Oh, how sharper than a serpent's tooth is a playwright incensed over varying gradations of privilege! Some seriously tart exchanges on ye olde Internet this week were touched off by this, Mat Smart's HowlRound post, in which the playwright brought the tough love to his fellow emerging playwrights. Smart challenged what he sees as the defeatism of emerging playwrights, asserting that: "In the end, our approach to our own work is the only thing we can control—and I believe that you have to love the doing. You also have to love the chase, love the absence of any resemblance of fairness, justice, or due course. And as long as it doesn’t make you too desperate or crazy—there is a nobility in this endurance, in this brand of foolishness. There must be a sense that 'I am going down with the ship.' And frankly, it is a commitment that I don’t see many emerging playwrights make."

This comes in the middle of a long essay on playwright laziness, which, despite its inflammatory wording, is written from the perspective of someone who wants to hammer home the importance of a work ethic. It should be a familiar refrain—we've heard it from every other writer who has ever told us ass-in-chair time is the secret to success.