Writing is Fun Sometimes
On following the recipe
I was thinking about the magazine Good Housekeeping. My mom read Family Circle and Woman’s Day, but Aunt Evelyn had a subscription to Good Housekeeping, which had the extra novelette in the middle. The middle of the magazine was literally a different type of paper stock—stiff and in pastel hues of green, blue, yellow, and pink, alternating for each issue.
The amount of trash I read before I turned 17 was epic.
The difference in my reading taste! Before 15, I read everything. From 15 to 21, it narrowed and narrowed, and by 25 it was pretty much classic literature and the New Yorker. Also the New York Times and the Village Voice. Waay too much Village Voice.
Back in the trash years, when we visited Aunt Evelyn and her family, I would eventually wind up in a corner tearing through her Good Housekeeping novelettes. These stories were usually about independent, feisty upper middle class white women who finally found the man of their dreams through a varying set of circumstances. Sometimes they would be working class white women. But mostly the writers were going for a specific type of 20th century American princess. My favorite story was of a fabulously successful songwriter. The story gave examples of her songwriting and it was just so bad.
Loving you. /
Tenderly /
Hoping that /
You love me.
How bad can it be, though, if I still remember it? She found her true love at the end, of course, after some trouble and misunderstandings.
Story structure is just so delightfully basic. I’m thinking about this because I just finished another screenplay - a real one this time, not one that I just copied from Casablanca like City of Fortune. Screenplay form is as strict as a country music song, and I’m not trying to transcend the genre. I googled around and found a beat sheet called Save the Cat and followed through with it to the end like a recipe.
And you know what happens when you follow a recipe for chocolate chip cookies? You get chocolate chip cookies. This screenplay is a goddam chocolate chip cookie. Am I going to sell it? I don’t know. I’m going to pay to send it to someone actually in the industry to look at and give me notes. It’s a first draft. But I know a chocolate chip cookie when I eat one and I am pleased as any baker would be.
Below are my journal entries for the writing process. I wasn’t journaling specifically about it, but I did mention it in passing a few times and it was fun to put them together because they create their own little narrative.
February 22: What do I want to do? (1) Write Art Handlers. The screenplay. Done by March.
March 14: I found our notes. We are so drunk in these recordings. There wasn’t much salvageable. But there was some. And now I have more of the pieces. Oh my god I am changing March’s goal to write the first draft. I don’t even have a character list. I don’t even know what happens other than he steals the bird. Time to re-invest in the screenplay software while I can still get an educator’s discount.
March 18: Making real progress on Art Handlers. I have a scene outline complete and the first scene written. The names are coming in. It’s like tuning in a radio. It’s kind of exciting. I’m not buying the software until we get the car fixed, which is tomorrow.
[The car had too many problems to fix so I traded it in for a newer used car named Snowflake. Which took all my money.]
March 25: Hm. I don’t have a c note to spend on the software anymore, so that’s a problem. I know I’m going to have to do it in Word, which is fine. I am going to open my City of Fortune script right now and look at the margins.
courier
2” left
6” right
March 28: Today I will work on Art Handlers. It’s such a funny script. It’s going to be great. It needs to be done.
March 29: I did not work on Art Handlers yesterday.
March 30: Just write one fucking scene. Ugh, what’s wrong with me.
April 10: On page 36. Just outlined the rest of the middle part. This is a really good exercise. I want to write a bangin screenplay. Something hot. Something fun. It’s hard, though. I love the challenge. But the middle is kind of a slog, and I don’t feel like it’s violent enough.
April 11: I’ve only got to get to 55 and I will be halfway done. 15 pages to halfway. The middle is the worst. The second half of the middle will be better, though, because it will be more action.
April 12: I’ll just be so fucking happy when I get to page 55. Making enough happy pages is hard.
April 28: We’re almost at the third act. It’s exciting. I have to write the Danny-Ox confrontation about the gun, and Ox’s betrayal. Then we’ll be ready to go into the final tie-up and the first draft will be done!
May 18: I need to write an opening scene for Art Handlers and then I feel like I will be done with the first draft.
And now I am done! I should say that this is a co-write with Dennis. I did the heavy lifting for sure but it was a joint venture. He gave me the kernel of the idea, plus some characters, scenes, and notes.
Writing Art Handlers was a blast. It wasn’t easy-peasy but it wasn’t an existential crisis, either. It was like doing a puzzle plus imagination. I followed the recipe.
I know I just wrote an essay about how writing is hard and why anyone would ever want to do it, but it turns out sometimes it’s fun. I had forgotten that part. I’m glad to feel it again.
Good luck! Hope you sell it!