The Bi-Monthly B

How you can tell you're old #472...you say shit like "how is it already (insert unit of time)?

How is it already April 9?  March was like a m**f** whirlwind.  I think.  I already don't even remember it. Basically, I remember yesterday, and to some extent can use that to extrapolate what's been happening for the past month.

Yesterday was April 8. My mom got on a plane and flew back to Indiana.  It's been really nice to have her in town. You also know you're old when your parents are even older so you want to spend as much time with them as you can (without going overboard because that's morbid).  I've been going over to her house about once a week, which might not sound like much, but is roughly twice as often as I see my sister (who lives in town) and six times as often as I see almost any single friend who isn't involved in a writing endeavor.  Mostly I was going on Fridays after work, and we would put together some dinner, talk and watch a movie, or if the kids were staying over maybe play some Monopoly.

Also April 8 is the day Paul and I got married.  In celebration of our anniversary he took yesterday off from work, and I switched up my hours and skipped writing, then, with our free time together, we went to Target, cleaned the house, had some expensive (and good) sushi, then watched TV while wearing teeth-whitening agents (bought at Target).  Yep, that's how we roll. In March I also spent some time with Paul, mostly late at night, or preparing for taxes.  We've both been spending extra time with respective writing partners on projects, which has decreased our available hours, so yesterday, while it might seem mundane, was a treat.

At work, April 8 was the last day of "prospective student open house."  Yay for that. Nothing makes time fly by like event planning without quite enough time, and open house is one of the bigger events--a three-day logistical extravaganza of hosting a dozen or so potential students.  My new co-worker handled almost all of the individual schedules and travel reimbursements and I ordered most of the food and we both tried to work our everyday duties in around the edges.

This year, April 8 fell on a Wednesday, which is generally the night that I go to my directing class, but serendipitously (for the anniversary) this week is community college spring break so class didn't meet. But for much of February and March, I have been leaving work at the stroke of five and taking two trains to class, which is officially scheduled to last from 6pm to 10pm but thankfully always runs shorter. With the 2-train+car commute home it still manages to eat an evening.

And yesterday, April 8 was the last day before today, April 9, which is when my writing partner (Janice) should receive the last of our notes on our script, so that we can spend the weekend revising and hopefully improving our application for the Film Independent Lab which is due on Monday.  I'm trying to mentally gear up for  a marathon writing weekend.  Switching back-and-forth between two scripts for various spring deadlines, there have been a few such weekends lately, and also a couple "vacation" days spent trying reach the finish line with drafts we can feel good about in hand.

And that, I deduce, is where March has gone.

A Hard Place

I've been in a physically fine, emotionally hard place this past week and over the weekend. Working extra hours at my day job to compensate for the fact that my co-worker left, and feeling conflicted about it. As with many things in my life, it has to do with boundaries, and the kinds of obligations I tend to fall into over and over.  The obligations are such that perfect effort equals invisibility, and anything less than perfect effort--which includes perfect effort for too few hours--equals embarrassing results for others that are highly visible and have repercussions--if a guest speaker were to arrive and not have a hotel room booked, or a professor need syllabi for the first day of class and not have any copies.  Not earth-shattering, but the kind of thing where you might think the person responsible was doing a shitty job because it's such a small thing to do...except that there are a lot of small things and each one takes time.

I haven't fucked up anything yet, but if I were trying to do 65 man-hours of work (the amount of myself and my coworker combined) in 25 hours (my official work schedule), it would have happened already.  Instead, I am trying to do the 65 hours of work in 35-40 hours, and feeling resentful about it.

The resentment has to do with the way I didn't make anyone ask, but just took it on.  It has to do with the fact that when the new person starts, she will be paid about 20 cents less per hour than I am paid...after four years. I think they would pay more if they could, but fear that I will find out, as I happened to find out that my last co-worker's salary had surpassed mine after only a year.  Apparently I was hired at too low a rate four years ago, and they have seen the error of their ways and hired subsequent people at a higher rate, but because yearly raises are given as percentage of the rate you already get, that's an error that keeps giving...less, and makes me resent both the people who made the original offer--and makes me resent myself for being so naively trusting early on.

I took a part time job because I wanted to pursue my big writing dreams, but then I agreed to the hours that come closest to simulating a full-time job, and whenever someone is sick, or gone, or needs to go home early, I instinctively spread out to cover the hole...because I'm a team player, and I'm there.  But it happens over and over.  There's always someone else's drama that is more dramatic than my drama so I enable that and then I feel like I haven't really fought for what I want at all, and so maybe I don't deserve it because if I really wanted it enough I would fight harder.

And then I think, if this unrealistic dream thing isn't going to work out, and I'm not really fighting for it, then I should just get a full-time job and makes some money...because, hey, we could hella use some money...  And that makes me sad, because I feel like I didn't try hard enough yet...because of making the very decisions I'm describing right now.

It just goes round and round in a pretty spirally fashion. So that's the hard place I'm in at the moment.  It makes me a less than optimally fun person to hang out with because even when I contain the words coming out of my mouth, my energy is just sad and dark. So I'm trying to find the center and the bottom so I can start charting my way out.

