“Are you ready?” Betsy asked me in the morning as we readied the theater. It was thirty minutes before the second performance of our class’s theatrical adaptation of Flying Solo by Ralph Fletcher, and today, not only were the students’ parents coming, but so was Ralph, himself!
“Ready! And nervous!” I spat out. We still needed the videographer to come to check the new prop placement, and he wasn’t replying to my texts.
“Tranquila,” Betsy said. “Enjoy this!”
And despite a little tech hiccup right before we let parents in, I did.
I managed the changing of the digital backdrops and the sound effects, preparing to give cues if students needed, but mostly, I just enjoyed the show. Ralph and Ana sat to my right, and I kept warming at his audible reactions:
“Wow, she’s good.”
“Huh!”
“That’s pretty clever.”
When E as Mr. Peacock introduced him, and he stepped up to take his line (the line he wrote), the audience applauded loudly. Ralph! Here! A storyteller that inspires!
The rest of the day was a whirlwind of professional learning sessions with him, organized by Ana. My brain buzzed with ideas, my pen moving rapidly to catch all of the wonderful things he had to say.
One has stuck with me all afternoon into evening.
Ralph says, many students think revision is to fix a piece of writing that’s broken. He sees revision as a way to honor a piece that’s good, a piece that means something to you.
Flying Solo meant something to us. We went through more than seven revisions of the adapted script, honing it each time, whittling away, adding, molding, sculpting a dynamic play that could truly capture the magic we felt with the first read. And I think we honored that original magic today.
I’m exhausted, and ready (in a way) to get back to our regular schedule without rehearsals. But mostly, I’m grateful.
Thank you, Ralph. Thank you for writing this book and all the others. Thank you for giving us permission to adapt it into a play. And thank you for coming to see it, for meeting our students. The smiles on their faces meant so much.
Writing With Abandon 
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