off? Unheard of in its 22-year history.

So what’s a guy to do when he’s got 10 weeks off from his workshop? Sign up for someone else’s!

I was thrilled — thrilled! — to see that my schedule is clear on Saturday the 25th, so I signed up for Chris DeWan’s “Monsters in the Woods” one-day writing workshop. JUST THE NAME ALONE appealed to me. But here’s more about it:

A ONE-DAY INTENSIVE IN WRITING HORROR
(and other scary magicks)

At a spooky, undisclosed location in the Angeles National Forest!

That just has “me” written all over it. Years ago, I wrote a show called “Monster Stories” — a collection of three short plays — and I’d sure like to get back into something like that. And I know Chris is a good writer, and he’s a theatre person (that’s how we met), so I’m feeling confident about this experience.

(By the way, how did I find out about this? I’ve known Chris for about 15 years — but I don’t believe I’ve actually seen him in person since 2013, as he reminded me via email this morning. I saw this workshop posted on LinkedIn, and then on Facebook, both of which were open to me because, as I said, I know Chris. So hey, everybody who complains about social media — in your face.)

Anyway — I believe there’s still a slot or two open. So if you’d like to join me for a few hours of being terrorized by snakes or a guy with an axe, here’s your link.

I worked my way through college (which, I know, now qualifies me as Old Economy Steve), earning a BA in Literature and Language.

But now this makes me think I could have saved the money. It sums up so much of my studies so quickly! Luckily, I’ve still got all my Chaucer-studying (in Middle English, no less!), which is not addressed here.

1. Now on page 321 of Sabbath’s Theater by Philip Roth. One question remains: Is it the worst novel I’ve ever read, or merely one of the worst? Given that it’s by a writer of otherwise extraordinary talent, it seems to qualify as the first.
2. Read over the table of contents of this week’s New Yorker. Twice. Finally handed the entire issue over to offspring unread. Usually can find at least one “Talk of the Town” item, or a review, or a “Briefly Noted” worth engaging. Not this time.
3. Still need to finish reading a script for a client. Also a stack — er, wait, four stacks — of books within reach waiting to be read. But, oh, the thrill of getting a new book to read. I keep salivating over the prospect of reading The Martian — surely a survivalist tale of the most difficult challenges.
4. One third of the way through The Filth, a collection of the 13-issue comic-book title by Grant Morrison that I picked up at Comic-Con this year. Typical of Morrison’s latter-day comics, it’s equally invigorating and incomprehensible. Once upon a time, one could enjoy his inventiveness while also understanding what’s going on. But that seems to have been 10 (or 20) years ago.
5. Various newspapers, mailings, magazines and other communications, including the latest issue of Inc. magazine, enumerating the “500 fastest growing privately held companies in America,” of which several at least are flat-out lying about their results. I’ve been to their websites, and if their businesses are anything like their online presence, they ceased to exist sometime during the first Bush admiseration.

More reading tomorrow, and every day hereafter.