Vincent H. O'Neil

I__e never liked the term __ctor_._ Barron spoke slowly, joining hands with the cast members to his left and right. The rest of them formed a circle, also holding hands, and he continued. __eriously now, is anyone here __cting_? Is anyone here pretending? __e, I__ a theater director. One hundred percent, all the time. I__ not pretending, or acting, or trying to fool anyone. This is what I do, and I give it my all__ust like you. I look around me, and I don__ see a single phony. I see people who give their hearts, their minds, and their very lives to being serious performers on the stage. In the last weeks I__e watched every one of you give up the easy life to come here and bust a gut to make this show a reality. __hat__ why I call you performers. Not actors__erformers. Because when it__ time to prepare, you work out every nuance of a role. When it__ time to step in front of the crowd, you reach out and pull them in with both hands. When it__ time to say your lines, you deliver them with skill and meaning. That__ performance. And there__ nothing phony about that. There__ nothing pretend about that. There__ no acting that will take the place of that. __nd so that__ my wish for you tonight: Have a great performance. You__e done the work, you__e ready, and now it__ time to show off. Have fun out there, gang. Perform._ --Jerome Barron's opening night pep talk to the cast of Death Troupe

The words of his various writing instructors and professional mentors over the years came back to him at times like these, and he found a new understanding in their advice: Writing is rewriting. The rough draft is just that. You can__ polish what you haven__ written. Things that made for a normal life__ike a daily routine that followed the sun__ook a back seat to times like these, and he exulted in that change because it served as proof that his writing was indeed the most important thing in his life. It wasn__ a conscious choice on his part, like deciding to repaint the bathroom or go buy the groceries, but an overarching reallocation of his existence that was as undeniable as breathing. Day turned into night, breakfast turned into dinner, and the laptop or the writing tablet beckoned even when he was asleep. He would often awake with a new idea__s if he__ merely been on a break and not unconscious__nd he would see the empty seat before the desk not as his station in some pointless assembly line, but as the pilot__ seat in a ship that could go anywhere.

Your boss takes a dim view of SEX?

That's what I love most about writers--they're such lousy actors.

Actors are all about entrances, but writers are all about exits.

If a tattoo is supposed to make a statement, that kid__ body is just plain babbling.

With no one to confide in, she'd held the argument inside her own head and naturally found a way to dissolve facts into concepts and concepts into explanations that in the end explained nothing at all.