I'm a Pulitzer Prize loser (/future winner?)
Oh, hi friends!
When I skip a day of this newsletter, I always feel just a little bit off. Like when you put on a bad pair of socks, the kind with stretched-out elastic that slides right down your ankle? You don't realize how annoying this is until you're standing on the subway platform and feel them puddling around the top of your shoe. You can't do anything about it. Saggy socks are your fate.
That's what a hiccup in your routine can feel like.
But when there's a lot to be done you have to cling to certain things a little more tightly, and loosen the grip on others.
I hit a big deadline yesterday. I also did not win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama yesterday. (A major congratulations to the winner, Jackie Sibblies Drury, and finalists Heidi Schreck and Clare Barron!!!)
(If you weren't with us back in January, I submitted my play Old Hollywood for the Pulitzer Prize. Because someone has to win.)
Watching the award announcements on Monday I felt an emotion that is elusive and valuable: I wanted it. I really, really wanted it!
And it was valuable because wanting something gives you a direction.
A medal is nice. $15,000 is nice. Accolades are nice.
But knowing exactly what you want to do?
That's priceless.
What do you want today?
I'm obsessed with Henry the tortoise. He lives in New York!
Follow him on Instagram @thenotortoisebig
It Couldn’t Be Done
BY EDGAR ALBERT GUEST
Somebody said that it couldn’t be done
But he with a chuckle replied
That “maybe it couldn’t,” but he would be one
Who wouldn’t say so till he’d tried.
So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin
On his face. If he worried he hid it.
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn’t be done, and he did it!
Somebody scoffed: “Oh, you’ll never do that;
At least no one ever has done it;”
But he took off his coat and he took off his hat
And the first thing we knew he’d begun it.
With a lift of his chin and a bit of a grin,
Without any doubting or quiddit,
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn’t be done, and he did it.
There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done,
There are thousands to prophesy failure,
There are thousands to point out to you one by one,
The dangers that wait to assail you.
But just buckle in with a bit of a grin,
Just take off your coat and go to it;
Just start in to sing as you tackle the thing
That “cannot be done,” and you’ll do it.
The biggest lesson Brie Larson learned from directing Samuel L. Jackson was to start walking around go, "I'm right. I'm right. I'm right."
Hope you say that to yourself today—I am!
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Thanks, as always, for reading.
Love, Kara