Hot on a Sunday

When it's really hot on a Sunday, the coffee shops and the few libraries with Sunday hours are overrun with writers and students escaping their air-conditionless environments.  The Beverly Hills Library is one of those that is open, and I am one of those who has arrived, trolled the back room of tables to find a seat.  I avoid the leg-shakers and those who type like it's a revenge and find myself a nice spot, facing a large arched window with a small sculpture on a wooden plinth in front of it.  The light from the window means I sees the statue only in a kind of silhouette, but it appears to be a representation in bronze of Abraham Lincoln sitting on a bench, with his signature top hat on the bench beside him.  He seems to be resting his weary bones. Could he be worn out from the heat as well?

Outslide the window is a large pine tree, which is unusual for Los Angeles.  I always particularly notice pine trees when I see them here, as they remind me of my home state. Home town. Really the house where I grew up with a large pine outside my bedroom window.

When Nouns Become Verbs

I sometimes like it.

Probably not always. Most of the examples that I can think of off the top of my head have to do with emerging technologies. "Facebook me."  "I'll Google it."  These are okay--short and also specific, which I respect.  Though I'm not a fan of saying "google" for "search" if Google is not the search engine, as that is kind of misleading instead of specific.

What I really like--and what has me writing on this topic to begin with-- is when the language is used more playfully and willfully, so that it has poetry as well as efficiency.  I recently read Karen Russell's Sleep Donation and jotted down two examples:

"We moth along toward the lights."

"Moth along." Kind of great, right?  She's describing human beings at a night market.  It evokes a different visual image and / or sense of intent from "walking", or "traveling" or "moving"--this is more haphazard.  And there's mood too--a sense of danger, of bad judgement in action.  For a short phrase it does a lot of work.

Here's another: "She has to houdini out of her restraints."

Not just struggle or wiggle--though certainly we feel wiggling is part of it. But we feel that "she" has a willfulness, and intent to escape her restraints such that she is doing something a little outside the possible.  Like Houdini.

Related articles

Do you salad or sandwich? The verbing of English

Lately

Lately I've been writing quite a lot, along with my co-writer.  In the last three weeks we finished a full draft of a screenplay, which is faster than I've ever written a first draft--but it wasn't pretty, and honestly neither is the draft.  Which is not to disparage it--you don't disparage a big lump of clay that vaguely resembles an elephant--it's not bad, it's too early for it to be good or bad.  Unless, of course, you put it on display with other people's more finished elephants, and say it should look like an elephant--which is (of course) what we have done, submitting applications to the Film Independent and Sundance Labs.  Whatever.  The deadlines were helpful in softening the clay and doing the initial elephant, so maybe that is the reward in itself.

The first deadline was May 1st, and the second was May 5th.  Even if you have drafted some of the materials, like artistic statements, synopses, and cover letters, the last days before these deadlines always involve a five and six hours sessions of revising and polishing, so by the evening of the fifth I was pretty fried--getting home a little late to start the prep for my annual round of "medical screenings" on the 6th.  Yes--those screenings.

I arrived at the hospital in my normal state--cleaned out and dehydrated--and realized we were doing an upper endoscopy as well as the colonoscopy, and discovered that since I apparently gagged a little on the tube the last go round, I was getting a deeper general anesthesia this time. They found a  few things in both stomach and colon to remove--which everyone seems to take in stride, but it's not my favorite--it makes me feel like there's some failure in the system.  Either I've been laxer in my diet, or my body is just getting old and deteriorating--my telomeres are getting shorter or whatever. I know  it's  both, though I only have control over one: I've been going with the flow, eating meat  just to be agreeable, giving in to my sugar cravings, and not juicing and eating a ton of cabbage.  The thought of re-establishing all sorts of discipline makes me tired, especially when my whole body is bloated from being inflated with air, and sore from being snipped at. I stayed home from work yesterday and went today.  This afternoon at my desk I was thinking, in words, that I feel like my life force is being sucked out of me. A few minutes later the doctor called  to say they needed to cut something out that they couldn't cut out on Tuesday, so I'll need to do it all again in a month. The thing they are cutting is "not cancer" which means I'm at the high-class problem end of the spectrum for being part of a demographic that is highly susceptible to cancer, but I'm throwing myself a very tiny pity party anyway.  In two weeks I'm also having and MRI and an x-ray to make sure that the back pain I'm having is also of the "not cancer" variety.  Let's all pray that I don't look back and wish for tonight's problems.  Count your blessings and be grateful for them, otherwise, when there's less, you have to look back and feel like an asshole.

Read Scripts. Watch Movies. Write Pages.

But maybe not in that order.

