D (depart) Day

     Two and a half hours before we leave for the airport for our flight to London. My husband has just put his giant load of laundry in the dryer.  Laundry that he plans to wear on the trip. Laundry that has to dry and be packed. Meanwhile, I am packed, dressed, even wearing makeup. Estee Lauder 16 Hour - safe to wear this early because you have to crack it like a three minute egg to make it move. The husband in question is in search of a present for our hostess in Ireland (I suggested a Georgia wine a few weeks ago.  He hated the idea but didn't come up with anything else, so Kennesaw's finest it is.)
     By the time we leave, I will be a nervous wreck and my husband will be calm and relaxed. Au revoir, y'all.  Be back with you all too soon!

From the Inconstant Blogger (Didn't Spencer say that?)

    Regrettably, that title is too accurate. I have been distracted from my blogging and almost everything else lately by travel plans. I would almost always prefer to plan a trip than do anything else - even write.
     Some time ago, one of my husband's friends began to encourage us to come visit him and his wife at their "getaway", which he built near a remote village in western Ireland.  A getaway from his places in Paris and New England, that is. After much waffling (not by me) so that the trip would include visits to as many of my husband's U.K. friends as possible, we picked the fairly short notice date of midSeptember, when Ireland was assured of being windy, wet and chilly, just as it is the other  twelve months of the year, but when London friends would also be available.
     I have been to to the U.K. several times, went to Exeter U. for some International Law studies, and traveled pretty much the length and breadth of that beautiful island, but my husband has been once, and only to London, which is like saying that you've been to America, and only New York City.
      This time we will go on the train to Salisbury to visit the Cathedral and marvel at the original Magna Carta and the first clock, and make a side trip to Stonehenge. We will dine with a vicar friend in a poor parish somewhat south and west of that, in his 500 year old farmhouse.
      Let's hope the household plumbing has been updated.  I cringe at sounding like a prissy tourist. I have traveled to places where the "loo" is a hole in the floor, so this will be better. And my daughter tops that, reminding me of the months she lived in remote Sikkim, high in the Himalayas, with only an unlit "pee ravine" where one balanced on two boards above a rocky-sided ravine, day or night, all weather.
     But, not to dwell on plumbing. I am already packing my bags because it takes a lot more planning and materiel than it did when I threw a few things in a bag just hours before departure. I expect I will be on a travel thread for awhile before I refocus on writing issues. Consider it research.

Gap? Some Kind of Gap : The Irony Industry

     Here is an approximation of a bit of script dialogue:
     Mom says "Bobby is so angry with me."
     Mom's Friend replies. "Sure. Weren't you furious when you found out your parents had feet of clay?"
      The editor reads that exchange pensively and pokes those lines with her pen. "What's that mean?" she asks. I reply, "Well you know. Feet of clay.  When a kid finds out his parents aren't perfect.  He idolized them as a kid and now he realizes his perfect Mom isn't so perfect after all."
     "But I don't get the Feet of Clay thing.  Clay?  What's that about, anyway?"
     "Well, it's a pretty common expression.  In common usage, that is. I don't know how else to explain it.  It's in the Bible. Ecclesiastes, I think. It's about Nebucchanezzer. And Shakespeare, of course." I sense I have provided too much information.
      Editor, still pensive. "Hmmm.  Must be a generational thing."  She's forty, for God sake.
      Writer. "I thought pretty much everyone knew it."
      Editor. "Well, I never heard of it, and I'm not exactly dumb."
      Well, maybe not exactly, but pretty damn close. And she's wearing a religous medal to boot.
     "Just say it.  He was disappointed in his Mother.  Done.  Here's another one. Beatific smile. What does that mean?"
     "I guess literally capable of being beatified. That doesn't help. Saintly? "
     "Go with Sweet."

Previous editor: "You have a gift of not only finding the right word but the only word. That's why people will want your script."

