Thin Skin and Sour Grapes

On a Saturday in May 2008 I sat at a table pushing rubbery lasagna around my plate with a fork.  The overwhelming fishy stench from my neighbor’s seafood ravioli made my stomach turn.  It was lunchtime at the Nashville Screenwriter’s Conference.  I turned to the woman seated on my right and traded small talk.  She was a nurse so inspired by Brian Fuller’s “Pushing Daisies” that she turned to screenwriting.  I told her about my feature length romantic comedy (a script I wisely tossed years ago). 

A pasty man with curly hair that always appeared curiously wet approached our table and squatted.  He wore a large carved Adinkra pendant on top of a black t-shirt.  I had met him the day before.  A close talker, he tried to impress me with his business card featuring his book.  I inelegantly dropped the word “husband” to get him to back off.  He continued to whisper to me during a seminar.  I began talking about my kid (works every time!) and that blessedly freed me from him and his aura of aftershave.

Wet Head told the table how he was writing a screenplay about the friendship between J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.  Someone commented that they didn’t know the two were friends.

“Yeah, they were real tight until Tolkien got his feelings hurt and started acting like a woman.”

I snapped my head up and glared at him.  I propped my elbow on the table and leaned forward.

“Really?”  I motioned to the women sitting at the table.  “Please tell us more about that,” I insisted in mock adoration.

The women at the table laughed.

“I think you just proved my point,” he retorted.

He continued to drone on about his screenplay until he realized no one was listening.  He rapped the table twice with his knuckles and slinked away.

                                                  .                          .                        .

This year was the fifth time I've entered the Academy Nicholl Fellowships Screenwriting Competition.  I was a Quarterfinalist in 2009 yet I haven't been able to crack it since then.  This year I made the top 20%, an improvement from last year.  This year I most looked forward to reader comments.  For the first time, the competition provided reader comments for and additional $40.  

My comments were somewhat helpful.  One was a little snarky but tame compared to other workshops I've attended.  Truth be told, I was (like many other participants) underwhelmed.  There wasn't much thought put into the critiques.  The comments were dominated by personal taste more than attention to actual craft.  

However, they were nothing like the reader comment Rachel Koller received:

"With some judicious alterations, [the script] might make a decent porn picture, as the gals do seem kinda hot, at least on the page."

Yes.  This actually happened.  And it gets worse.

When Koller politely expressed concern on the Nicholl Facebook page, she was treated with contempt:

(for the full exchange, see this article) 

This is supposedly the most prestigious screenwriting competition in the world.  For me, I thought it was my only ticket to becoming a successful screenwriter.  For years I submitted draft after draft hoping I could somehow break through and get an agent or sale or something.  To see such carelessness and misogyny on the other side crushed me.  I felt my power had been taken from me.  My dreams and my hopes snatched away. As I melodramatically related to my best friend: 

At the same time, I felt a familiar sentiment simmering beneath my disappointment.  Of course.  This is how it is.  This is how it’s always been.  Did I really think that I had the same chance as a man?  Especially when all my protagonists are female?  Was I really so naïve to believe I had an equal shot?

Yes.  Yes I was.

While there were a lot of supportive comments from all genders (yes!) on the Facebook thread, as time went by, more and more dismissive comments surfaced.

There were comments after online articles about the controversy that were scarier and more hateful than these.  I don't want to visit those.  They speak for themselves.  These sly, disparaging comments cast the blame on Koller.  She was "begging for it."

It was infuriating.  

It was at this point when my buttons had been pushed too far.

Yeah, it was petty and crude ... but it made me feel good.  Why?  Because words have power.  Rachel Koller is certainly evidence of that.  I'm indebted to her for speaking up and giving us a peek behind that plush red curtain.  What's back there is ugly yet familiar.  Powerful but not indestructible.  

I'm now conscious that yes, the past and the odds are against me.  I'm also aware that I have the power to fight back: with words.  With characters.  With story.  I want to frickin' blowtorch the supposed limitations and expectations of my gender.  I will slay that beast behind the curtain until it's bloody mangled mess.  Every time it creeps back up, I will stomp on it.  For, as Zora Neale Hurston said: 

Most of all, however, I just want to do me.  I want to write.  I want to channel my anger, my sadness, my pain into energy for my work.  In a strange way, the opposition has given me a boost of confidence.  I have no idea what I will do now.  I don't know if I'll enter the Nicholl Fellowship competition again.  I have no idea how a chronically ill mom from Tennessee will possibly break into screenwriting.  I just know there is something in me that knows I can try.  

I'm not worried.

