Strictly Playwriting #1

A 2026 weekly journal challenge

I’ve been writing in journals now for 16 years. (If you are new here, first welcome, secondly, you can check out why and how I started writing by following the link below)

My Origin Story

My notebook of choice is a classic black and white composition book. (Moleskin is too pretentious for me. Oh yea, this year I’m also challenging myself to not give a shit as much and to be more me, so yea, Moleskin notebooks are pretentious, or maybe I’m just cheap.)

Anyway, my good friend Miguel Angel Lopez, AKA Teatro Foo, got me a beautiful Oregon Shakespeare Festival light brown leather notebook, that is not pretentious at all last summer when he was a FAIR Assistant Director, and I wasn’t sure what to use it for. It sat on my desk for the past five months until I decided to take it with me on a trip to Central Oregon recently.

Not wanting to soil the first few lined pages with black ink of incoherent thoughts, I scribbled on the first blank page “Strictly Playwriting” as I sat in the drivers seat of a rented van, in the parking lot of a Bi-Mart, as my three year old daughter slept in her car seat. I liked how it sounded. I liked how it looked:

This could be a journal where I keep track of my playwriting efforts or lack there of. I started to list some of my 2026 playwriting goals:

1. Read more plays

2. Write more plays

3. Watch more plays

4. Write about the plays I watched

5. Rewrite old plays

6. Revisit plays I never finished

Then I started to reflect on 2025.

• In January and February of 2025 my short play South Hope St. was doing it’s thing at the Frida Kahlo theatre.

  • I learned a lot about what it takes to have a 4 week run, and the amount of effort it takes to try and promote and sell tickets.

• In April and May of 2025 “You don’t even speak Spanish!” was being produced at Cal State San Bernardino.

  • I learned that my words and this play really resonated with a lot of folks, and that a lot of people believe in me.

• In October of 2025 shared an excerpt of “You don’t even speak Spanish!” at CTG for the BIPOC Showcase.

  • It was great to work with Jesus Reyes, Raul Vega Martinez, and Josephine Nunez, and to be an artist again.

• In December of 2025 I was notified that my play Cry Now, Laugh Later reached the Semifinalist Round of consideration for the 2026 O’Neill National Playwright Conference.

  • One of 250 out of 1650 scripts.

Looking back, 2025 wasn’t too bad for me as a playwright, but to be honest, it was one of the worst years of my life. Despite everything that I was going through, and still kinda going through, I found and find myself returning to my essences, to poetry, to who I am. Hence this “Strictly Playwriting” Journal was born. It is a recommitment to my writing and to myself.

Thank you for reading, and happy New Year!