I was not a creative child, but I longed to be. Throughout grammar school, I panicked whenever we had to write a poem (somehow it was never a story) and one year, avoided my teacher’s eye for weeks because he’d scrawled “Let’s talk about this” across the top of my poem about patterns. I had nothing to say. But I loved reading, and in sixth grade started to write a novel, a la Nancy Drew. But I forgot to invent a plot …
Fast forward to Senior Honors English: we had to write a graduation speech. In class! The clock was ticking and I panicked, my mind blank. Finally, after twenty minutes or so, having written about ten stilted words, I went up to my tall, bespectacled teacher and whispered, “I can’t write a speech.” He whispered back, “Then write an essay.” I went back to my seat and stumbled on a big secret, Begin with the particular… and was soon scribbling about how my Great-aunt Tessie always exclaimed how I’d grown, but that the infant twins I babysat once a week wouldn’t remember me … I was off. And my “essay” was one of three picked to deliver, live, at Graduation. Luckily, we all had strenuous coaching from the drama teacher.
But I was still blocked. So after college, I took a creativity workshop at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education. We splashed paint on paper and used cardboard cut-outs to frame the most pleasing parts. Something about this simple process moved me to tears. Later when I had children, I was amazed at how uninhibited they were and started to read wonderful, inspiring books on writing. Books by Brenda Ueland, Dorothea Brande, Julia Cameron, Anne Lamott, John Gardner, Stephen King, even Aristotle. My creative pump needed much priming, but eventually I stuck my toe in, feeling like a liar as I wrote my first lines of fiction in third person. After writing some stories, I took several online courses and started the novel that would become Topping the Willow.
It took me years to produce a first draft. When a knowledgeable friend advised a hefty rewrite, I was laid flat for months. But then, somewhat illogically, I chose to try the screenplay format, under the delusion that it would be easier than writing a novel. Wrong! But when my completed effort was named a Semi-Finalist and then a Finalist for a major faith-based screenwriting competition two consecutive years, I knew I needed to rewrite the novel, this time from my teen protagonist’s point of view. This meant Young Adult, but with a warning about mature themes …
The journey continued, with innumerable twists and turns. Today, God keeps putting the next step in front of me, and I’m following the trail as if it’s so many breadcrumbs in a German fairy tale. Sign up for a year-long film producing mentorship? Sure. Buy the domain name that matches my tiny media company? Sure. Let my pastor hand-deliver my screenplay to a noted Christian film critic in whose home he has stayed as a guest? You bet! Attend a Hollywood film festival that selected my script? Wait! What? Well, maybe…
What I’m learning? As Sir Winston Churchill so memorably said, “Never never never give up.” So I’m doing my part. The results are in His hands, and He is more than capable; He is willing, and faithful.
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