My worth is no longer tied up in what people think of my work, if they even think of it at all.  I know there's something in me, my own beast behind the curtain.  It's small.  It's strong.  It's feisty.  It will claw at your eyes if you try to stifle it.

I can't be bothered anymore.  I've got too much to do.  I bet you do too.  And I bet whatever you do, even if you mess up, it'll be beautiful.

Parting words from Zora:

By Way of "B"

"There are times when the only way to get from A to C is by way of B." 

On the way down to Florida this week I got an email from the Academy Nicholl Fellowship Committee.  They had promised all the results for the quarterfinal round of their annual screenwriting competition would be announced by August 1st.  I wasn't expecting an email so soon.  

This past year (the third time I've entered this contest), I felt more confident than ever.  I worked very hard for a long time to make the story more character driven and the emotions more authentic.  My reader, best friend and all around coolest gingey ever really enjoyed the script.  This was a breakthrough seeing as she wasn't too fond of my previous draft (I got to the quarterfinals one year and then in the top 15% with that draft).  Rochelle is very frank and honest (that's why she's my BFF!) and so I trusted her opinion (and still do).  I felt I had done the best I could do and it was great.

I didn't get into the quarterfinals.  Not even in the top 15% or 20%.  I was told the following: 

"A little bit of good news: your script received two positive scores from first round readers and was read twice during the competition. It did fall outside the Top 20% of all entries. Beyond this, we do not provide exact numerical scores."

I'm still a little fuzzy on what that exactly means but in the moment I read it, it read failure.  I was devastated.  All that hard work and for what?  I was very tempted to give everything up during those first 24 hours.  It seemed like the harder I worked, the lower I scored!  Now, there were more than 1,000 extra entrants compared to the year I got in the quarterfinals.  The committee also changed the minimum screenwriting salary from $5000 to $25,000.  That means I was competing against people with more real experience than me.

In the end, those excuses don't matter.  I had a chance to talk with Scott Frank at a screenwriter's conference a few years ago and he said that if you submit your screenplay to this competition and you don't win a fellowship, then it's simply not good enough.  I said that sounded kind of harsh and he explained that a screenplay has to stand out.  Outside of the competition, he explained, there is so much more competition.  My screenplay has to compete with hundreds of thousands of scripts.  If mine can't stand out in 7000 or more scripts, how can it compete with hundreds of thousands?

It was hard to find out the screenplay I thought was amazing was only sub-par.   For the first time ever, I thought about giving up writing.  Rochelle assured me that I need to give myself time before I made any choices.  My husband and mom told me not to give up.  These reassurances kept me from metaphorically jumping of the ledge for the moment.  The fact we were at the beach also helped.

After the initial shock I realized that while my screenplay needed work, I needed even more work.  I had let my confidence slowly grow into egotism.  I let myself get a big head.  That big head lead to big disappointment and a desire to make big choices to satisfy the vast emptiness left behind by unfulfilled expectations.

While searching for some answers and inner peace, I came across this video.  I had seen it many times but this time it spoke to me personally.

If you're not into the churchy stuff, I'll summarize.  Sometimes we have to go down unexpected roads in order to find the right way.  Sometimes we have to make mistakes in order to learn.  Sometimes accidents or other problems out of our control cause us to take a different path than the one we planned.  And that's okay.  That's life!  I'm embarrassed and disappointed I didn't place in the competition but maybe this is the only way I can be a better writer.  I'm learning that I need to be humble and gain all the knowledge I can.  I've been given some great opportunities to work with those who have experience in the film industry.  The road isn't completely dark to me.  It's just new.  

This experience has taught me lessons I can apply to my life in general.  Enduring autoimmune diseases and the resulting surgeries, physical therapy, painful procedures, strict diets and dealing with financial issues and living with my parents for several years . . . all of these are absolutely not the roads I thought I'd have to take!  But maybe I'm here because there is much for me to learn here.  I can learn to have more empathy and patience with others.  I'm also learning that my social standing, career (or lack thereof) is not the final say in who I am.  They don't make me unworthy.  I am more than my failures, illnesses, etc.  I just have to find my ground so I can have true confidence, not the puffed up kind I've had for the past few months.

What do you do when you find yourself on a road you didn't expect?

Best Laid Plans . . . Cracked and Scrambled

The pictures are actual item listings on Etsy from some extremely talented people. Simply click on the picture to view its Etsy listing.

I've had quite a month, as expressed in my cryptic (or painfully obvious, depending on who you are) treasury in my last post. To help explain some of it, I have a stubborn 3 year old I'm trying to potty train, I was a dance coach for a cultural celebration for the rededication of the LDS Atlanta Temple, my family traveled to Atlanta for the Temple Open House, Easter, I have IBS which flared up big time (probably in the face of so much stress) and I was trying to write a screenplay in 2 weeks to make a contest deadline.

