May your day be filled with joy and merriment.
Clip from Q13 News.
Boredom and I don’t get along very well, so years ago I found a way to turn routine tasks into games. It’s all about patterns. Either recognizing them, or creating them.
I remember how I handled homework in elementary school. My teachers loved repetition, and would assign writing 10 vocabulary words 20 times each.
Boring!
So, I’d draw vertical lines to create 5 columns, then count down 20 lines. I’d do this on 2 pieces of paper. This created 2 canvases of 100 units each.
Each column was assigned a word. Then I’d fill in a unit with the appropriate word to create whatever pattern I’d chosen – usually something simple like a tree, house, or flower. I’d complete both pictures and admire them, then see where I could add more words to change the picture into a different, recognizable item. Then I’d fill in all the empty units so no one could tell I’d used the words to create pictures.
For some reason part of the fun was keeping my pattern-making a secret.
I had a similar thing I’d do with math facts. All I needed was a grid.
Fast forward to now. Washington has been locked down for 8 months. Eight frustrating, over-crowded, claustrophobic-inducing months.
Boredom is big.
But since I’ve dealt with boredom many times before, I know all I have to do is make a game out of one of my routine tasks. Like writing.
For some unfathomable reason, I decided it would be fun to work on 6 novels at the same time until I had them all at the first draft stage. At the same time.
I reached that goal last month.
Obviously I didn’t think it through all the way, because now I have 6 novels, sitting on my computer, waiting for rewrites.
Did I mention that rewrites are my least favorite part of the writing process?
Fun times!
I’ve been rewriting the same first few paragraphs for over a week now. If I post them, maybe magic will happen and I can move on to the rest of the book. So here goes!
# # #
“No, no, and again no!” Nicole yelled over her shoulder.
The 22-year-old paused long enough to spear the irritating man following her on the jungle path with a glare, then stubbornly plunged forward. The path was not an easy one in the dark. Not when the jungle relished throwing every tripping hazard imaginable in her path. Finally, after she had bulldozed her way through the thick jungle brush and shoved her way over a clump of tall grasses, she stumbled into a clearing.
A surge of joy washed over her as, for the first time in over an hour, she was free of the jungle’s creepy crawlies. No vines to brush across her face. No giant insects to drop on her shoulder. No roots to spring up in the middle of the pathway with the sole purpose of snagging her feet and making her fall flat on her face.
She was free. She had successfully traversed the jungle. She could relax.
The moment of joy lasted exactly 2.5 seconds, then reality reared its ugly head. Sure, she had pummeled this jungle trek and beat it into submission, but unless she planned to sleep all night in this clearing, tentless, no less, she would have to make the return journey back to the hotel. Through that same jungle that had snagged her hair and tripped her feet and showered her with critters of all shapes and sizes.
# # #
There. I’ve released them into the wild. Unless they come knocking on my door begging to be let back in, my brain should be able to move on now.
Run free, little paragraphs! Run free!
Cute little fella, isn’t he?
I thought so, until I heard strange noises in my attic.
Further research has uncovered holes this little critter and his friends chewed through my roof. Big holes.
A grand entrance on one side of the house, and a private entrance on the other. I fear my attic is being used as a party house along a scenic highway.
This squirrelly little critter is no longer cute.
He’s just another destructive nut.
Since I had to compile this list anyway…
Braumaru :
2014 ScreenCraft Family-Friendly Script Contest Quarter-Finalist
Haunt for Hire :
2019 Screenwriting Staffing Query Letter Top 15
2018 Emerging Screenwriters Shoot Your Sizzle Top 100
9th Annual StoryPros Awards Screenplay Contest Quarterfinalist
Jupiterians :
2019 Filmmatic Pitch Now Screenplay Contest Finalist
Spencer, 1928 :
2018 Nashville Film Festival Semi-Finalist
2018 Emerging Screenwriters Shoot Your Sizzle Top 100
Stone Woman :
2020 Northwest Screenwriters Guild script reading
2019 Screenwriting Staffing Query Letter Top 15
2018 Quarterfinalist ScreenCraft Screenwriting Fellowship (Fifth Annual)
2016 WeScreenplay Diverse Voices Semi-Finalist
2014 ScreenCraft Family-Friendly Script Contest Quarter-Finalist
2014 ScreenCraft Action & Thriller Script Contest Quarter-Finalist
True Story of the Perfect 36 :
2019 Screenwriting Staffing Query Letter Contest Winner
2019 Scriptapalooza Screenplay Competition Quarterfinalist
2019 Creative Screenwriting Unique Voices Screenplay Competition Semi-Finalist, Family/Holiday Top 25
Wormhole 276 :
2017 WILDsound Festival Best Scene Screenplay Winner
2017 Festival for Family Best Scene Screenplay Winner
2017 Fantasy/Sci-fi Festival Screenplay Best Scene
Arbitrary is as arbitrary does, and Governor Jay Inslee is the most arbitrary man I’ve ever had the displeasure to see give a press conference.
