Fiction Fridays: December 11th, 2015: What I'm up to writing wise (screenplay, novel); a poem from college and its context; Sappho.
December 11th!
Today is Friday, and that makes this FICTION FRIDAY!
WHOOT!
I wanted to give a little update on what I'm up to these days writing-wise.
Just this morning, Carlo and I held a reading of our feature-length action-thriller screenplay. We had made a few major changes after getting feedback from a script analyst from Sony, and another from a reader at the agency CAA. Both analysts had great feedback- "the future looks bright [for your script]" and "...reminds me of the best scenes from 'Homeland." Both analysts ALSO had a lot of suggestions on changes to implement and so, after discussion about how to really make the script the best we possibly could, and after 6 weeks of intense rewriting, editing, reading, rewriting, editing, etc., we feel it is ready for the market.
Whew!
Meanwhile, I took part in National Novel Writing Month (#nanowrimo) last month! I wrote 250 pages of my novel, Eva de Los Angeles, expecting that my first draft will be about 400 pages. Oof duh! It's a magical realism road trip novel... more to come. I also re-read parts of the first novel I ever read, My Life as a Phone Psychic, and the comedy screenplay version of my FIRST one woman show, The One. My goal is, one at a time, to write a draft of one, edit/ rewrite the next, etc., until each is ready for agents/ publishers/ self publishing. At the point at which I feel any individual project is truly ready, I will proceed. In the meantime, my Fiction Fridays will DEFINITELY continue, with essays from the "self help" version of The One, (sort of along the lines of the book "He's Just Not That Into You," only really screamingly funny, so I've heard.) I will also put up excerpts from my novels that I just mentioned. Currently, my goal is to finish draft ONE of Eva de Los Angeles (based on the musical I wrote in 2012, but realized was far too large a story for a two act musical) by my birthday in February.
I know. It's a lot. But you've met me, right? If not? You're meeting me now! :) Un plaisir de reconnaitre.
So let's move on to something I found while looking through some old boxes-
a poem I wrote in college!
I write a lot of poems. Some of them are channeled and I am very proud of them. Some are sonnets, exercises in the integration of form as well as nuance. Of those, I am sometimes proud and sometimes... um... not so proud.
The following poem I actually really love, because of what it stands for in my life both NOW and at the time I wrote it.
I found it encased in some handouts from a class I took my fresh(wo)man year of college. I was in a program called "The Great Conversation" at my first college, St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. I LOVED it. It was a two year program that would take care of every liberal arts requirement as it was taught by five different professors, covering Western Civilization from the time of the Ancient Greeks forward, taking a holistic, systemic study of each era (Ancient Greeks, Romans and Hebrews, etc.) History, art, architecture, science and math of the era, comparative studies of literature, music, religion... basically, everything I have always loved and studied, and continue to love and study now! Only now, I am definitely NOT an academic, but am merely an autodidact/ fangirl.
The handouts were about what we, meaning scholars, knew up to that time about the Greek poetess Sappho. I know that in recent years, more has been discovered and learned about Sappho, but the handout I am looking at now was the most recent at THAT time. I am going to include a few snippets of translated Sappho works, and then the poem I wrote, apparently at that time, right before my first rehab.
(that's Sappho, not me! Although my real hair is that color, my eyes are truly blue.)
At that time of my life, I felt very lonely. I spent hours wandering the frozen woods near my college campus, communing with the endless gray skies and barren trees. I would wake up every day at 6 am to practice piano on the glorious Steinways in the practice rooms of the music hall, and then go for a long walk before breakfast, which was usually one apple. I see now, as an adult, I was isolating myself, and I know I was yearning for the life I WANTED to live but wasn't yet ready to claim for myself.
Now, MANY years later, forging a new path every day, I look back to that younger Erin and reach out a hand of compassion, yes; understanding, hell yes; and hope.
There are a lot of wonderful passages in this handout I have from so many years ago. I will share some now, and some again, perhaps. I encourage you all to investigate the "tenth muse" (read below.)
SAPPHO SNIPPETS:
"Some say the muses are nine. Careless!
Behold the tenth: Sappho of Lesbos."
-Plato, The Greek Anthology, IX. 506.
"Eros the loosener of limbs shakes me again-
bitter-sweet, untamable, crawling creature."
-Sappho, translated by Jane McIntosh Snyder, p 27, in
The Woman and the Lyre: Women Writers in Classical Greece and Rome
"As a sweet apple reddens
on a high branch
at the tip of the topmost bough:
The apple-pickers missed it.
No, they didn't miss it:
They couldn't reach it."
-Sappho, translated by Jim Powell, p 12, in
Sappho: A Garland
"Like a mountain whirlwind
punishing the oak trees
love shattered my heart."
-Sappho, translated by Willis Barnstone, p. 9, in
Sappho
"The moon has set,
and the Pleiades,
midnight--
the hours are passing
and passing--
yet I lie alone."
-Sappho, translation VLH
My poem:
i ask myself what i'm waiting for?
false knowledge drops on my doorstep.
after a mundane moment of
fingering my desk
i choose now to ignore the lies,
the fragments chasing through my mind
of i love you, i don't love you
i need you, i don't need you
i'll end it now.
i choose you.
and fear?
i ate it for breakfast.
