The story behind the facade

The house across the street from where I’ve lived the last seven years was always my favorite in the neighborhood. It was tall, regal, storybook like. When it went up for sale a few years ago, I considered selling my house and moving but it was too expensive. Another family moved in and I admired them as I drove past or did yard work.

Then one day a few weeks ago I came home to find a demolition crew taking it down. I’d never seen something like that happen in my life and yet it was happening across the street the very week my marriage officially collapsed and he moved out. From the outside, we, like this house, looked picturesque and happy, but as I found out from various people this house, like us, had been hiding secrets. There were termites and mold problems that were more expensive to fix than the house was worth. In my 17 years of marriage our foundation had been completely eroded by metaphorically similar issues.

As a writer this is what it took for me to find my voice, to get to the truth of things, to let go of my perfectionism. I learned that there is no better way to get to truth than through conflict. And that conflict and truth must be shared. I also learned that there’s a beauty and joy found in these moments that can’t be got at any other way.

My passion is writing and that is because reality needs story. People need writers to look beyond the surface level and to care, sharing their unique perspectives in narrative writing, poetry, and for the screen.

To ask someone to support my passion seems presumptuous but it’s also empowering. What if others see a spark in me and say “yes I want to see more of that!”? What would it be like to have a community of people cheering you on as you work on creative pursuits that take awhile to unfold?

My passion for writing began when I was 5. I was in awe of the way I could put words down as if anything was possible. The magic of being able to say whatever you wanted without fear.

It was an even greater joy at age eight to read those journals and stories again and laugh at my large print, spelling mistakes and immaturity as if eight was such a mature age.

At ten, I began writing an epic saga of a warrior princess who escapes her controlling father and falls in love with a nomadic lone wolf type.

I put off finishing this story because I never could get her to reconcile with her father. I wrote and rewrote the story so many times over the years trying to find a resolution. But for some reason I could never get her to go home. I put the story away as I turned my attention to raising my own kids and working on saving my marriage. It was the breaking of that, the realization that I can’t make another person happy that freed me in my writing. I was able to embrace conflict and embrace story again.

The princess saga is waiting but first I’m working on a screenplay for a book series that just released its most recent title. I’ve never written a screenplay before, but as I finished reading the book, a series of odd coincidences began to happen in my life. I asked myself why? Finally I looked to see if a movie was in the works. It was not. The book was said to be too difficult to film because of some quirks of the main character.

Ah, a challenge. I began writing notes on how I would love to see the movie made and began working on solving the book to screen issues.

Here I found an even greater pleasure than creating my own characters: taking a beloved story and rewriting it for the screen. It combines my love for reading and especially rereading with my love for journaling, research, and note taking. I love the process of adapting this book to the screen even though I have no way of knowing if it will get picked by any studio’s or seen by the author. But I have to keep working on it and soon will send out a completed pilot for the book to become an episodic.

There’s a poetry to adaptive screenwriting that I love and think the world needs more of. It’s a different experience than reading a book, but the process of transforming one into the other is an incredible feeling. Like mixing baking soda and vinegar to create an unexpected reaction or like baking a cake where all these separate ingredients come together to create something new and delicious. That is my joy in screenwriting and why it’s my passion.

The idea of joining a platform for people to support my writing sounds amazing. It gives friends, family and online interests a way to be a part of the writing journey while building that sense of community that is so important to all of us.

Writing is something that is done alone but never finished alone. There’s always people who help give birth to the authors vision. What if instead of a few people you could have a community?

I am no longer a young girl writing epic fantasies of warrior princesses but now a newly single mom who had a passion for screenwriting spring up just as my marriage was falling down.

It would be amazing to see my screenwriting take off while connecting with other’s whose passion equals mine, finishing our projects together, looking behind the surface level reality to what’s behind and beneath and not assuming things are what they appear to be behind the facade.