Posts Tagged ‘writing’

A good weekend

It was a weekend full of dearest friends, marathon conversations, yummy dinners (chickpea tagine, still transitioning out of raw foods), fun with public art, perfume buying as a treat to myself for finishing the latest draft of my book (Tocca Cleopatra!), brunch at my favorite place to eat in Chicago (yummy omelet with chanterelles, blew the raw right open in this meal), many rounds of drinks at various bars around Logan Square (if anyone cares, the Owl was packed with very attractive people on a Saturday night) and a kind of mini-reunion with film school friends, where we Godarded out at the Whistler and talked movies, buisness, and writing just like old times, albeit with a bit of seasoned perspective.

But one of my favorite moments was when my sister texted me late Saturday night after finishing reading my book and told me she loved it, it made her cry and that I should be proud of myself for creating a beautiful story. I totally teared up. The only other real bookworm in the family, I was a little scared to show her my book because it’s so intimate, you know? It meant a lot to me; I’m such a softie.

It was “a best, best time”, as my niece would say. And it’s nice to be back after a vagabond weekend, back in my own bed, surrounded by books and lavender tea and fashion magazines.

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Photo was taken up underneath the Cloud Gate sculpture by Anish Kapoor in Millenium Park. Do you see me? xo k.

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Posted in Pieces of Life on Tuesday, February 7th, 2012 | No Comments »

On true gifts

I have a habit of re-reading books again and again, something I’ve been thinking about lately, because I think deep down writers want to write books that people re-read over and over — as if they were wise friends, comforting voices, or just a riotous good time that just has to be visited again. (I go to a Six Flags rollercoaster park every summer; I know it’s possible.)

I spent December re-reading all my favorite books, some of them for likely the twentieth-plus time in my life. (That would be Little Women.) Of course the first time I just love the story, or the characters, or the voice, and I want to know what happens and why. But the second, third, fourth or even twentieth time? What does one possibly extract from a book that many times?

There are, of course, many levels to read a book: for pleasure, analysis, cultural import, emotional attachment, wisdom, duty, research, moral instruction, creative inspiration, just to name a few. But as I closed the cover of Little Women after finishing it in December, I knew there was more to it, more to the reason why I pick up some stories again and again.

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At the same time, I was also thinking about gifts. Not just presents and who would get them, but things that people, objects, experiences bring into the world that help shape it and make it a more beautiful, fuller, more interesting place.

An infectious humor. Incisive yet kind discernment. The ability to make life lovely to others, no matter what the circumstances. A true grace. Wild, poetic imagination. A power to look into dark places and not be afraid. You see it as the throughlines in bodies of work, or the feelings great leaders or cultural figures inspire, but it’s also present in everyday people: how my best friend’s beautiful tenor makes everyone stop and smile, because he takes such joy in singing. No matter what route they choose — relationships, words, images, voice, food, songs, clothing — something of their gift comes through.

And then the different strands of thinking converged: I love to re-read stories not just for stories, characters, rich language, gorgeous imagery. I love to revisit them because something about that book’s true gift resonates deep in me, in those corners of life we call spirit and soul. A book offers not just a story, characters, plot points, language: it offers a point of view, an emotion, a spirit or a set of possibilities, a world to step into. Great books, you can argue, offer something much larger than themselves, which is why stories can transcend their execution and resonate across cultures and centuries. But even “lesser” works have a gift. Everyone has a gift. You can argue that life is for developing your gifts and sharing them with the world.

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I’ve been re-thinking books lately through this lens, and it’s clarified why some books are so beloved for me, as well as helped me appreciate books that aren’t so personally resonant. The true gift of Little Women for me is of its innocence, its presentation of the richness of women’s lives in all its possibilities: that fulfillment can come in ways one leasts expects. And while I’ll never love reading On the Road, I can see how people connected to its sense of liberation and freedom and free-wheeling energy.

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Interestingly enough, I’ve been in the middle of another revision to my novel, and now I find myself looking at my beat-up, been-through-hell-and-high-water story through this unfamiliar light: what are my story’s true gifts, its fuller offering to the world? And what can I do as the writer to serve that? Now that I’ve lived with it for almost two years, I hope I know it enough to hear the deeper layers it wants to reach. Submerged usually in questions of craft, publication, and the annoying nitty-gritty that comes up in rewriting, the question of a story’s true gift is a new, unfamiliar question to guide editing. I wonder how it will bear fruit.

