Are You the Same Person?
I am a different person today than I was one year ago this day. Everything was different. In the past year I have swum in the Dead Sea; signed a book deal; been terrified, brutalized and stalked; lost my older brother; stood in the Negev and looked down upon a deep, ancient crater; been to the top of the London Eye; scattered ashes in the Mediterranean; held my friend Lynn one last time before breast cancer took her and cried more tears than I thought possible.
I have heard the ancient call of the mullah over remote Arab villages in the West Bank, I have lived with a handsome Venetian, spent months abroad, taught classes full of amazing writers, enjoyed the company of Shane Black and learned how precious real friendships are. I have seen writers go from frustrated to empowered, from lost to excited. I have written one book and have started another. I began blogging for the Huffington Post, I sent my son to college and I watched my daughter learn to drive in LA traffic, go to Israel and start her senior year. I have seen my parents lose a son and my family change forever. I have hatched a plan for a non-profit writing/film center in the Middle East and made plans to put that into motion. I have been humbled, I have been reminded of goodness and light, and I have seen unimaginable darkness.
I am a changed person. And yet I am the same. I still believe in light, in love, in talent and in goodness. I believe in grace, resilience, in forgiveness and in being grateful for life lessons. I have lived a lifetime in the past year and I’m still here and I still believe that life is precious. More than ever.
What happened to you this year? Can you tell us in 300 words? That’s what I just did. You can send your 300 word essay to me at Julie at Just Effing dot com or you can leave it as a comment here.
Podcasts
Julie in your town
Julie on Facebook
Julie on YouTube
Personally, I’ve had a great year – but all Hell has broken loose around me. I’ve almost finished the second draft of my book and now realise what a crappy writer I am. Goodbye denial, hello cathartic masochism!
I’ve mourned three friends losing their marriages to adultery. Ouch. One of them was my Pastor. Double ouch.
Words cannot describe the anguish of watching my tent blow away in a snowstorm on the side of a mountain – but hey, I’m still alive.
I’ve suffered the death of a life long mentor (while someone stole my license plates at the funeral). And I celebrated by getting a new email address: kismybuttonthree123@gmail.com
I’ve gone from almost losing my job 12 months ago, to being totally vindicated in front of my entire workplace.
I gave my Dad the best 80th birthday ever.
I am so grateful for my wife and kids. Every day is a gift from God.
All in all, a good year.
Julie, your last year,(2010), produces, in my mind, two adventure dramas, two character dramas, a thriller/horror script, maybe a romantic drama, and possibly a comedy if you decide to play your daughter learning to drive in L.A. as a comedy. Sorry, Julie, you taught us to think on these terms as screenwriters. Now the chickens come home to roost.
Julie, your past year runs the gamut of emotions as thoroughly as a long distance runner married to a vain show girl. I am amazed that you could have had so many diverse experiences in one year and though I empathize with you in the dramatic tragedies you have suffered, yet I am compelled to feel that if you were ever going to write an Oscar Award Winning screenplay, this would be the year.
Not to state the obvious, none of us can ill afford your absence from looking out for us for any length of time. Yet, your last year could produce the genius to several different films set in several different genres. It is, indeed, yours for the taking. The emotions, the tensions, as or Chris Soth says, the tension between hopes and fears, are the most perfect backdrop for an award winning script by you.
This not my year end revue, but a commentary on yours. You have not become embittered by the sometimes difficult journey you have been through, so you can still offer the many thousands waiting for your viewpoint on life to be offered in a most positive way, despite life’s negative reversals and twists, in a screenplay.
Julie, as you have taught us, if I wished you a happy 2011 without tensions, I would be dooming you as a writer/consultant, because tensions produce the conflicts necessary for a compelling story and an exciting conclusion. Whatever you are going through, Julie, you continue to lead us, to inspire us, and we are right behind you. Best to you and to us your students in 2011!
We are waiting for you next blog.
Well, let’s see. . . This might turn out to a fight about who lived in a shoe box in the middle of the road, but. . .
I’ve sold two more short scripts. Seen the films based on three of my scripts. One has won first price on a film festival.
