A Pandemic, a Screenplay, and Endless 2020

I haven't been here for a while. I don't know if it's because I didn't want to immortalize the year 2020 since it surely has to rank among the worst in living memory. I was about to sit down an blog about the headstone I got for a baby that died in 1928 and who has rested in an unmarked grave since then, but before I could get my thoughts down -- wham! The coronavirus pandemic was upon us and everyone's attention was taken by IT. We have missed an important wedding, three funerals, two planned trips, one of them to Europe, and many many other moments we can never get back. But I know everybody else has had those same experiences so I won't dwell on it. Except to say, I realize how lucky I am, with a house in a quiet small town, and another one where I can go write, and not having to worry about a job loss or any of the other catastrophes others have had to endure. I am not going hungry. 

The time has reminded me, oddly, of when I was a child. We didn't go places all the time like people do now. We pretty much kept to our daily routine, and even on the weekends, we often spent a lot more time at home than we did in the car or recreating. In fact, recreation wasn't even a word in my vocabulary when I was a child. I do remember wishing to "go somewhere" and jumped at the chance to accompany either one of my parents on mundane errands if they would allow me to tag along. Often they didn't. We just stayed at home. A lot. But that was back when we had neighborhoods full of kids who played in the streets or in each other's yard, and we didn't have air-conditioned homes, or internet, or any of those things that seem to keep children inside their houses now. We played hard. Sun-up to sun-down. Mother would turn on the porch light when it was time for us to come home. And we usually stayed out a while even after we saw it burning. She might scold us a little bit, but not much. We lived in a safe neighborhood. We didn't even lock our doors way back then.

I do lock mine, now, but my house is my sanctuary, and with all this time on my hands, what better way to fill it than to dig back into writing. Oh, don't think I mentioned it but at the end of 2019 I got a new agent. She went to a lot of trouble to find me! What a switch. I enjoy talking to her, she gets my work, and is enthusiastic. What a delight it is just to have that much after other agents I've had through the years. She's trying to sell a novel, and she has some other ideas, too. Keep your fingers crossed for me. I need a lot of good wishes.

I've done a good bit of reading through the last few months. Haven't had to actually buy many books since my shelves are loaded with books that have been waiting for me to get around to. Hope I can one day read them all, although I may not live long enough for that. I had two books on Horton Foote sitting side-by-side on my shelf. I had forgotten about them. "The Trip to Bountiful" has always been one of my favorites plays and I love the movie with Geraldine Page, too. Reading those two books made me want to write a screenplay. Several years ago I made a stab at it, bought some screenwriting software, and so I updated the software for my newish laptop, and started in on it again. And guess what? I wrote a screenplay. All the way through. From beginning to end. Six times!

It's an adaptation of one of my own novels (the third one), and I was thoroughly engrossed in it from the moment I started. I got lots of help from my agent and just generally had a ball. I changed the ending, deleted characters, streamlined dialogue, and got the thing down from the original 145-page script to a decent 117 pages and I'm (more or less) happy with it. I don't know if anything will come of it, but my agent has it and she will decide if it has merit enough to submit somewhere. The main thing, for me, is it got my writing juices flowing and I'm anxious to get onto the next project. I've got about three of them rattling around in my head, and we shall see which one takes hold. 

So I guess for me there has been an upside to this terrible pandemic, although it has more to do with forced isolation than anything. I hope the medical scientists can get this thing licked pretty soon. We've lost far too many people in this country and over the world, and far too many have suffered. There are just a couple more months left of this endless, awful year, and good riddance to it. I urge anyone who might be reading this to wear your mask, maintain social distance, and stay safe and well. Until next time --

Onward... 

Going Into eBook Once Again

THE PASSION OF DELLIE O'BARR became available on Nook today. Odd that it came out on Nook before Kindle, but Kindle should be out before the week's up. I like having my books available again, even if it is an electronic version. I got 1099s from both Barnes and Noble and Amazon for sales of LILY last year. Surprised me. I knew I'd been getting little deposits from them, but it adds up.

Re-reading THE PASSION OF DELLIE O'BARR to catch mistakes made in the conversion process is what got me interested in working on the old screenplay again. I have been doing more of that over the last few days. My son and his partner will be here mid-week next week, and shortly afterwards, we are making our three-month trip to Texas, so the screenplay is something I can take along more easily. But once we get back from Texas, I am going to set it aside and get back to the endless novel. I'm really chomping at the bit to dig back into it.

It is fun to work on this screenplay, although I'm sure I'm going to have to cut easily half of it before I'm finished. I like learning a new way of writing, delving into the mechanics of it, and just finding methods to get the story done through dialogue and action. That just has to be good practice for novel-writing, too. In prose it's often too easy to cop-out with a lot of narrative and internal monologues. Not possible with a screenplay, or anyway, not AS possible. I am seeing more and more movies with voice-overs than I ever used to see, and for the most part, it's in movies where the script has been adapted from a novel. But I'm not quite good enough at this yet to do that effectively.

Anyway, I think I'm really looking at this screenplay as more of an exercise. I do understand that it's even harder to have a screenplay produced than it is to have a novel published. And I'm not sure I would be willing to put in all the necessary work that would go into that process. I've had some dealings with movie people -- producers, directors, writers, etc -- and they live in a totally different universe than I do. Truth is, I don't want to live in theirs, so there you are.