Have a great weekend, all. And for breakfast, this weekend, I'm thinking a beautiful green juice, followed a few hours later by my favorite almond croissant and a cappuccino. ;-p
xoxo
Erin
Today is Friday, and that makes this FICTION FRIDAY!
WHOOT!
I wanted to give a little update on what I'm up to these days writing-wise.
Just this morning, Carlo and I held a reading of our feature-length action-thriller screenplay. We had made a few major changes after getting feedback from a script analyst from Sony, and another from a reader at the agency CAA. Both analysts had great feedback- "the future looks bright [for your script]" and "...reminds me of the best scenes from 'Homeland." Both analysts ALSO had a lot of suggestions on changes to implement and so, after discussion about how to really make the script the best we possibly could, and after 6 weeks of intense rewriting, editing, reading, rewriting, editing, etc., we feel it is ready for the market.
Whew!
Meanwhile, I took part in National Novel Writing Month (#nanowrimo) last month! I wrote 250 pages of my novel, Eva de Los Angeles, expecting that my first draft will be about 400 pages. Oof duh! It's a magical realism road trip novel... more to come. I also re-read parts of the first novel I ever read, My Life as a Phone Psychic, and the comedy screenplay version of my FIRST one woman show, The One. My goal is, one at a time, to write a draft of one, edit/ rewrite the next, etc., until each is ready for agents/ publishers/ self publishing. At the point at which I feel any individual project is truly ready, I will proceed. In the meantime, my Fiction Fridays will DEFINITELY continue, with essays from the "self help" version of The One, (sort of along the lines of the book "He's Just Not That Into You," only really screamingly funny, so I've heard.) I will also put up excerpts from my novels that I just mentioned. Currently, my goal is to finish draft ONE of Eva de Los Angeles (based on the musical I wrote in 2012, but realized was far too large a story for a two act musical) by my birthday in February.
I know. It's a lot. But you've met me, right? If not? You're meeting me now! :) Un plaisir de reconnaitre.
So let's move on to something I found while looking through some old boxes-
a poem I wrote in college!
I write a lot of poems. Some of them are channeled and I am very proud of them. Some are sonnets, exercises in the integration of form as well as nuance. Of those, I am sometimes proud and sometimes... um... not so proud.
The following poem I actually really love, because of what it stands for in my life both NOW and at the time I wrote it.
I found it encased in some handouts from a class I took my fresh(wo)man year of college. I was in a program called "The Great Conversation" at my first college, St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. I LOVED it. It was a two year program that would take care of every liberal arts requirement as it was taught by five different professors, covering Western Civilization from the time of the Ancient Greeks forward, taking a holistic, systemic study of each era (Ancient Greeks, Romans and Hebrews, etc.) History, art, architecture, science and math of the era, comparative studies of literature, music, religion... basically, everything I have always loved and studied, and continue to love and study now! Only now, I am definitely NOT an academic, but am merely an autodidact/ fangirl.
The handouts were about what we, meaning scholars, knew up to that time about the Greek poetess Sappho. I know that in recent years, more has been discovered and learned about Sappho, but the handout I am looking at now was the most recent at THAT time. I am going to include a few snippets of translated Sappho works, and then the poem I wrote, apparently at that time, right before my first rehab.
At that time of my life, I felt very lonely. I spent hours wandering the frozen woods near my college campus, communing with the endless gray skies and barren trees. I would wake up every day at 6 am to practice piano on the glorious Steinways in the practice rooms of the music hall, and then go for a long walk before breakfast, which was usually one apple. I see now, as an adult, I was isolating myself, and I know I was yearning for the life I WANTED to live but wasn't yet ready to claim for myself.
Now, MANY years later, forging a new path every day, I look back to that younger Erin and reach out a hand of compassion, yes; understanding, hell yes; and hope.
There are a lot of wonderful passages in this handout I have from so many years ago. I will share some now, and some again, perhaps. I encourage you all to investigate the "tenth muse" (read below.)
SAPPHO SNIPPETS:
"Some say the muses are nine. Careless!
Behold the tenth: Sappho of Lesbos."
-Plato, The Greek Anthology, IX. 506.
"Eros the loosener of limbs shakes me again-
bitter-sweet, untamable, crawling creature."
-Sappho, translated by Jane McIntosh Snyder, p 27, in
The Woman and the Lyre: Women Writers in Classical Greece and Rome
"As a sweet apple reddens
on a high branch
at the tip of the topmost bough:
The apple-pickers missed it.
No, they didn't miss it:
They couldn't reach it."
-Sappho, translated by Jim Powell, p 12, in
Sappho: A Garland
"Like a mountain whirlwind
punishing the oak trees
love shattered my heart."
-Sappho, translated by Willis Barnstone, p. 9, in
Sappho
"The moon has set,
and the Pleiades,
midnight--
the hours are passing
and passing--
yet I lie alone."
-Sappho, translation VLH
My poem:
i ask myself what i'm waiting for?
false knowledge drops on my doorstep.
after a mundane moment of
fingering my desk
i choose now to ignore the lies,
the fragments chasing through my mind
of i love you, i don't love you
i need you, i don't need you
i'll end it now.
i choose you.
and fear?
i ate it for breakfast.
Have a great weekend, all. And for breakfast, this weekend, I'm thinking a beautiful green juice, followed a few hours later by my favorite almond croissant and a cappuccino. ;-p
xoxo
Erin
