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[side_show]

Around 15 years ago, I started writing something.  A few years later, I had a draft of a play.  It got produced about 10 years ago.  There was talk of it getting published, but then things went down where the people who said they were going to had a falling out unrelated to it getting done.  So I thought maybe it was done for.  Shortly after, I more or less stopped writing at for the stage or artistically all.  But then a couple years ago, the plan to publish in an anthology with a couple other plays came back to life.  So 10 years after production, around 15 years after pen first hit paper, it will be published.  Like I have a contract and it's really real this time.

I have to submit the publication draft to my editor next month and she then to the publisher a month later for typesetting and such.

So here is the thing:  I am not the person I was 15 years ago.  The person I am now would never write such a thing, so the person I am now would have to write a whole different play entirely.  So I really can't and shouldn't edit it much at all.  It would basically be like someone who didn't write it doing the re-writes.  But I really have to give it one thorough read through and light dust off before it leaves my hands, just to be sure.  Or at least to be familiar with it again before sussing out the details with the editor. 

Oh, and there is no money in this what so ever.  I mean like $350.  So is it insane to just use the writer's head-shot I had taken 10 years ago as the one for the book, because I seriously paid $250 for those and I have no desire to pay that much again for something that will be used once.  But again, I look way different now.  10 years older and a lot heavier.  Since the script it from a version of me 10 years ago, why not a photo from the same time?  Shit.  I don't know.  Like I was considering having a friend do a family photo shoot and maybe I should just tack on a couple shots of myself for this purpose?  It is the only time I'm ever going to be published after all.

[wombat]

I'm still using a headshot from ten years ago and it didn't even cost me that much money. What I noticed after meeting a bunch of female authors over the years is that most of them use headshots from ten years ago, or headshots airbrushed enough to look like them ten years ago. So it seems like the done thing and I am not in any hurry to get a new one.

Oh, and for my most recent book I had a momentary impulse to take a new one and I'm REALLY glad I didn't because the publisher asked for one and then didn't use it.

Do you like the photo? If so, I say go ahead and use it. And like you said, in a sense it's actually a photo of the person who wrote the play when a new one wouldn't be.

[side_show]

Thanks - I asked the publisher and they don't even know if they're going to include a photo, and if they do it would be inside with my bio and a very small black and white image!  So unless the option comes up anyway when we do our next family photos, I'm not going to bother.  Very weird though, this process gives me tiny flashes of wanting to write again.  But then I remember I have a demanding job supervising a health care program and a toddler and an old house that needs a lot of work and that there aren't any extra hours in the day and then... well no.

[wombat]

You have plenty of time to write again someday. I always tell people the great thing about writing is that it's not like wanting to be an Olympic figure skater or something - you don't have to make sure you do it while you're young.

Of course more and more the reason I cling to that is that I am getting really old without being successful yet... but hey, I have a new agent again, so there's still hope?