When I have it in mind to do a project, it is all I can think about. It was like that with Homing, when I was writing the first draft, though in that case I was obsessed with the statistics of it, how many words I could write per hour, and how many hours per day, and how long I could reasonably put it off and still finish by the end of November. NaNoWriMo and all. My god, six years ago right now I was just being ribbed by a good friend about my character who didn’t seem to want to leave the house, the ghost who seemed to be hanging around the library and the wafer thin plot that didn’t seem like it was going to be able to bring them together at all. She laughingly suggested homing pigeons. Maybe it desperation, or maybe divine inspiration. Doesn’t matter. I bit, and here we are.
Anyhow, while Kev is out of town, I have been passing the hours and days and weeks with cunning plans involving furniture placement, reconditioning and repurposing. This, I could do forever and be happy happy happy. Today, I recovered an ottoman. A truly ugly one I bought for four dollars at Value Village. I bought it a nineteen dollar curtain and some swish new legs, tapped some finishing nails into ‘er, and whaddya know, I have a fabulous new foot stool. I couldn’t be happier. It’s not like me to actually finish a project, but there’s one done. I also painted a wall in our kitchen with blackboard paint… that one’s finished too. And I moved around eight pieces of furniture in all… no, sorry, ten… and those projects are not quite finished. Too many ripples with each piece. Gotta take everything out of it. Decide whether it’s being kept, trashed or given away. Find a new place for it, make sure it gets to the garbage or into the charity bin, depending on what you’ve decided. Sweep behind each piece you move because holy god, what breeds under credenzas these days? Arrange the piece just so, and fill it up again.
And so I am almost done. I have all this orphan stuff lying around, and I am going to sort it out tonight if it kills me. Which it might if those dust bunnies mass together and rise up.
Why am I telling you this?
Because I think I’m nesting. The bun in my oven is Fallsy Downsies, and I think this frantic and furious nest-feathering is the novel’s way of telling me it’s ready to be written.
Which is great news because my vegetable crispers could really use a cleaning, and I find nothing can keep me from writing once it’s time to write…nothing can take me back to the procrastination stage…except a vegetable crisper in need. Lock up your crispers, people, I’m about to write.
Filed under: Homing on screen
The differences between writing Homing-the-novel and Homing-the-screenplay are huge and many. Homing the novel was such a solitary endeavour, a feverish fugue of writing, thinking, some rewriting, more thinking, not quite enough rewriting and not quite enough thinking and then it was out and on the shelf and in my hand.
Homing the screenplay holy smokes. At this point, it’s still Homing-the-synopsis, and it’s already in its sixth, maybe seventh draft. It’s a painstaking process of honing and shaping and honing and shaping and paring and shaping and honing. With lots and lots of input from the team of producers and story editor/mentor. When you’re writing a novel there’s no one who says, “maybe that’s not how Leah gets the pigeons, maybe Charlotte doesn’t go down to the library.” Because, what the hell are you talking about, of COURSE that’s how she gets the pigeons. That’s what happens! With the screenplay, there’s a lot of what if she, and maybe she ought to, and perhaps he feels… and that’s pretty strange to me, to my process, to the kind of writer I am. They ask a lot of questions, and sometimes those questions make me defensive, and that’s usually when I notice that I feel edgy about not having the answers, which means there’s some work to do there.
So it’s quite a process. I think I’m getting better at it, but I can’t really be sure. Maybe I’m just making a bunch of new drafts, and putting some new error or hole in each one. Hard to say. It feels like a lot of concentric circles and not a lot of straight lines, and I am so all about going forward as a writer. So it’s a good learning opportunity, if that’s not too weeny a thing to say about it.
It is definitely affecting the way I talk about the book when I am called upon to read from it (which I have been rather a lot over the last couple of weeks. Weird little flurry of activity for wee Homing-the-novel). The process of writing the treatment and synopsis for the film have definitely clarified my intention around the characters and story line (such as it is) in the novel. Very interesting cross pollination. I don’t know whether it holds up for a new reader of the novel, who doesn’t have access to the emails that fly between me and the producers, a reader who hasn’t read all frillion drafts of the treatment and synopsis. But it is yet another life the novel has, and I am so interested in that. There’s the life it had while it was being written and published, before it belonged to anyone but me. Then it came out, and belonged to everyone but me, and so the story changed again, every time someone read it, and told me what they thought. And now, as the story gets processed to become a film, it changes again, becomes no longer mine, nor yours, but ours, this common material with so many fingerprints all over it.
I should hate the process, but I don’t. I really don’t. In fact, I kind of like it. Potentially famous last words, but for now, I like it.
Got up this morning with much reluctance, flowed like molasses in January to the table to write…and managed to get a nice little road section with Evan Cornfield and Lansing Meadows. Clear articulation of Evan’s goals and fears. Lansing crusty, as per usual. Plus, I found some writing I apparently did in June that’s maybe pretty good, and is going to get an airing tonight at Porkpie. So if you’re in the mood for some delicious fresh-baked writing, Porkpie is the place for you. The Company House, Gottingen and Cunard, 7pm. Five bucks at the door, cheap wine once you’re inside.
Just a quicky. I am reading at Porkpie Four tomorrow night at the Company House. You should probably plan to be there. There’s a pile of great writers on the bill, and I’ll be reading something brand new. So new it hasn’t been written yet! Whee! A new little chunk of Fallsy Downsies, coming your way in less than twenty four hours. Gotta go!