Sometimes I like to read Scott Meyer's Go Into the Story blog, that is all about screenwriting, and also contains a million (yes, hyperbole) links to other blogs and resources about screenwriting.  He adds content more frequently than I can keep up with, so I miss a lot, but I check in occasionally and recently I happened upon this post, where he recommends a formula of reading 1 script a week, watching 2 movies a week, writing 7 pages a week (one a day) and devoting 14 hours a week to story prep.  A  I think his numbers are pretty good for maintaining a steady practice and learning curve, but faced with hard deadlines, one has to prioritize a little differently. In my own case, I have to devote my highest hour count to pages of screenplays I'm actively writing (and rewriting!) but this article was a nice little wake-up call to the fact that I tend to let my script reading, and even my movie watching, fall to the wayside in my desire to finish pages.

It's a delicate balance--because to a certain extent, it's helpful to put on blinders and just keep running.  But when I make myself read a script, watch a film--I almost always pick up something useful for one of my projects. Last night, while folding laundry I watched Mississippi Masala, a Mira Nair film with a very young Denzel Washington. As  public service announcement, I'll note that you can watch the entire film on YouTube here. Tonight I started reading Monster's University, because what better than a Pixar film for reinforcing all the basics--perfect structure, characters with strong wants with obstacles, story beats that hit right where they're supposed to.  Too tired to finish tonight, but something to look forward to when I wake up in the morning.

I was interested that Meyers recommended more time spent on story prep than writing (assuming that most people can write a page in an hour or less). Also, I wondered what he  regarded as story prep. From context, it seems like he's referring to ideation, as opposed to extensive notes and research for a single project, but maybe not--or maybe he's deliberately loose in his definition. While I haven't been keeping a notebook of late, I give myself credit for the fact that I'm writing a short story to a prompt every week for the fiction class I'm taking, and I think that has been keeping the creative taps open. I've also done drafts of two longer stories that I'm pretty happy with for first drafts.

Book Review: Bill of the Century

A couple of weeks ago, I finished a short course in book reviewing. We discussed  things like the changing culture of reviewing with the advent of social media and decline in traditional publishing, and the recent debate regarding the pros and cons of printing a negative reviews. We also made a couple of stabs at review writing. I doubt I will embark on a career as a reviewer anytime soon, but it was a good exercise to have to generate a perspective on a book as I read it, and then present that perspective in some coherent fashion. Here's a little sample of my efforts:

Bill of the Century: The Epic Battle for the Civil Rights Act
According to Clay Risen, we tend to credit the achievement of the Civil Rights Act to Lyndon B. Johnson and Martin Luther King, Jr. largely because theirs are the names and stories with which we are familiar. Risen is kind enough to include himself in the “we” but I suspect he doesn’t actually belong there. I, however, do. In a word association game, I would complete “Emancipation Proclamation” with “Abraham Lincoln” and the “The New Deal” with “FDR,” because those are the only names I know. If there were more in my high school A.P. history study guide, I don’t remember them.

Unfortunately, Risen notes, our tendency to assign credit in such a simplified manner is both unfair and inaccurate. “The idea that either King or Johnson was the dominant figure behind the Civil Rights Act,” he writes,  “distorts not only the history of the act but the process of American legislative policymaking in general.”

In The Bill of the Century: The Epic Battle for the Civil Rights Act, Risen sets out to correct that distortion by presenting us with the literary equivalent to a “making of,” documentary, beginning in early 1963, a point during John F. Kennedy’s term at which civil rights legislation was at low ebb, and tracing the gradual rise of tide leading to the signing of the Civil Rights Bill on July 2, 1964.
A work that sets out to reframe historical events can’t help but shine a light on the fact that any view of history is a result of framing. Maybe this is why I found myself drawn to the moments in the book that revealed how players strove to frame events even as they were happening. While some examples of this—like a gala White House reception where Langston Hughes and Sammy Davis Junior rub elbows with Democrats for the cameras in a ploy to distract from John F. Kennedy’s meager progress on civil rights—felt par for the political course, other instances gave me pause.

Here’s one: In 1963, confronted by the knowledge that his movement was in danger of fading away due to a distracted public and a federal government refusing to intervene on states’ Jim Crow rulings, Martin Luther King Junior approved the plans for the Birmingham “children’s crusade.” On May 2, 1963, hundreds of children poured onto a plaza. At the end of two days, many were jailed and “photographers had snapped hundreds of pictures of German shepherds, their teeth sinking into young boys and girls.”

Just to recap: MLK, the “I have a dream” guy, sent kids to battle with angry policemen and big dogs. (Risen, by the way, does not react to this with the surprise I felt, probably because he is the author of an entire book related to King, and knows many things about him that aren’t inspirational quotes posted to Facebook.)

In the wake of the incident, Attorney General Burke Marshall publicly denounced the move, saying, “An injured, maimed or dead child is a price that none of us can afford.” Other politicians, however, turned their criticism toward the Birmingham police. The story and images from the event galvanized the civil rights movement, caused demonstrations to spark around the country and led key players, including Marshall, to realize that federal legislation was needed. Whether or not the means justified the ends, they were successful in achieving them
Here’s another item that I didn’t learn in A.P. history: The historic showdown between George Wallace and Deputy Attorney General Nicolas Katzenbach at the University of Alabama was rigged. “Wallace, [Katzenbach] realized... might believe his racist convictions, but acted on them mostly to appease voters.  Katzenbach would go to Tuscaloosa himself... let Wallace have his show, then insist on escorting the students to register.  Wallace, through a back channel,... told Kennedy he would comply.”