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Posted in Thoughts & Musings on Monday, January 9th, 2012 | No Comments »

I am a cinematographer

I’m so behind on my year-end, month-long Reverb 11 blogging project, where I reflect on my year in a series of daily blog posts. Today I am writing on YOUR LIFE IS A MOVIE: Pick and describe a few moments this year that defined you, your life, your world.

1.

I lean on the railing, looking over at the downtown lights beginning to flicker on as the dusk fades. I see this pose in movies all the time done by other people, and now it’s my turn. I won’t be coming back here for awhile, I realize. I know I should say goodbye. But there’s a stubborn silence inside me, a strange blankness. And that’s when I realize, I said goodbye a long time ago.

So I don’t say goodbye. Instead I turn and walk away, ceding the view to the strolling couples, the pensive old ladies, the kids horsing around on the promenade. They can have the view, I think. It belongs to everyone, everywhere, everytime. It will always be there.

2.

I type “The End.” It’s done, I think to myself. Little do I know.

3.

I sit in the hospital room, thinking it is remarkably cheerless for a room in which a newborn baby sleeps in. There’s like a border of tiny, grim-looking ducks rimming the perimeter of the ceiling, and the curtains are fraying at the hem. The superstitious part of me worries that this is a bad omen; there’s always a superstitious part of me operating, making deals with the Master of the Universe.

Then I look down at the new baby, his little hands covered in tiny socks. He’s so little, like someone carved him out of a tube of Pillsbury dough or something. He yawns. Already bored with life, I crack. But I pick him up and I’m so charmed at the way his little eyes blink and peer up at me, and my new nephew and I meet properly for the first time.

4.

I stare out the window as we wait on the runway, watching the planes line up, waiting to take off. For the first time in a while, I feel really, really so excited, like a bottle of soda water all shook up and ready to pop.

5.

Lighting sparklers in the dark and running around among the fireflies. I am one year older. A few days later we are watching the most bombastic fireworks display ever, and I pretend that they are all for me.

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Posted in Pieces of Life on Tuesday, December 27th, 2011 | No Comments »

Breathing room & new endeavors

I am, I realized, insane.

But I had to admit, the siren call of Nanowrimo was too irresistible. I had told myself last month that if I wrapped up the last revision of my novel, I’d give myself November off from it and start on my next book, using Nanowrimo as a semi-sanctioned cultural excuse to write a large amount of (mostly crappy) words in a short period of time.

Of course, I didn’t think this would happen, because I thought I wouldn’t be done. I had been struggling for some time, you see, chipping away at this current revision, again and again fitzing and cutting and re-writing and chopping and adding. I had gotten used to struggling and feeling discouraged, I guess. I honestly had the thought that I would be one of those supremely frustrated writers who just never are able to get past that one spot in their books, and that I would go to hell faced with these chapters and never be able to get them right, my evil laptop ridiculing me for how utterly ridiculous my attempts were and broadcasting all of them out into the Internet for my ex-boyfriends to laugh at. (That is my version of writer’s hell.)

And then, something magical happened. Some beautiful, gorgeous goddess of words and writing bestowed upon me a remarkable solution that somehow sliced through my difficulties*, and somehow I got to the end of my book. I was just sitting there in Barnes & Noble, looking at this really cute guy in the cafe and tooling away at my document. Maybe I was so distracted by Foxy Coffee Dude that I wasn’t paying attention, because suddenly I realized, Wow, there’s nothing left for me to do. Every item on my To-Do to Fix My Book list had been done.

I looked up in a kind of daze, staring at those weird author portraits they hang up there, godlike, in the store’s cafes. I remember I was directly opposite Langston Hughes, which is a strange author god to have looking down on you as you finish a book about teenage skater werewolves. (“What Would Langston Think?”) I remember I just shut my computer off and didn’t know what to do with myself for a moment. So I read a discarded Us Weekly the next table over, because isn’t that what real people do with their time instead of spending so much of it in their heads with imaginary people?

The next day was Halloween, and I ate lots of candy and wore angel wings with great abandon.