If the rules he dictated for the state made sense, I might not mind so much.
But they don’t.
Instead of data, he uses a fear-based method of making decisions. Some might call it gut instinct, but unfortunately, his instinct is to hide from any hint of danger, save himself at all cost, and drag the entire state into the dark ages if it will make him feel safer.
So he closes churches, shutters businesses, and forces schools to remain closed.
All in the name of safety. His safety.
And whenever he sees a spark of life among the citizenry, he panics and creates a new arbitrary rule to snuff out that spark.
Like the new rule he just instituted that workout centers must maintain 300 square feet per person. Throw out that old, tired, 6 feet apart rule. We now need 300 square feet each to be safe.
Where did that come from?
Obviously, from a fear-troubled tummy. It certainly has the aroma fear. A fear that someone might workout and get healthy.
Can’t have that. Even if it is suggested by the CDC.
Governor Inslee is in charge, by gosh, and everyone’s gonna know it.
I’ve wanted to write a Christmas script for a while. I particularly wanted to write about some little creatures that populated my dreams. They’re clear to me, as well as cute, nice, intriguing, and in some indefinable way, connected to Christmas.
So, a few months ago I got out my computer and began a beat sheet. It’s usually one of the first documents I create when I’m working on a new screenplay.
I got the entire first act worked out, then got stuck. And by stuck I mean nothing, absolutely nothing, past the first act would come to me.
I was complaining to my youngest daughter about being stuck. She wanted to help me brainstorm and asked for more details about what I had planned.
“I want it to be exciting,” I explained, “like a thriller, or maybe a-“
“Oh,” she jumped in, “like 00Santa!”
Those words were magic. My brain whirled, there was a loud click, and just like that my head was flooded by music, scenes, and more potential ideas than I could ever possibly use.
I scrapped the first act I had written and started over. This time the flow of ideas continued all the way to the end. In two days time I had a completed beat sheet that mapped out my script.
Funny thing, though. While creating the beat sheet 00Santa became 00MrsSanta, and research revealed that there were no consistent descriptions of the woman, or even a consensus of what her name might be.
Bonus! That gave me a LOT of room to play. And play I did!
I had a few more bumps and swerves as I wrote the actual screenplay, but I finished the rewrites two days ago. As soon as I copyright the script, create a logline, and write the synopsis, I’ll reveal more details.
By the time I complete a novel or a screenplay I know it so well that it becomes real to me. Familiar. Sometimes too familiar.
I had the sudden fear that the screenplay might be too similar to other Christmas movies.
So, I did a deep dive into Christmas flicks.
I found nothing, absolutely nothing, that even remotely resembled this new Christmas movie that I wrote.
And that feels very good.
Like I have been given a gift. A Christmas present.
In the middle of summer.
My last post talked about fermenting in lock down and suggested a tea party.
Just to clarify, what is happening currently is NOT what I meant.
The violence and idiocy in the streets is no tea party, it’s an attempt to overthrow our entire way of life to make room for communism.
Funny how quickly it all happened. First, socialism was held out like a carrot. When enough people accepted it as a possibility, WHACK, down came the stick.
Communism.
It’s hard to believe how uneducated these looters are. How can they not recognize Marxist doctrine when they see it? Can this many people really be ignorant of what their lives would be like under a communist run state?
No freedom of religion – the all powerful leader is god.
No freedom to rise to a better life – all belongs to the state.
No freedom to create, grow, invent, express oneself – unless it falls within narrowly defined, state approved strictures.
Communist regimes allow no freedom of thought. Citizens belong to the government, mind, body, and soul.
“Resistance is futile. Prepare to be assimilated.”
Nope! I have no intention of becoming a Borg.
It doesn’t matter how much the riotous bullies burn buildings, topple statues, and act like complete idiots, there are enough non-idiots out here that we can stop this.
And I know we will.
We are Americans. We are not the assimilating type.
I can feel it, deep inside, brewing.
A bubble pops, releasing the foul aroma of frustration that expands and grows until it surrounds my heart.
Time passes and the fermenting continues. Bubbles of frustration continue to pop until my heart is surrounded by more frustration than it can bear.
My heart, fully aware of the danger and needing to protect itself, sends its own ingredient into the mix – a burst anger.
And as forced inaction lengthens into eternity, I finally recognize what is brewing in my chest.
REVOLUTION
I am a grown woman.
I’ve been married more than 35 years.
I’ve successfully raised 4 children.
I have a good education (a bachelor and two masters degrees), 10 published books, and more than a dozen screenplays under my belt.
Yet, I’m being told that I don’t have the mental capacity to wash my hands and keep germs at bay.
“Don’t worry your pretty little head about it,” they say. “We’ll do the thinking for you.”
As if!
I am, by nature a rule follower. It feels right.
But, for the first time in my life, I TRULY understand how the American Revolution came to be. Once that fermentation process is in full swing everything changes. Nature takes over.
And nature does not like being locked down.
Anyone in the mood for a tea party? You know, like the kind they had in Boston, oh, so many years ago?