The first third of the Bill of the Century—which runs some 290 pages including 40 pages of citations—depicts events leading up to the introduction of the Civil Rights Bill in June 1963. The final two-thirds details the tactics and maneuvers required to push the bill through —in back rooms, on the streets and on the Senate and House floors. Although no summary could be sufficient, Risen’s recounting of a memo written by Katzenbach to Robert Kennedy during the early life of the bill might give a sense of what was involved:

“If the goal was to get the bill intact through the Senate, then a filibuster was inevitable—which meant they needed 67 votes to stop debate and bring the bill to a vote.... The only way to do that.... was to get [Senate Minority Leader Everett] Dirksen on board.... Because Katzenbach could then take Dirksen’s support of the bill to the House Republicans, who were open to civil rights but wary of siding with legislation that might get pared back in the Senate.  Dirksen, of course, did not support Title II, but Katzenbach hoped that his support on everything else could give momentum to the bill in the House, and that by the time it reached the Senate, Dirksen would have to choose between agreeing to the entire bill or standing in the way of historic legislation.”

If it sounds complex and confusing, it is. Risen, an accomplished journalist and author of A Nation on Fire, America in the Wake of the King Assassination, admirably manages to introduce and contextualize dozens of individuals—senators, congressmen, and myriad civilian activists—as well as organizations and political factions, but the density of information he is delivering can make for strenuous reading. I’ve no doubt been spoiled by textbooks and George R.R. Martin novels, but by page 150 I would have been grateful for a fold-out timeline, a tree graph showing all the characters and their affiliations, and maybe a cheat-sheet with acronyms and their translations.

Despite this, I recommend The Bill of the Century. “The story of the civil rights bill,” says Risen “is about the interplay between elected officials, government officials, lobbyists, and countless thousands of activists around the country, pushing and pulling each other toward their common goal.” That story, with all its details, dramas and complexities, is what Risen delivers.

My Favorite Project from 2013

This little multi-media art/song was my favorite piece from this year.  The lyrics pay homage to a story I remember my dad telling me when I was a kid, My brother Greg wrote and performed the music.  I made the shoe-box coffin when I was visiting Indiana over the summer and staged the picture in the back yard of my childhood home.  When I think of this, I think of my dad, of working with my brother, of painting and gluing at the kitchen table talking to my mom, digging in the dirt, and remembering that words are fun.

And I loved the way it turned out.

The Funeral of Turtle Ted
[audio http://barringtonsmithseetachitt.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/smithseetachitt_the-funeral-of-turtle-ted.mp3]

Turtle Rejected, Spider Accepted.

Yesterday I received a nice rejection for the picture/audio combo version of Turtle Ted.  The journal wrote,  "Your piece was a source of constant debate for us, and there was something about it that we found very charming. Unfortunately, we couldn't make it fit within the overall aesthetic of the journal."

For non-writers, "nice rejection" is not me being facetious. There is actually a concept of "good" rejections and bad (or standard) rejections.  A standard rejection is a form letter. A nicer rejection, is anything with a personal touch that shows it was read, like "try us again!" or "hard decision."
A nice rejection should encourage you to keep sending something out, which I hope to do with Ted.  The project is made a bit more difficult  in this case though, because there are still only a few journals that do multi-media.  Even the online ones are mostly print-based.

Which reminded to check and see if my piece that had been accepedt for an audio magazine called The Drum earlier this year had been posted yet--and it was! It's a humorous essay called "Sunday Afternoon with Buddha and Spider," and you can listen to it here.

MPW Farewell

As a rule, I often downplay naming people and things in my blog posts, thus the program where I take writing classes I tend to refer to, generically, as "the program where I take classes." Today, however, I want to name it: It's a graduate program at USC called the Master of Professional Writing.  I've been taking classes through MPW part-time for two years. I enrolled for a few reasons: because my job offered tuition remission and I'm a big fan of things that are free; because taking classes maintains my student status and thus prevents my mountain of student debt from toppling down on me; and because every semester I saw interesting topics and instructors. I figured I might learn something, and if not, I'd at least be pressured to write. I didn't enroll because I thought I needed an MPW program. With two MFAs from highly respectable schools,  I didn't need the degree, and I didn't need any more friends who were aspiring writers.

That's what I thought.

I thought wrong.

While it would be impossible for every concept to be new, I've been consistently surprised. I've gained skills and knowledge in my MPW classes that five years of MFA classes didn't give me; and though I'd graduated from my screenwriting program with friends and acquaintances in the Los Angeles area, it has been the MPW program that has given me a  community--both a strong student community and an introduction to Los Angeles as a writing (and reading!) community.  I'd come to believe that my screenwriting pursuits were entirely incompatible with a path as a creative writer. Through MPW I have been shown that is not the case, and introduced to a number of role-models who work in multiple genres.  Finally, MPW has reminded me of my appreciation and gratitude for writing and for other writers, which is not a luxury, but a necessity for anyone who plans to persevere in a writing profession.