And then the next day, it was November 1. I still didn’t know if I would do Nanowrimo. I thought initially I’d give myself all of November off. You know, sleep, relax, gad about Europe a bit, not put a lot of pressure on myself to keep accomplishing stuff. I have been working on this current book for a long time, revising for nearly a year. Wasn’t I just depleted? What more did I really have to give? I had a few loose ideas for the next book kicking around, ones that had been marinating there in the old brain for some time. But nothing really fully thought-out, considered. Nah, I said to myself. No need to do it.

I did my job that day, I went to the gym. I think I talked to one of my beloveds on the phone for awhile. Then I went to check my email, and opened up my Google Docs, where I had a backup of my current revision going. I thought I was just going to upload the latest version to my account. But suddenly I thought, what the heck. I opened up a new doc and started writing. I kept writing day after day, some days harder than others, but when those came I was too excited by things to be much discouraged, chalking it up to the usual ebb and flow of emotions you have when you write a lot. And now it is the 11th and I’m happily halfway through.

Of course, tomorrow I get to fly over an ocean to another continent, and I’m not bringing my computer because I am so sick of being on my laptop all the time. So no doubt I will likely “fail” at Nanowrimo. But you know, failure is educational and failure can keep you honest. And I’m excited for my next story and am excited to see what I discover about my character, about writing, about myself.

xo k.

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* This technique is called “delete.” As in, if it’s not working, just delete! It only really works if you are an over-writer, like me.

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Posted in Progress Reports on Saturday, November 12th, 2011 | No Comments »

Tiny missives

1.

I’m in the midst of another revision, a fairly major one: second half, yet again, although I feel like I’m on the right track and it’s just getting the pieces into better places to make it happen better. Better, better, better. Sigh. Just when I think I’m rounding a bend…another bend comes up in the road. Hence, writing the novel sometimes feel more akin like making my way through a maze, a maze that goes into a mountain and comes up into the sky. But I’m getting there. And I’m especially grateful for friends who cheer you on when you’re overwhelmed or pessimistic about ever finishing. “You’re so close, don’t give up in the last lap!” It’s true. Just when I feel like chucking the whole damn thing is often when I’m that much closer to being done. I need the writer’s equivalent of Gatorade.

2.

I read this old interview by Ann Demeulemeester and it reminds me of why I like making stories. And also, why I love her clothes so much.

3.

I made this mix you may like. Go to the link if the embed below doesn’t work. Why is this isht so freaking hard sometimes in WordPress is beyond me.

4.

The lovely Stephanie at one sleepless night interviewed me, and I talk about work, life, productivity, writing and other sundry, fun things! Also: my philosophy of attack regarding To-Do lists. I read over this and I think, wow, I really am insane in some way. I swear, I truly do have fun! Writing is fun, after all, even when it feels like it’s going to shit.

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Posted in News, Progress Reports on Saturday, September 24th, 2011 | No Comments »

Cloudbanking, and Vegas, where hotel light shows count as culture

PlaneFlying

Oh, glorious vacation, how lovely you were! Went to Vegas with family and hit some other dots in the western states. It’d been awhile since I traveled, and it was just wonderful to see something new. And of course, to be up in the air above the clouds. I always try to get the window seat on a flight, just for the pleasure of looking down at the landscapes below. I have strangely evocative memories of waking up the middle of an overnight flight to Iceland to darkness and quiet and peeking out the airplane window below to see miles and miles and miles of dark Arctic tundra. So haunting and beautiful, and one of those moments where your soul kind of just races inside you with thrill and awe. And I love that sensation of racing over a map and seeing it come to life.

This time around, it was seeing the southwestern areas of the U.S., the cracked earth and mountains and canyons and mesas. They were strange and beautiful, as well.

Vegas itself was a blur of restaurants, casinos, taking naps by the pool. It was HOT, and surreal, like someone took all the “cosmopolitan-ness” of the world and dropped in the middle of the desert. It was strange to see the names of “hot” bars from L.A. and NYC in Las Vegas, walking up and down the Strip at night. I didn’t win any money, but it was still a good time, though I felt I blew my wad of “going out energy” for the next three months. You can see a tiny bit of it here, as well as most of the nightly light show in front of the Bellagio hotel, which I guess counts as a cultural attraction. (We did go see a Vegas show. We were not into the idea of seeing a magician, or a psychic, or Celine Dion, so we went to see Jabbawockeez instead and it was actually pretty entertaining. Hip hop break dancers > Celine Dion, any day.)