On another note, I've felt the need to fill my loose time with some money-making endeavors. I've started selling again. Ladies fashion blouses this time. It's a new line of merchandise for me but not a new concept. Selling is basically selling, no matter what the product. Hopefully it will turn out to be lucrative. Otherwise, I'll quit.

Onward ....

Furthering the Story

Finished reading -- finally -- THE COLD DISH by Craig Johnson. It seemed to take me forever to read that book, and I was really enjoying it all along. But we are so busy all the time, and I just don't take the opportunity anymore to go off by myself and simply read. It was because we were in Denver and I had some alone-time for it that I got really along with the book, then finished it yesterday.

The reason I wanted to read this book in the first place -- because it's a mystery and that's not my usual choice of things to read -- is because they were filming it last year right down the road from us. It's to be an A&E series, so I wanted to read at least one of Craig Johnson's books before the series, which will be called "Longmire," airs on television. I really liked his characters, his use of humor, and the details about the Wyoming landscape. I also didn't guess who the killer was until right before it was revealed, and that's unusual for me, too. I think the reason I don't like to read mysteries as a general rule is because I do usually know who the killer is long before it's revealed. Not because I'm so smart, but because, being a writer, I understand a bit about structure, foreshadowing, and introduction of character. So often a mystery writer will either make me like a character too intentionally, and then that person turns out to be the killer, or there is a character introduced who has no other reason for existing except to be the killer. It's this kind of obviousness that I dislike when reading mysteries. Johnson, however, was so smooth with his character introduction that the one who turned out to be the killer was a natural part of the storyline and of his main character's development, that I never saw it coming.

We also watched a good movie last night. Saturday nights have become our Netflix night, and this one was called "The Debt," starred Helen Mirren and Sam Worthington, that agreeable actor from "Avatar." He was excellent. She always is. I liked the subject-matter, and was never bored for one minute. The writing was excellent, even clever with lots of twists and turns. It made me think more about the art of the screenplay, especially since this was an adaptation of a book.

I seem to be kind of stuck on mine. Didn't work on it yesterday. I think I'm going to have to work through the story, then go back and cut cut cut. I don't work this way when I'm writing a novel, but I'm finding that there are so many things that are told in narrative that cannot be done that way in a screenplay. And of course, as I go along, I also see the need to combine characters, cut others out, give certain characters new dialogue just to get certain information out there. And yet, it has to be done in a natural way. I just absolutely hate it when the only reason for a scene or an exchange of dialogue is so obviously just to get certain plot elements into the story. Not that I don't see the need for it, but there has to be a secondary reason as well. Oh, this is always so difficult, no matter what kind of writing you are doing. That delicate balance between spooning out bits that further the story, develop character, or provide plot elements without it all seeming contrived and obvious. There are just times when you have to soldier on with the idea in mind that you can come back later and trim it all up. I think this first time through is going to have a lot of flab.

But my my, how the time does fly when I'm working. Forgot about that. It feels good.

Onward ....

Birthdays, the IRS, and Writing Clearly

Yesterday my oldest son turned 39. It's hard for me to believe I have a child this old, yet when I look at my Daddy, who will turned 86 this year, I FEEL old. Odd to me that it should be that way. Where the hell did the time go? It almost like I was absent for a lot of it. I'm reminded of the George Strait song, "Where've I Been All My Life?" Good question.

When you're young you believe life is endless and you think the next best thing is around the corner, not in the present moment so sometimes you make really poor choices. I made so many poor choices during my young years, choices I've had to try to forgive myself for making. In fact, I've come to realize that it's all about forgiveness really, and forgiving yourself most of all. Not an easy task for a perfectionist. It has caused me no end of trouble. I have to keep reminding myself, even at this age, to live for the moment, because it might never get any better than this. You can live through your finest moments and not even recognize it until way too late.

Dealing with the IRS again today. This 2008 return has been a real headache and I'm anxious to get it off my desk and out of my mind so I can focus on something else. It started last July and has continued, though aborted correspondence and aggravating phone calls, accompanied by bouts of high blood pressure. Finally, after contacting my state senator for help, I have been assigned a case advocate and she's about to get it straightened out. But the whole thing is a big confusion to me, my CPA, and my advocate. I'm tempted to just pay them the amount they say I owe and be done with it. That amount is less than $200 but I've just never had a reasonable explanation about why their figures don't jibe with mine. Ah me ....

Made a mad dash to Austin yesterday to my dentist. The older I get the less I want to make that trip four times a year. I really like those people though, and I've been with them since 1984! Gads! More of that flying time.

I did stop by the Apple Store at Barton Creek Mall and bought Final Draft software. I have all the rights to my books now, and I want to try doing a screenplay for THE PASSION OF DELLIE O'BARR. That's the one I have always wanted another stab at -- the ending primarily. I recall attending a book club discussion where that book was the pick of the month. Out of the 16 or so people who were at the meeting, only about 2 of them understood what I was going for with the ending as it was published. The rest thought something else entirely, which told me plainly that I had not done my job properly. If a writer doesn't get her message across to a majority of her readers then the writing failed to clarify. Clarity is, in my opinion, the ultimate goal, or should be, of any writer. This is probably why I get so frustrated by writers who try to impress with their writing acrobatics. I don't want my readers to have to reread a single sentence, or sit with a dictionary at their elbow. I want my words concise and crystalline in their simplicity.

Well enough already. I think I'm in a mood today. IRS headaches. Old age flashes. Feelings of inadequacy. Blah!

Onward ....