My current semester at MPW has been the best I have experienced in terms of all of these things.  My classes have been educational and directly applicable to my work; I've felt a real affection respect and compassion for the students I share the classroom with. I've been inspired by my professors and the literature they've introduced to me,  and I've been ever more impressed by the reading and events the sponsored by the program and the efforts its administration makes to give us ties to the larger community of Los Angeles.  Friday night, I attended a student/ faculty reading. Afterwards as I wandered through The Last Bookstore in the company of other students, I was struck by a sense of belonging. This is not to say that I spend lots of time feeling ostracized or alienated, but moments of feeling a real sense of belonging occur seldom enough that I notice them.  And lately, when I have noticed them, it's been during in MPW-related activities: attending readings at bookstores around L.A., volunteering for the department-run journal, participating in professional seminars organized by the faculty on the weekends. Lately, when thinking of the MPW program, I've felt uncharacteristically warm and fuzzy.

Which makes it a little ironic that today I received an email saying that the dean has decided that the MPW Program will no longer accept new students. The current cohort will be the last cohort and the program will be discontinued as of Spring 2016.  So far, no reasons for this have been offered, other than the statement that it was "a business decision."

This will likely not affect my own educational trajectory, but somehow it still changes things-- like learning in your senior year of high school that after you graduate the city is going to burn down the building.  You'll still get to go to school everyday, but when you're done, there won't be anyplace to visit, and all the secrets and advice you might have given your kid brother are no longer pertinent.
It's an odd, sorrowful feeling.

But mostly I feel lucky.  Lucky that I found MPW when I did, and that it has given me so much that I didn't even know I needed.

Moving On

Well, the thing we hoped would happen didn't happen.  Paul and I, based on a script we'd worked on together had made it to the final stage of a fellowship program, but in the end, were not among the final selectees.

I think I was more worried about his one because it included him, and I'm sadder about the missed opportunity because of him.  Each day I go to work, and though I sometimes resent the say it can interrupt my creative flow, it also gives me a place to forget about the pressure to "make things happen" in a world where it's very hard to make things happen.  And I'm so lucky that I can keep taking a class each term--that I am given that space to feed my soul, and that motivation to develop as an artist.  I believe that even though I have to constantly balance the two worlds--the literary world where one's role models might speak in terms of feeding your soul and being an artist, and the industry where they want that passion and authenticity, but ultimately see both as product, and the writer as producer of that product.  That's the world he lives in all day, everyday, and it changes you.  It changes you if you find success, and it changes you if you don't.

In any case, we both have applications in the works for other fellowships, the world keeps turning.
I've been watching some early David Lynch short films I found at the library.  I had an early fondness for David Lynch, that I find has faded somewhat when I re-watch his work years later.  The shorts are the same. Some are really stimulating.  Some are unwatchable to me now.  But the stimulating ones have given me ideas for new projects--albeit long term ones, since I will have to figure out how to do animation to do them like I want.

Related articles

• The Short Films of David Lynch (aconstantstream.wordpress.com)
• Universal Launches Fellowship For Aspiring Writers (deadline.com)

Things That Might Happen or Not Make Me Anxious

So there's this thing I want to happen, that has a chance of happening, but that also has a chance of not happening. Dread of it not happening leaves a big anxious ball in my sternum.  The moment that it does happen, if it does, the big anxious ball will remain because I also fear failing at the thing that might happen, which would feel even worse than not having it happen to begin with.

Also, my new fiction class starts tonight.  A writing class with Janet Fitch, whose name might seem familiar to you because she wrote White Oleander the book, which has been made into White Oleander the film, and also  Paint It Black, which I have just started.  The class is reportedly much work, so while I am not anxious about it happening or not, because the likelihood is great of it happening, and even it were not to happen I would not be the cause of that--I do still harbor the fear of failing...or perhaps more precisely, the fear of falling short.

I hear however, that she will insist upon more descriptive language than what I have used here, so you might soon hear about this in terms that make some sense.

Related articles

• Book Review: White Oleander (stillcait.wordpress.com)

Acceptance and Rejection

Got an essay accepted by The Drum. It's an online literary magazine that is all audio--so you listen to all their pieces instead of reading them.  Which is particularly cool for this piece, which I have always like reading aloud. When you submit though, you do it on paper. If they accept you, then you make a recording.  So I'll be making a recording sometime soon, and when the issue I'm in is published, I'll let you know!

Did not progress to the second round of the Sundance Screenwriters Lab. Not surprised, so not disappointed, except for a little bit.  The little bit disappointed happened because of the little bit of unreasonable hope I allowed to creep in when my rejection letter didn't arrive by their self-imposed deadline.  I had to email, then call, for my rejection letter, four days after that date.  In the past, with Fellowships etc, I haven't bothered, but since I'm working on boundaries, I've decided it's rude to skip the response portion.  When a person spends $35 and 12-20 hours of their life putting together materials, and you've promised you were going to respond, then you owe them a form rejection email telling them the competition was particularly tough this year, and that many deserving applicants were also refused.