Everything surrounding the temple was a success and worth all the work. The kids danced beautifully at their program last night and the temple is beautiful.

My IBS is just something I have to live with. I have good days and bad days. I'm juggling a lot of medication which I don't like but at least I have insurance and some sort of treatment to help with this horrible condition. I can at least be grateful for that.

The screenplay thing is a little more complicated. The contest I planned to enter was the Nicholl Fellowship Competition. It's done by the Academy (the "Oscar" people) of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences every year. They award 10 amateur screenwriters a $30,000 fellowship and even better than that, comes the prestige with the title. You're guaranteed an agent (the Holy Grail of wannabe screenwriters) and your script has a much bigger chance of being sold and made into a movie. Both "Finding Forrester" and "Akeelah and the Bee" were winning Nicholl scripts, for example.

Even if you don't win a Fellowship, being a finalist has its perks as well. Your name, script name and genre and contact information are put on a list that is sent all over Hollywood to agents and producers. I was a quarterfinalist in 2009 and was approached by about 12 different agencies. I sent my script to only 7 or 8 (some of them seemed shady). I haven't heard anything back but it was still such an honor. So, I sent in the same script from 2009 in again this year. I'm hoping it'll go farther in the competition . . . you never know.

I pray about a lot of things I think most people would find strange. Heck, I'm a Mormon and most people find that strange! I believe that when I pray, I'm heard and I get answers. They are not always immediate nor are they always what I want to hear . . . but I do get answers. So, I was praying saying that I sent in my script and that the OTHER script I'm working on I'll submit next year. Well, I immediately had the thought, "Don't give up." It sort of threw me for a loop for two reasons: one, I had only half of the treatment (a basic scene-by-scene summary of the script) written; two, the deadline was two weeks away.

What hit me the most was the last time I prayed and got the answer "Don't give up." It was two months after I opened my Etsy shop. I had almost no traffic and no sales. I felt humiliated and frustrated. I prayed saying I just wanted to quit and it was a waste of time. Then I felt someone tell me, "Don't give up." Less than one year later, I have almost 40 sales. I knew that if I was supposed to get that script in that contest, I would happen!

I talked with my husband and arranged for the most childcare I could get so I could write. I decided to put my Etsy shop on vacation the week before the deadline with the message, "My shop is on vacation until May 3rd while I try and finish my screenplay in time for the Nicholl Fellowship Competition deadline. Eek! Wish me luck! : )"

The first week went pretty well. I was able to finish my treatment (it got up to almost 40 pages which is about right) and write 7 pages of my script. That weekend we went down to Atlanta for the Temple Open House as a family. It was very important for us to do that and I'm glad we went, even though I wasn't feeling the best. My doctor had just prescribed me a new medication that made me very nauseous but I was able to get through the trip anyway.

As the days went by, it was obvious my IBS was out of control. I was in constant, intense pain. I knew in my heart there was no way I could finish the script when I was this ill. I prayed about it and felt like it was the right thing to do. There's no sense in killing myself over a script when I'm ill and have a child to take care of. At first I was really disappointed. Why in the world would I need to go to the trouble of trying to write a script in 2 weeks only to have to quit because of illness? I got to thinking about it and realized a few things:

1. By cleaning out my schedule and arranging for childcare, I had the time and help to rest and get better.

2. By closing my shop I was able to relax a little and take the time to reassess my shop. I've been able to brainstorm and create goals for BiblioBags with a clear head.

3. I was never keen on sending in a first draft of a script anyway! I mean, people have won fellowships on first drafts but I was super uncomfortable with that notion. Despite my messy blog, I'm actually super meticulous with my writing and it would KILL me to think of industry professionals judging me on a first draft.

4. I only wrote 7 pages of that script but it got me hooked. I got the writing bug again. I always believed in this story but actually writing it grabbed me and now I'm so excited to keep going. Those of you who write know what a struggle it can be to get yourself to do it. You may love it and writing may even give you life (I feel that way) but sometimes, you'll do almost anything to avoid writing. But now that I got a little taste, I'm begging for more. Maybe I needed that kick in the pants to get me writing again.

Even though things didn't work out the way I thought they would, maybe they worked out better for me in the end. Heavenly Father knows me better than I know myself and I've learned a lot from this experience. So I guess I'll make an omelet out of these broken eggs . . . with lots and lots of cheese. (That's metaphorical . . . I can't eat cheese in real life. I eat it rhetorically as much as possible, though.)