     
     

Spoiler Alert

     If you have not already heard, Sweet Beth ( also called That's What Friends Are For, depending on my mood)was not picked up by The Tisch Group for Meryl Streep, so I will not be the hit of the month come next July.  One who knows told me that my script was a lot funnier than the Meryl Streep comedy presently in the theaters, and I choose to believe that. But Beth is still with us and will be revisiting the Women in Film who liked it last fall, so we'll see.
     When my husband called today (he's out of town, visiting his mother) to say he saw the news about the screenplay on Facebook, I have to admit I was sort of taken aback.  People read that? Social media has never been my forte, to say the least. I guess I neglected to tell him, so many other things happened that day. This is not nearly as bad as the incident a couple of years ago when my son's dog died. (This will not be a recurring theme in this blog. ) Anyway, he was not living at home and I hadn't yet told him, so he learned it from Facebook. Very bad mothering.
     The little multicolored wheel keeps spinning around on my screen and the computer is sending me terse messages (This probably will be a recurring theme.  Computers do not like me.) So, soon, back to my perilous year as a screenwriter.  It may not be destined for the screen right now, but that doesn't  mean there isn't more to tell.

but I digress.....

     I haven't blogged in a while, and I know that is bad form. I try to always "write funny."  Life is tough enough - I like to laugh when I write, and I hope you like to laugh when you read. Sometimes, though, the laughs just aren't there, so I'll just tell you and move on.
     For the last eight or nine years, as long as as I have been writing on a daily basis, I have had two faithful office dogs who wedged their furry bodies into my tiny office  and stayed with me through every word. They were old dogs, grumpy old men, best friends united against the puppies, and recently health problems and age took an inevitable toll on their combined thirty-some years.
     As they declined, my daughter cooked them special food and carried them to the backyard so they could peek from beneath the magnolias once again.  Carrying was no small feat, since they were each fifty pounds, more or less.  She took them on their beloved car trips to the drive-through for chicken nuggets, and, toward the end, slept on the floor of the den with them in case of a crisis in the night.
     They departed within a few weeks of one another, and this office is mighty lonely. Our  youthful black Lab girl has taken up office duty and is asleep at my feet right now. They were dear friends, full of quirks and behaviors, some charming, some not so much.  But it all added up to two lives well-lived, lots of love given and received, and who among us can hope for more than that.

Scene Four: Life is Change

     Just because someone loves your writing, loves your script and presumably loves you doesn't mean that they don't want to change you. It's like a marriage.  You love him for all his fine qualities, and he will be so much better once you touch up those little things about him you can't stand. Like his plot, assuming he's a screenplay. But you can't show signs of wanting to alter him too soon, lest you scare him off.
     We writers want to please. We are really desperate to please if the changes will  make them love us more. Wear my hair up?  Darling, you will never see it hanging down in those awful squiggly curls I thought you adored ever again. Let's see less of my family?  Never fear, Sweetheart.  I always thought my Mother was pesty, too. And my sister?  A complete loser, I agree.  Asks too many questions.
     And then he up and runs off with the screenplay, er that is, the busty bitch from human resources and neither your Mother or your sister gives a fig. Glad to see him go.  And six months later your sister submits a sit-com based on your awful marriage and your fool of a husband, and she she sells it. Life is cruel.
      So face it.  Whatever you write is almost certain to be changed in what may seem like the most illogical, boneheaded ways by people who do not write as well as you, and you will probably nod lamely and say, I never thought of that, because really, you never did think of  turning the heroine's druggie son into a pool boy who is just trying to earn money for film school. Life imitates art, and vice versa.
    I will leave you with a story that sounds apocryphal but which the writer swears is true.  The studio wanted his screenplay about two middle aged married couples holed up in a New England farm house during an snowstorm, confronting their personal failures and the tatters of their marriages. Very Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?The writer was asked Why middle aged people?  Who wants to look at a bunch of saggy people with wrinkles anyway?  Let's make them younger.  Well, the writer replies, they had to have been married for a while for them to have their thirty year old son commit suicide and the elderly parent have Alzeheimers. OK, younger it is, the studio guy replies. I am thinking stewardesses, here. Marriage was kind of the point of the story, the writer protests. And New England, in the winter for God's sake?  What could be more depressing? Let's use Malibu. It's close, cheap to film, everybody loves the beach. The writer: The location is pretty important.  You know, as an analogy for the barreness of their lives.  The light of awareness in the studio exec goes on.  But you know something?  You're right.  It does need sexual tension.  Lesbian stewardesses.

Technical Difficulties

     After laboring over a post dedicated to rewriting, the computer ate my insights on the differences between re-writing and writing something new, forcing me to write a new Scene Four post. Oh, irony. But not tonight. In the meantime, if you are interested in writing screenplays, get The Screenwriter's Bible.  Amazon.  Read it at least a couple of times before starting. I am serious. It will save you tons of time in the end.