Dismantle My Bed

Since my trip to New York over the weekend, I’ve been considering this question quite a bit. Since I went there for the purpose of seeing two plays and a film that was having a New York only showing, I was exposed to a lot of writing over the two days I spent there.

The film I saw, Backseat, got into the SXSW fest. It was quirky and raw. I did enjoy it, it’s true. It had its slow moments, but it also had some great moments.

Of the two plays that I saw, one was new. Something You Did, written by Willy Holtzman, was chock full of popular political talk of today. Translation: It will never become classic. How can something ever become classic if it is filled with references that no one will understand in ten years time?

The other was roughly twenty years old. Crimes of the Heart is a Pulitzer Prize winning play, written by Beth Henley and completed in 1978. Thirty years later, it is still mostly relevant. The only dated references refer to Johnny Carson and Hurricane Camille, but they didn’t detract at all.

But here is what I really realized. The best writing, when it comes to plays, and will hold true with screenplays and any other type of script, is the writing that brings out the most amazing performances in the people on the stage.

If I totally alter it to be interesting.

I finally saw ‘Running with Scissors’, the movie version recently. Not too shabby. Enjoyed it.

Thought much afterward about the fact that their was a lawsuit involved with this book, because the family portrayed claims that they were falsely represented. Who isn’t in a book? But, still, the change was that it couldn’t be marketed as a memoir, but as a novel. You know, fiction.

It’s so interesting to me, because nearly everything that I write is based on something in my life. It may be something small. It may be something big. Something in my real life inspires the vast majority of my writing though.

Sometimes I wonder if I should just put ‘a memoir’ following the title and see what happens. It seems everyone wants to read fiction that pretends its fact.

Hmm.

I understand the reasoning behind the Hollywood writers’ strike. Really I do. But was the strike beneficial? The biggest sticking point for writers was payment for shows that streamed on the internet. This was a fair point. They should be getting paid for all forms of media through which their work was airing.

The number I have seen though is $1200. $1200. It’s something, but it’s not much. And is it enough? Is it enough to make the strike worth it? A lot of money was lost by writers during the three months that the strike lasted. Many writers even lost their contracts. Shows that might have stayed on if they hadn’t endured a three month hiatus have been cancelled.

Basically, there was a lot of loss for, what seems to me, a little bit of gain. I can’t say, because I am not a part of that system, but did the strike really work?

Here is what I need to remember.

I need to remember how it felt writing my book, how it always feels writing. I need to remember that the way that I feel writing is the only indication I need that it was what I was put on this Earth to do. The fact that I don’t know how to successfully market myself, to network, or to sell is sort of secondary, because the writing is my primary purpose, my primary function.

And I need to remember what good has come from it. There has been some. There have been some moments that made it so worth the time spent, the money lost.

This moment in particular is one I need to always remember, because if there had been no other moment in my life, if this was it for me, this moment was something extraordinary. I tried to capture its essence, but I don’t know that I did it justice. I don’t know that anyone could.

This actually happened, at a community festival in Columbus, Ohio, over two years ago. I had this moment. I crave others like it.

Mama Khandi

When I was in Nashville, I tried to sell some books. I know. Who’d a thunk it? But it’s true.

While trying to sell said books, I took a cool little 8 ½ x 11 sign with me titled Cinderella’s To Do List. On that list, it had a few things written and then those things crossed out with new ‘to dos’ written in. The final written-in ‘to do’ on the list was “Defeat my maker”.

As a marketing tool, I thought it was tremendously clever. I forgot I was in the south.

The people who saw that sign often sniffed snootily and walked off.

One woman actually said the “Defeat my maker? I don’t know about that” line.

Could God stop corrupting everything? Seriously.