Lately I’ve been trying to put some distance between myself and the book, in attempts to make my eyes fresh towards it again. So I’ve been working on other things, some short stories and other stuff*, blogging more a bit, and of course, reading lots. Nothing like reading 5,000+ pages of George R.R. Martin’s epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire to put some distance in there, right? I think things were getting a little insular there for a moment, just writing, writing, writing one big, demanding story. I’m hoping to get some breathing room around it, and then go back with a new perspective. It feels like writing a big, big story is like working up and down a spiral: you keep circling back to it, sometimes deeper, sometimes higher, in the same dark hole but never quite in the same place.

(Am loving GRRM’s stuff, btw. I had read A Game of Thrones way back in the late 90s and really liked it, but hadn’t kept up with it because of, you know, life. It’s so good! I’m dying to talk about it, so I may just have to be a complete nerd and find a good forum or something. I’m sure there is no lack of one out there.)

View from hotel room

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* By other things, I mean bits and pieces of a new novel!

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Posted in Pieces of Life, Progress Reports on Sunday, August 21st, 2011 | No Comments »

How To Be A Recluse

Such a relief, I think, to realize that I’m not a person that needs to go out every weekend. Now I can be who I was meant to be all my life: a recluse! A never-going-out, holing-up-at-home-with-loved-ones, marathon-book-reading person. Despite my predilection for rambling walks, I don’t stalk the moors in a tempest of emotional broodiness, though. I’m not entirely sheltered from the world, lost in a reality of my own invention. (Okay, that’s not true: I kind of do exist in a parallel nether-reality often, but it’s in my own head since that is where my characters currently live.) I am in the world! I am living life! I read The New Yorker! I just do it all in a more eccentric, INFJ/P way. It is not normal, but it is more me.

But the notion of a recluse is strange these days, I admit, especially when everyone is so Internet-on and social-networked. Everyone is like, “Kat, what are you doing? Aren’t you going crazy? Where have you been?” To which I answer: I am here, I am doing things like writing books and making a living, and I have been to lots of places, but most of them are not bars, clubs, restaurants, or other socializing type of things. Life is still full and interesting, but it requires more effort, and a different set of rules. Hence:

You still must dress nice. It is too easy to just wear workout clothes, or yoga clothes, or just pajamas all the time. This is not right, especially when you have a closet full of nice things to wear. Dresses! Lipstick! Accoutrements of glamour! Of course, my notion of glamour is slightly off, and I’ve defaulted to a kind of punk-nerdish tomboyish style, with small anime touches of lipstick and accessories. Recluse status has made me fashion-lazy. There is also nothing to buy here. But my savings are beautiful!

You maybe shouldn’t be a recluse unless there’s a big thing you’re working on. In my case: a book. An endlessly-being-revised book. I HAVE to be a recluse to get this thing done. There is no other way right now. If I didn’t have a Big Project, what would I be doing with my time?

Being older is the best excuse to be reclusive. I have become one of those older humans who do not go out anymore. I like to think of it as rare public appearances. As in, “I’m making a rare appearance at the bowling alley tonight.” But also: energy and attention and time are my most valuable resources, and I must use them wisely.

You must still do fun things. In my case: winning money on riverboat casinos, riding horses, rocking “Straight Up” on Dance Central, making dinners, watching Jim Jarmusch movies, cooking things, partying with three-year-olds who are related to you. Never going out hasn’t blunted curiosity or a desire for new experiences, I just seek them in other ways.

You shouldn’t live in a city where a major part of its value is what’s outside your front door. This is partly why I knew I shouldn’t be living in NYC for the time being. Why am I paying near $1,000 in rent to stay inside my apartment all the time? It made no sense, and being a deeply practical Midwesterner on some level, this was not acceptable. Maybe this will change. Maybe this will not. It is hard to say right now. I know myself to know that my “phases” can last a few years, and then I phase out into something else for another few years.