So I called and left a message, and soon after received my email.

The upside is that I was using their response date a a target for a close-to-finished draft, and as a result I do have a close-to-finished draft.

To Embrace Rejection, or Not to...

An interesting article from Salon showed up on my Twitter feed this week, on the science of how and why rejection hurts.
Here's a quote from it:

Humans are social animals; being rejected from our tribe or social group in our pre-civilized past would have meant losing access to food, protection, and mating partners, making it extremely difficult to survive. Being ostracized would have been akin to receiving a death sentence. Because the consequences of ostracism were so extreme, our brains developed an early-warning system to alert us when we were at risk for being “voted off the island” by triggering sharp pain whenever we experienced even a hint of social rejection.

Reading this made me think about all the different kinds of rejection we face in the modern era. Social media has given us a whole new arena to be rejected in. Ever posted a Facebook status and had nobody like it? Or been left out of an email loop at work? It's easy to feel threatened--often needlessly. On the flipside, there is that cringe-moment when a friend or colleague blithely posts or says something that will elicit anger or disdain, and they don't seem to notice. In my years working as a freelancer in different group scenarios, there would often be someone who seemed to lack that potential-rejection-radar. I'd witness an interaction and know it would be followed by conversations behind closed doors saying of the offender "he just doesn't get it.  And not getting it was a good way to not get an invitation to work on the next gig. In that profession, it really was like getting voted off the island, because it really did affect one's prospects for earning a livelihood. One of the things that made those instances hard to watch, was that the group would almost never be honest to the rejectee about the reason for their rejection (maybe because we do feel rejection so acutely that we want to avoid it, even if it's someone else's). Without that information, it seemed the oblivious rejectee was destined to repeat his mistakes elsewhere.

So a faulty rejection radar can be professionally damaging, but there are other scenarios where being impervious to rejection can actually be an asset. As a writer, often the only path to success is to submit your work to many rejections in the search for acceptance. Stephen King talks about having a spike on the wall full of rejection slips. Desperate Housewives was rejected by six networks before being accepted by a seventh, and that wasn't immediate.

This week an actress passed on a short film that I wrote, a production company passed an outline I helped create, and a literary magazine passed on two poems I submitted. It feels like a lot of rejection. But the truth is, I'm not being rejected enough. Because I'm not submitting enough. While I have a couple pieces of work out to a handful of journals (and by handful, I mean four), I have colleagues who tell me they send a single piece of work to dozens of journals. These are colleagues who are published, and who have ultimately won prizes with work that was rejected dozens of times. So while some with less confidence might go back to the writing-table, or even retreat all together, others will just run the gauntlet of rejection until they find the right audience.
So sometimes you have ignore those feelings of rejection.
But sometimes you need to pay attention.
The trick is know when to do which.

Related articles

• How To Deal With Rejection (miladyanne.wordpress.com)
• Publishers Who Got It Wrong (huffingtonpost)
• Why Rejections Hurts

The Writer Speaks (An Amazon Studios Update)

Well, that was disappointing! If you get my blog via letter, you last night received an empty blog post. I don't know what happened--it looked far from empty when I sent it...so that's a bummer. I fear also, that since I was writing late and tired after a long evening of driving, I won't be able to re-create it.
We're about to hit the road again, so I'll keep this one short. Remember when I mentioned that there was someone doing a rewrite for Children of Others over at Amazon Studios, but I wasn't sure if I should say who it was? Well, I guess I can now, since they just released an interview with Omar Naim.

Flailing

As this is a record of sorts, of my creative progress, it bears mentioning that I have been flailing lately in my creative life, and well, just my life. I haven't posted much about it, not because it's an emotional topic (though it is) so much as it is one that is difficult to capture in writing, because, by its nature, flailing goes off in many directions, and while that might be good for a twenty-page essay, or a semi-autobiographical novel, a blog post, if it is not to be tedious, best accommodates one direction, two if you're crafty.  If I were up to writing a twenty-page essay or a novel...well then I would probably be flailing less than I am.

Instead of trying to capture everything, I will just mention one aspect of the flailing, and that will probably give some idea of how even one thing can split into multiple directions.

For much of April and May I really tormented myself about whether to take this summer TV Writing Class that was offered. I had seen the instructor on a panel and been really impressed by her and so was super excited when the class announced, and even when I signed up for it.