Finished a feature script, only to have a bad feeling about the result; rewriting it a month later, only to find it is still crap.
I’ve started a fascinating project with the producer of one of the short films to turn one of my feature scripts into a graphic novel.
I’ve been a judge at a short script contest in UK.
I’ve written two damn good short scripts on speculation.
And I’m balancing on the edge of a mental abyss.
I’m not sure why.
Maybe because this is all still a dream. Yes, sure, the scripts are sold and produced, very much real things. But a life as a full-time writer is still so far away and somehow, amazingly enough, does not seem closer than previous year.
I’ll keep on writing. That’s all I’m sure of.
My past year if written as a screenplay:
Destiny! Hollywood Comes 3,000 Miles To Me!
Hook – Carriage/Driver opposes Mayor’s new code which would kill off the carriage trade in St. Augustine, Florida. I consider moving 100 miles north to work on Jekyll Island. My old position as carriage/driver tour guide is open.
Inciting Incident – An apartment office manager loses my money order rent payment. She tells me they never got it and that they were evicting me. Rather than to fight it, I took it as sign I should take the job up on Jekyll Island. After I had moved out, they found my missing rent payment.
Plot Point 1 – October 1 Headlines, “Filmmakers scout X-men locales.” They decide to build a huge set on the Jekyll beach for their final scene to be shot in December. Destiny! Hollywood was coming to me!
Mid Point – My eight published columns, radio interviews and Freedom Rallies wear down the Mayor in St. Augustine. He accuses me of “riling up the people.” However, I bring together artists, musicians who’ve been forced out of tourist traffic areas by the Mayor’s codes, plus boaters from the bay. The Mayor doesn’t kill off the carriage trade after all.
Plot Point 2 – A Production Assistant/Special Effects Coordinator walks up to my horse and carriage. We talk. He becomes interested and reads my screenplay. He wants the X-Men producer to take a carriage ride with us as I point out the scenes for my screenplay. His best contacts are with Universal Studios. He said he wants to champion my screenplay and place it high up the ladder there. He wants to have me over for dinner with his family so we can plan our strategy. My Agent’s excited!
The ending? Stay tuned.
2010, it sounds so futuristic and now it’s about to be the past. My 2010 brought me one of the best gifts I could have ever asked for: a calling. After reading/listening to The Element by Ken Robinson I decided once and for all that I needed to know what my passion in life was. I have been an actress and a clairvoyant for hire both of which turned out to not be my true calling. And I have been dying to have a calling. Through a series of events and people I found Brett. No he isn’t my calling, but working with him is. I found my professional soul mate.
I found my life soul mate (although I hate that term) ten years ago this coming New Years Day, but I was awakened to myself in a new way when I met my writing partner. I have believed in my heart that I was a writer for the last 9 years, but to join forces with someone and create in a way that, put simply, makes me happier than I ever thought working could.
So many other things happened this year too, I got an office job, I watched my sister shed 100 lbs that she had carried for decades, I became the Newsletter editor for my neighborhood, I participated in my first film festival, I watched my niece run a cross country meet, I read a series of books with my nephew, and had two friends “dump” me. Although all of these things are worth mentioning, I don’t think any of them compare with finding my Sundance. I feel alive in a way that I haven’t in years and I am looking forward to 2011 with a nervous stomach and hope.
Wow, great stuff, everybody! Desiree, MAZELS that’s GREAT work in the last year! And Molly – what a great feeling for the new year you have!
And Terry. That is a GREAT story, Hollywood did indeed come to you!! And thanks for your take on my year; I am grateful for all of my experiences, I am lucky to travel the way I do and I do share a lot on this blog for exactly the purpose of inspiring imagination, etc. The only thing this year that I can never accept is the loss of my brother. But you’re right, it’s all grist for the mill. Book, script, something.
