My Life in a Fellini Film

My life, I have very often said, resembles a Fellini film. Absurdist in the extreme. Fantastical. Insane.

And now, it's all being filmed.

Why? Oldest Son, Oldest Son's Best Friend (who lives in my house about half the week--his family gets MY son about half the week . . . it's sort of like shared custody), and Baby Girl want to be filmmakers. They now film EVERYTHING. The pizza man arrived. It was all captued on digital camera. My opening the door. Filmmaker poised "Hello, Pizza Man!" Slowly backing up the stairs to get a tracking shot. Capturing this mundane act ("Pizza's here!") for all eternity.

I now feel as if I have to hold up my hands and beg, "Off camera, guys, please. Can I blow my nose off camera?"

I happen to know many a director started out this way. Maybe this is their future. I hear the three of them behind closed doors upstairs, plotting films. There are plans to make a Cujo-esque movie using Fat Dog. They have plot. Actors (a.k.a. Me and Demon Baby).

And as I laugh my way through my afternoons on film now . . . it got me thinking. How did YOU start out, dear readers, planning and plotting your literary (or other) careers? Did Ello set up moot court at her kitchen table? Did Stephen make a map from his bedroom to the bathroom? (And please visit his blog post, 72 Virgins--I publicly declare my love for Stephen here . . . thank you!)

Did you write? I remember notebooks filled with scribblings, and a book about a dysfunctional mouse family living in the New York Public Library that I wrote when I was about 8. The mouse family had very elaborate lives . . . and I think in my little girl mind, I assumed fame and fortune as a writer. However, I also wanted to be a vet. Now I just have a lot of pets, including the soon-to-be Oscar-winning Fat Dog). And no fame and fortune--but my name on more than a few book covers.

So I encourage my budding filmmakers, even if it means I will soon be on YouTube. I'll be sure to invite you to the movie premiere. In the meantime, share. How did you start on your journey to the writer you are today? The person you are today.

The Call of the Book

Watched this movie last night with Baby Girl. It was overdone, schmaltzy, but it connected with me on a couple of levels, mostly because the lead was a writer, and because he wanted to adopt a child.

It had the usual writerly fantasies that the movies invoke about my chosen profession. The lead character was immensely wealthy, was thrown glittering parties by his editor (Angelica Huston in a power suit). His agent was his best friend. And he was given over two years for a deadline. He, of course, had writers' block.

But there were a couple of writer parts that felt very real to me. In one scene, he was supposed to turn in the draft for the sequel to his best-selling novel. And he INSTEAD turned in a different book. His editor was furious (of course). And he said (paraphrasing), "I'll write that book for you and sell you lots of copies, but my life changed. I adopted a son, and we've had a hard time, and this was the book that I had to write."

Over on Mark Terry's blog, he had (and he called it that himself so . . . . I feel I can call it that) a "mini-rant" about writers who say they write because they "have to." I pretty much agree with his blog post. However, the scene in the movie resonated with me, too. Sometimes, you just have a book that calls to you, that demands to be written.

I was mid-way through a complicated novel about a priest, an IRA bombmaker, and a Catholic bar owner who gave money to Sinn Fein--and the granddaughter of the bar owner who fell in love with the man from the IRA. It spanned about twenty-five years. And in the mdist of it, a persistent voice that I came to know as belonging to Cassie Hayes came into my head. She was very much like me (the writer in the movie last night said in every novel, it could be thought that there's one character who has autobiographical elements of the author in them). And the entire plot, the premise, the secondaries, all literally gelled inside my head in the matter of a few hours. Much to my writers' group's dismay, I abandoned book #1, which still sits on my computer, nearly finished, six years later, and wrote Spanish Disco. The first draft flew out in a couple of months. Second draft, too. It sold within 90 days of making the rounds of publishers (which I have now come to see is a ridiculously short time).

Maybe there are some books you write not because you HAVE to but because they call to you. And going with Mark's observations . . . books that call to me are sellable. I think I have honed my publishing hunches enough to not try to write something that I innately know just would be nearly impossible for my agent to deal with. Even the character in the movie last night said to the editor, "Just read it, and I know you will love it." He knew it wasn't what she wanted, but it was very good in its own right and would, indeed, sell.

Thoughts? Have you ever felt the inexplicable call of a book even when it meant abandoning a work-in-progress?

Beach Reads and Drew Barrymore at Gunpoint

Last night, at gunpoint, my mother and I forced my dad to watch Music & Lyrics with us on cable.

Okay, that's not true. I don't own a gun. But he hates Drew Barrymore (she's not my fave either) and so it was, as he puts it, "under duress" that we watched it. He had to make that known to us. He also had to tell us it was "contrived."

But my mom loves Hugh Grant. As for me, I had seen the movie before with daughter #2 and I knew what I was getting. I.e., for what it is, I laughed.

And THAT is the beauty of Beach Reads. People often disparage beach reads, commercial fiction, light reading and B-movies. Like being entertained is a BAD thing. And sometimes I love a deep, heavy book. If you look at my bookshelves, it is full of tomes on physics, Buddhism, scientific discoveries, biographies, etc. Not a beach read in the bunch. Which isn't to say that I don't like them. Sometimes, I just want to curl up with something I know the ending to. That I know will let me laugh (like the movie). I like to know what I am getting.

Thoughts?
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