But as last semester started to come to an end and the class loomed closer, something changed.  I started to ask "what is this all for?"  What sparked this feeling? Maybe it was attending an informational session for one of the TV Fellowships and having it dawn on me that it just never going to happen.  I'm not the droid they are looking for.  A diversity program is never going to think that my voice is diverse. That's nobody's fault, but nothing can change that.   I'm getting too old to climb the ladder from the bottom, to be a PA, then a writer's PA, then a writer's assistant, then a writer. I'm sure  someone could cite a case where a woman my age made that work and became one of the 14% of TV staff writers out there who are  female,  but it's not the low-hanging fruit. Even rung one is not the easiest gig to get.  (I was offered it once, right when I graduated, but it didn't have any health insurance, and my job had to support myself and Paul, since he was shooting his movie, so, I didn't take it, and, I guess, since I had one of my cancer "episodes" the next year, I made the right decision, since with no health insurance we would have been completely screwed. But still I have to wonder if it was a mistake. I get that I'm rambling here, but rambling is kind of like flailing, so we'll just go with it.) and second, even all the full writers I know, who have been on several TV series, seem to live with constant uncertainty and workplace dysfunction.

I also am getting really scared that if I keep taking different classes, I won't ever finish the screenplay and the book that I already have drafted, I'll keep putting them to the side, and I'll die--or just get old with a drawer full of half-finished dreams that never get to come out into the light.  And one of those half-finished things would be the new TV script, because you never come out of a class with a polished draft of anything.

So after two months of deliberating in this way I dropped the class before it started.  I'm still not sure it was the right decision.

And now I'm really worried that even if I don't take a class I won't ever finish the screenplay and the book that I already have drafted, because, I really don't fucking feel like writing right now .  A bad poem now and then, a blog post, sure.  But something that will take concerted and continuous effort an extended period of time. Sitting down at my desk and opening the document feels like a trip to the gallows. All I feels is this "don't want to," and I don't know when that will change.

And this brings up a bigger question...if i don't even like to write anymore--why in the hell am I existing in this financial situation?  Why are we selling our car for a thousand bucks because we can't afford to spend two thousand to fix it?  Why do I only buy clothes about twice a year, and then at the Ross or Goodwill? Why do I live in a house that makes me homicidal because everyone who lives here likes to act artistic and not clean anything but no one has money to pay a maid?  And why do I seem poised to live like this for the rest of my life?  It's one thing to have a dead-end job because I'm driven write some opus, and another just to have a dead-end job for no reason at all, because the act of opening a Final Draft document feels like walking to the gallows.  My job is not bad.  It's benign, but it's the definition of a dead end.  The maximum raise I will ever get will be something like 38 cents a year.  My salary will never pay my school loans. Not even close. And until Paul gets a job, it can't really pay our current expenses either.

So then I've starting to look at "real" jobs. With two and half Masters degrees, and quite a bit of work experience, it  seems like I could have something to offer in a more lucrative field. But that begs the question, why do I need to live in one of the most expensive, traffic ridden cities in the world to do a job that has nothing to do with the industry that the city is known for?

And then again, so much is so close. It's possibly the exact time not to be looking at other jobs, but the time to bear down. It might be tragic to pack up and go now.

I decide I should wait, just push myself through this one script that I've promised to someone.  But of course, because of the not-wanting-to-write, it would be helpful to have a push.  I ask about taking an independent study with an instructor I like in the my program. The department doesn't do independent studies with adjuncts.  I reach out to an old-mentor. His summer is full.   My writer's group is on hiatus...

Flailing is what you do when you're in deep water and you feel like you're going under.  You just grasp and any random-ass object that passes. "Hey, piece of disintegrating driftwood, can you support me?  Please save me."

Rotten driftwood can't save you.  And there's no one else here. You have to start swimming. But swimming only helps if you can figure out what direction to swim.

Therapy, you say?  Yeah, I'm going for the first time this week. Will let you know how that goes.

The Funeral of Turtle Ted

I took a poetry class this semester and enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. I wrote this early in the semester, when we were studying ballads.   I gave it to my super-talented little brother, who on-the-spot composed a little background music and laid down the vocals.

You can listen to The Funeral of Turtle Ted here.

Siblings Day

Oh, Sibling Day. This was the first year that, through the power of Facebook, I discovered  it existed, and it still passed before I knew when it was. It was yesterday. Do card companies make cards for this holiday? Answer unknown. According to the ever-helpful Wikipedia it is about 15 years old, and though not a federal holiday like Mother's Day, has been embraced by 39 states.  Go marketing!
Though I'm not a great observer of nouveau holidays (I barely manage the traditional ones), I do really appreciate my siblings.  My full siblings (I also have two half siblings) are my connection to my parents, my childhood and my memories of where I'm from.  And because I won't ever have biological children of my own, my sister's children are the closest thing to my genetic legacy.
I feel particularly lucky that, at this juncture, we all live in the same city, even though that city is Los Angeles where it's easy to let two to six months  go by without someone in person.  My sister tries to combat this with a standing dinner invite to her family's house twice a month. Even with typical conflicts we usually manage to gather other once a month, hang out, see how much taller her kids have gotten.
About a month ago I also had a really special experience hanging out with my brother (and believe me, I would not use "special" in this way if it weren't the most accurate term I could think of).  I hit him up to help me record some stuff I'd written.  I was going to read it myself, but after I tried it, it seemed better if the voice was male, so he did the reading as well as composing background music and producing the audio.
I seldom get to work my brother in the studio, but I love to, because it is the best time to see him deeply focused and, I think, happy.  I believe that being a musician and storyteller is his truest nature. (When he was only two or three, he used  to sing himself to sleep at night with long narrative songs about characters from TV shows he watched. I can remember listening, and even at the age of seven or eight noticing how music just poured from him.)
Though our training is really different, and our personalities are different,   my brother--my sibling--is the closest thing I could have to a male mirror of myself.  We have a similar sense of humor, which became clear as we edited the piece.  We also have a similar cadence and rhythm to our speech, so hearing him read my work felt oddly familiar.
I had brought in two poems and one piece of prose. At the end of our session, I felt like only one of the pieces worked--but I was really happy with that one piece.  I would post it here, but we submitted it for a contest, so I'll wait until they announce the winners first (even though I'm pretty sure it would be safe to do so.  I'm fond of it, but it's a pretty beginner-level poem, so I don't think we are in big danger of winning). The whole experience made me think of how I'd like to collaborate with him more in the future.
In honor of that fact, his website is the first to be added to my "links I like."  Soon to be followed by many more, but for tonight, because it's late--just my sibling's.  Happy Siblings Day!

