AJ stands for Andrew Jackson, our 7th president. His reputation for toughness earned him the nickname "Old Hickory." A hero of the War of 1812, Jackson has appeared on the $20 bill since 1928.

Meet the judge

The judge told us that our play was very well written and that we performed it fantastically.

The only criticism he had was that we could have exaggerated our actions a little more, to be clearly seen throughout the audience.

He gave us a blue ribbon and the award for best original script. Then the big surprise came.

The judge offered to assist us in getting our play published! He said that he thought our script was on par with many published plays. All it needed was a good title and someone would publish it.

Find a publisher

Give a cheer for the accomplished script writers. Accomplished Script Writers

Yahoo!

Counter clockwise from top left: Jesse, Janelle, Katelyn, Jessica, and Jacob encourage YOU to get involved in drama.

Close The first step toward publishing our play was having all the authors sign a release form. This allowed our leader to find a place to publish our play for us and give the profits to our 4-H club.

We decided that since we were all 4-H members, we should donate the money to the people who helped us.

Then, Mrs. Dernovsek sent our play to Meriwether Publishing LTD, a company we had purchased plays from in the past. They sent us back a polite notice saying that our play was charming, but "did not fit our standards."

Polite Notice

The fact that the company actually wrote a personal letter, even if it was short, was a good sign.

Usually companies just print off a whole set of identical rejections and then insert the name of the author, and sometimes they don't even do that!

Close

Mrs. Dernovsek then tried sending it to Plays magazine, another company whose plays we had used before. Plays magazine decided to publish our play and would pay our club $100 for it. Yes!

How to get your play published.

You can do it!

It has now been about two years since I've helped write that play.

In that time I've helped write one more script for 4-H and performed in several other plays, but I still think that our twist on "Hansel and Gretel" was my favorite.

I encourage you to get involved in drama. Just remember to consider all ideas, and don't turn anything down immediately.

Creativity can really pay off.

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