I ask you pardon for my >300 word year in review
So many years ago I wanted to be a writer. But for clichéd reasons that would send a movie straight to dvd I didn’t pursue it. I consciously buried my interest in writing. I told myself no one would ever know I gave up on myself. But I knew. The refuge that had been mine as an abused child with each notebook I filled with endless notes, outlines and actual stories became a burden as an adult. Into the fire from the frying pan. Hard to let my soul soar when I’m intent on surviving. Too many competing emotions.
And then a moment came where I couldn’t help it. I had to get all those stories out of my head. I’d written so many in my mind, they clamoured for release. That was 3 years ago. For the first 2 years I was scared. And overwhelmed. And angry at myself. I’d let myself become a raft sent out without a captain over the white water rapids. I’d lost too much time in delaying what I cared about most. Telling stories.
I began to get a glimpse of life as it should be for me. I let it all go—the angst, sticking with the role assigned by others. Well,except one little itty, bitty fear. What if I was wrong? What if I couldn’t reverse my course and return to the “Two roads diverged in a wood…” ,take “the one less traveled by…” and thus make “all the difference”?
2010 it became clear to me. Only by writing and writing a lot would I ever get to the other path. So to make the turn easier I really did let all the past go. It wasn’t easy and I had to hold my breath. The raft passed under a bridge and I jumped for it and held on. I was going back and I wasn’t choosing the road that lead to the churning water. Sometimes I do take a peek at all that water under the bridge and it is, well, you know, just that.
This year has been about the “difference”. Or the end in the beginning. Those close to me notice the changes. I’m making choices. And it’s freaking everyone out. I’m not doing the stuff I’m known for. Because I fricking don’t even like doing those things. I did them for you to make you happy. I like to write. You think there’s no way I can make it a career? I don’t care. You golf or cook or garden and you can’t break a 100, your food is always bland and plants die in anticipation of you coming.
I’m on the right road. I’ve seen the signs. Here and there the parallels show me. Things that happened to me before I gave up on writing are happening again. Not good or bad things. Just things that remind me who and where I was once. Déjà vu.
Of course, I know there’s probably an equally daunting river lurking ahead. But this time I plan to be the captain. Then write about it.
That is FANTASTIC, Meg- I’m so glad you’re freed yourself to write and express and let it all out and let it all go. That’s what life is all about! xoxo
This is the first time I’ve posted here so please laugh loudly if I’ve done something wrong. Tis the season, after all!
Before I launch into my, likely uninteresting to the majority, litany of the past years events, I want to thank Julie for her inspirational and touching 2010 all-condensed-into-300 words. I hope you make millions off the script!
2010 stretched the limits of my sanity and involved multiple emergency flights to the middle-of-nowhere North East.
I watched my mother die slowly from a hereditary disease. I endured her petty, bigoted, insignificant other tell me that not many men would have stayed with her during this time. Pushed back when the family tried to exclude me, arranged last minute shipping for antique furniture when it was put outside for me to come fetch. I made peace with not being invited to the funeral. I thanked God that my cousin, who is like a brother, supported me through the shocking family abandonment. I ended a caustic friendship when my anger with a friend for treating expensive property carelessly was blamed on my mother’s illness.
I hiked in British Colombia and touched a relic from the Fortress of Solitude (aka the Olympic Cauldron). I was invited to New Zealand to work on a film. I was asked to write a spec for a show being pitched to a network. The first spec I’d ever written made it to the semi’s of a contest. I got inspirational coverage on my first feature, joined a writing group, attended beneficial writing seminars, forged some great friendships discovered in the unlikliest of places.
I’ve accepted there will be no family gathering for the holiday or if there is, I will not be invited. I am blessed with friends who will do anything for me regardless of a difference of opinion. I am more emotional this year than I have been in my life – and I really don’t like that feeling.
I’m not a different person. Not really. I’m less naive; more mature. And I’ve come out the close of 2010 stronger than I was at the open.
Have a Safe and Happy Holiday season everyone!
Meg, your essay is rife with imagery and metaphors. The imagery will serve you well in writing novels. Your use of metaphors will spice up dialogue in your screenplays. Your creative mind will serve you well in whatever mode of writing you choose. You are on an adventure. Self revelation is part of that journey, don’t turn back. Best wishes to you in 2011!