Under Construction

This blog is going to look pretty funky for a few days--or maybe weeks or months.  I'm in the process of trying to build a website around the blog, which seems like a good idea--but I'm not exactly sure how.  So I'll be experimenting with the whole thing, and hopefully not deleting seven years' worth of blog posts in the process!

 It's been on my list to have a writer's website for awhile, but it came to a head recently. As I've mentioned, I  have this staged reading coming up...

(Wait--I need to insert an announcement here:

MPW Stage and Screen Festival
Staged Readings of Three One Acts
APRIL 7th
7PM
ELECTRIC LODGE
1416 Electric Avenue
Venice, CA 90291

Note that if I had an "events" section or page it would be there, but I don't, so it's not...yet)

I have this reading coming up, and the director asked me, "do you have any actors you want to recommend?"

There was a time, when I belonged to small a theater company here in LA, that I would have had twenty actors I had worked with directly and would love to use.  Nowadays, I have some friends, and friends of friends, who are actors.  They are not "Wow, I know this person would be absolutely perfect."  They're more like, "I think they could be good--they seem the right type, and speak in complete sentences at parties."  But I haven't worked with them.  Also, I don't know the director very well,  he may have actors that he works with and really likes working with already, which, in these circumstances, seem ideal. So, basically, I have a small group of folks that I'd like to have the opportunity, if there are some openings, but I'm not ready to be solely responsible for casting them.  In this town, that happens A LOT. 

In this case my thought was, "I'll send their websites to said director. Then he can look at their headshots and reels, evaluate their training, experience etc"

The trouble was NONE of them had a website.  I ended up sending pictures from Facebook, IMDB links (one had a link with no picture) or their bios from posted play or film sites.  I still put them out there, but it was harder, and they don't look as serious.  

And I have to wonder, is that happening to me?  I doubt I'm missing out on a feature film assignment, but I meet a lot of people who have projects.  If they happen to idly think of me, am I making it easier for them to give me an opportunity, or mention me to someone else who might?

Not so much.

So it's time for a website--and as loyal blog readers, you'll get to witness its growing pains!

Goodbye Google Reader

I'm not just a writer of blog posts, I'm a reader.  You know how (some) folks say that you should read more than you write?  For the most part, that just doesn't happen?  When it comes to essays, short stories, screenplays, and my new-found interest, poetry, the ratio of write-to-read hours is vastly skewed toward the writing. It's a flaw,  but since there are more deadlines for writing than reading, and since even though the chances of being paid for anything I write is miniscule, the chances of being paid for reading is none, it seems likely not to be remedied soon.  It is possible, however, that I actually read as many blog posts as I write--if not more. There are two reasons for this:

1) The bar is pretty low, since I am a sporadic blog-poster.

2) The existence of Google Reader.
Reader is an awesome feed with an easy link from my Gmail page.  After I check my mail, I can give it a click and check my list of blogs.  When someone has updated, it shows up in bold, if not, it doesn't.  It shows me how many posts I have not yet read.  In this way, it's easy to keep up with other sporadic bloggers.  I don't have to check directly everyday, get frustrated, and eventually give up, only to miss a post when it appears.  It's awesome.

And it's going away.  The last time I clicked over to my Reader, I received a message that Google was "retiring" Google Reader come July,  And today, when I went up to my menu, the link to the reader page was gone.  You can still get to it, but it's harder.  So check out is in July--but apparently the maid is going to keep knocking, calling "housekeeping" every half-hour until we decide to leave earlier.

So I'll be transitioning, probably to one of the products described in this article. Transitions of any sort are not my favorite, because they usually involve having to make decisions about what to toss and what to keep.  And I have some blogs on my list that I've kept for awhile that are pretty much defunct, but I live in hope regardless.  Jane Espensen might  decide to start posting again, right?  And the same goes for many of my friends who began blogging at the same time I did.  I don't like to give up...but it's probably time to start letting go.