Had a lovely time in Yarmouth yesterday, despite the long solitary drive there and back (seven hours round trip). The Library people I was there to talk to were great, great, great. They asked really thought provoking questions and they seemed to really enjoy the reading. Lots of them bought books and stuck around to chat afterward. It was exactly what you’d hope for if you’d driven three and a half hours on a rainy Saturday morning and had not much to look forward to but a three and a half hour drive back.
It was nice to take Fallsy Downsies out for a bit of a walk as well. I read them a short section about Dacey Brown and her dream life. I love the image from one of her dreams, in which she is driving two cars along a sere winter road. She lurches a few feet forward in one car, hops out, goes back for the other, brings it forward, and on and on. I feel like that so much of the time with writing and working. These twin lives, each of which I seem to need, neither of which I’m willing to abandon, and so they lurch ahead slowly, so slowly, one getting momentum, then stopping for the other.
The talk I gave was nominally about balance, which is hilarious, considering it’s the thing I struggle toward most. But maybe that made me a good choice for the conference. I’ve certainly thought about it a lot, that’s for sure.
Anyhow, onward to the next: Mount Saint Vincent University on Tuesday night, then Porkpie Four on Thursday. I am going to try to write something new for Porkpie. Not sure what, nor about which character. I guess you’ll have to drop by the Company House on Thursday to find out, yeah?
There are so many bookish events coming up in the next few weeks. What a great way to usher in the season of curling up under blankets to read and write.
On Tuesday night I’ll be giving a talk at Mount Saint Vincent University. They’re celebrating writing next week, with many fine events. Here’s a link to some highlights. My colleagues Carsten Knox and Ryan Turner are taking part in one of the panels… and I wish I could go, but my damn day job generally keeps me desk-bound (and it only becomes my damn day job when it gets in the way of something I want to do.)
Then on Thursday next, it’s Porkpie Four at the Company House, featuring a pile of good writers as previously mentioned.
On November 3, Anna Quon is launching her beautiful book Migration Songs. I’ve been asked to read and speak at that event and I just cannot wait. That’s happening at the Company House as well. Busy spot!
Later that week, Zach Wells is launching his new book. I think his launch is on November 5 if I’m not mistaken… and possibly also at the CoHo. All I can tell you is that I’m glad that place is stumbling distance from my house, as it looks like I’ll be spending a lot of time there over the next two weeks.
Then Ryan Turner‘s book launch (can’t wait can’t wait can’t wait) is happening at the CoHo on Friday, November 13.
And then I collapse under a stack of delicious new books.
Filed under: book news and views
I said I was looking forward to winter, but maybe I meant not quite yet. It’s been a cold and blustery week in Halifax… three measly degrees today. Too soon, too soon! Kev is away now… he’ll be home for a few hours on Sunday, but then gone again, for a month. The furnace is on as I type this. I am too wussy to tough it out till November.
Tara Thorne and I are cooking up a delicious edition of Porkpie for October 29. (Or Porkies, as the unfortunate typo on the poster at the Company House has it). I’m so pleased with the direction in which the series is heading. We’re starting to hear from people who want to read at it, which is always a good thing. So I’m very pleased to report that our bill on October 29 will feature matt robinson, Susan Mersereau, Eva Madden-Hagen, Ryan Turner (whose new book is very nearly ready, and about whom you should be very excited) and myself rounding out the bill just for kicks. Tara will host, it’ll start at 7pm and be done by 9, and it’s a Thursday, which means cheap-but-good wine at the CoHo. You’d be silly to miss it, really.
I feel like I had something else to say… and now I’m not convinced I did. It’s kind of been that kind of day.
After a weekend of houseguests and much cooking and laundering and organizing, I figured I might as well do a little digital housekeeping as well. I have a small stack of events coming up this month, so the Out and About page has been updated accordingly. Hope to see you…out and about, as they say.
So I think I’m finally figuring this thing out. I wrote a second draft of the treatment for Homing: The Movie… and it didn’t suck! And I wrote two full scenes…and I’m pretty sure they didn’t suck either! So that’s very exciting. In fact, I am beginning to feel real enthusiasm for writing this thing, which is great.
Up till now the enthusiasm has been intellectual. As in: Hmmn, interesting challenge, I wonder if I can figure out how to make a novel into a film. And then that feeling was interspersed with lots of despair and aggravation and boredom at what felt like simple retelling of a story I’d already written and moved past years ago.
But, having immersed myself fully in trying to solve the story’s problems as it moves from novel to screenplay, having watched a zillion movies a week, having read the screenplays for Dead Poets’ Society and Rushmore (both films I’ve watched ad nauseum), I actually feel like not only CAN I do this… I really, really WANT to do this.
Hurray for that! And also, having completed the treatment, some character studies and two master scenes in time to meet a couple of funding deadlines…I just may be able to steal back a bit of time to work on Fallsy Downsies. Bring on the winter, I say, with its short days and quiet mornings and husband on tour–all perfect for getting some serious writing done. I don’t think I’ve ever looked forward to winter before. I must be growing up.
Filed under: Homing on screen
I pity the individual who got here–twice–by googling “success writing screenplay treatments.” Ha!
(Let me know if you find anything out, hapless googler. I could use the help.)
