The Game of Writing
I realized at a very young age that I wanted to be a writer. I was about 8 years old when I wrote my first screenplay. It was actually an episode for "Emergency." I LOVED that show and I was totally in love with Randolph Mantooth. I wrote him love letters too, but I figured I had a better chance of actually meeting him if I wrote a brilliant screenplay and got invited to the set. Then he would see me as an intelligent creative rather than just an adoring fan.
My script never even got a rejection letter and, needless to say, I still haven't met Randolph Mantooth. But I have written in countless journals, moved stacks of handwritten novels that I hope never see the light of day, and lived to see my name in print more than once. I still have the tattered, faded magazine that carried my first published article.
The summer between my junior and senior years of college, I had two internships: one at Mark Goodson Productions and one at L.A. Parent Magazine. Seeing my byline was a heady experience that paled only in comparison to watching my name speed up the screen after "Family Feud."
Maybe the bright lights of the television studios turned my head. (We may have been producing game shows, but we taped in Hollywood, baby!) Or maybe I just wasn't focused enough. But my writing career has been sporadic, to say the least. I started a screenplay in college but fell out of love with it after graduation. I was offered a job writing for a business magazine in Phoenix -- two weeks after accepting a job as a writer/editor with the Bureau of Land Management. I chose security (government jobs have amazing benefits!) and friendship. (I'd been volunteering there for more than a month and knew all the people in my office.)
Funny thing is, when my boss handed me my five-year plaque, I panicked. When I was a little girl, I didn't dream about working for the government and building up loads of vacation time. When I started college and people asked what I wanted to do when I grew up, I told them I was going to write the Great American Novel and then do the big screen adaptation. At what point did good health insurance take precedence over my lifetime aspirations?
I quit the government job.
I started working for myself, doing graphic design and freelance articles to pay the bills. Meanwhile, I tried to figure out what I wanted to write. What compelling story did I have to tell? Focusing has once again been a problem. Memoirs, novels and personal essays fill my disks and notebooks, and yet nothing felt right until I wrote a children’s novel. I wrote it in the space of about two or three months, but I've spent years editing it and rewriting it.
And now for the hard part ... finding someone who believes in it as much as I do ... stay tuned ...
My script never even got a rejection letter and, needless to say, I still haven't met Randolph Mantooth. But I have written in countless journals, moved stacks of handwritten novels that I hope never see the light of day, and lived to see my name in print more than once. I still have the tattered, faded magazine that carried my first published article.
The summer between my junior and senior years of college, I had two internships: one at Mark Goodson Productions and one at L.A. Parent Magazine. Seeing my byline was a heady experience that paled only in comparison to watching my name speed up the screen after "Family Feud."
Maybe the bright lights of the television studios turned my head. (We may have been producing game shows, but we taped in Hollywood, baby!) Or maybe I just wasn't focused enough. But my writing career has been sporadic, to say the least. I started a screenplay in college but fell out of love with it after graduation. I was offered a job writing for a business magazine in Phoenix -- two weeks after accepting a job as a writer/editor with the Bureau of Land Management. I chose security (government jobs have amazing benefits!) and friendship. (I'd been volunteering there for more than a month and knew all the people in my office.)
Funny thing is, when my boss handed me my five-year plaque, I panicked. When I was a little girl, I didn't dream about working for the government and building up loads of vacation time. When I started college and people asked what I wanted to do when I grew up, I told them I was going to write the Great American Novel and then do the big screen adaptation. At what point did good health insurance take precedence over my lifetime aspirations?
I quit the government job.
I started working for myself, doing graphic design and freelance articles to pay the bills. Meanwhile, I tried to figure out what I wanted to write. What compelling story did I have to tell? Focusing has once again been a problem. Memoirs, novels and personal essays fill my disks and notebooks, and yet nothing felt right until I wrote a children’s novel. I wrote it in the space of about two or three months, but I've spent years editing it and rewriting it.
And now for the hard part ... finding someone who believes in it as much as I do ... stay tuned ...