The only thing is that I don’t see my friends as much. But my friends live everywhere: London, Lisbon, New York, Australia, Chicago, L.A., Abidjan, Montreal. It’s like IMPOSSIBLE to see them! But I have to confess that everyone’s lives feel so full as well, with babies and husbands and wives and families and careers and crises, that it feels OK to drop off someone’s To-Do list. It is almost the best thing I could do for them, because the last thing I want to do is be yet another obligation for someone to have to check off. Reclusivity as an act of love?

Strangely, I remember witnessing this pattern through my parents as a child. When I was quite young, I remember their circle of friends, the lively gatherings that began on Saturday afternoons and went into late nights, drinking beer on the porch as the various little ones played soccer in the yard and then watched kung-fu movies in the evening. But the little ones got bigger, and the parents got busier, and those gatherings became fewer and fewer.

It is an inverse of my 20s, where friends are your life and line. This is the thing about olderness: the “projects” get bigger, your arrows of your honor pull more weight and speed, and all that is not essential drops away. As I get deeper in my 30s, it is something else entirely: true passions, family, sense of purpose, edged with mortality and the soft sorrow that everything is so fleeting.

(Right now I’m writing this in the middle of a thunderstorm, with a mug of tea, and it feels so recluse-y!)

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Just a few beautiful things lately: if you haven’t checked it out already, the lovely Erica L. Scheidt at Royal Quiet Deluxe interviewed me on my novel! If you want to know more about my book, please do check it out. I can’t wait for Erica’s own book to come out next year. I think it is going to be amazing; it is already picking up awards!

And the novel: I’m reworking the beginning. I keep meaning to release the first chapter or two, but it’s “just not there” in the way I want it. I worked so hard on the 2nd half of the book that now I have to get the beginning up to scratch. But it’s coming!

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Posted in Pieces of Life on Saturday, July 23rd, 2011 | No Comments »

Soundtracks for Writing: Also Doubling As a Girl-Positive Makeout Tape

I love having soundtracks for writing, or for making anything, really. I love finding out what other writers listen to while they write. I assiduously document and soundtrack every story and film I write. I even directed through music, giving actors a copy of the music I associated with their character. (Amusingly, one actress I worked with, I could just give her a song reference from my mixes on set and she knew exactly what I was after in her performance.)

While my last mix for the book was very “historical” (lots of late 80s/skate stuff), this mix was the latest batch of songs I wrote my last draft to and it’s much more about mood and theme. I gave a copy of this (on CD! old school!) to my best friend/muse and he noted drily that it sounded like a makeout/female sexual empowerment tape instead. Which is true; much of my book concerns sustained kissing, or wanting to be kissed in a sustained way, or recovering from such kissing. And yes, sexual power is a kind of theme in the book, too. But really: if my book were a person, I honestly would most definitely make out with it. And I don’t say that about many books at all! I’m sure that’s a very strange thing to say and I can’t fully explain it, but even when my book is making me crazy and sad and angry and full of doubt and self-loathing — I still love writing it anyway.

Here’s the track listing:

The xx, “Hot Like Fire”
I loved that the xx covered an Aaliyah song.

Thom Yorke, “Hearing Damage”
Ugh, I can’t believe I took a song from the New Moon soundtrack. But say what you will about the movies, their soundtracks have generally been solid.

TV on the Radio, “Will Do”
What straight girl doesn’t want a dude to express these sentiments to her at some point?

Lykke Li, “Get Some”
Kind of the “These Boots Were Made for Walking” of the year.

Jane’s Addiction, “Mountain Song”
COMING DOWN THE MOUNTAINNNNNNNN!!!! NUH NUH NUH-NUH NUH-NUH NUH-NUH NUH-NUH!

The Walkmen, “On the Water”
I love how this sounds like a landscape, a dark, moonlit one.

Warpaint, “Shadows”
The whole Warpaint album is so part of the novel’s DNA that I feel like I should pay them royalties or something.

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, “Shame and Fortune”
It took me forevs to warm up to It’s Blitz! but I’m glad I did.

Lady Gaga, “Bloody Mary”
I’m fond of anything song that sounds like Depeche Mode but sung by ladies, and this fits that bill. I love the Edith Piaf-like vocal as well.

Calla, “Dancers in the Dust”
I have had such a huge crush on this band for ages! Much of their whole oeuvre is makeout material.

R.E.M. “You are the Everything”
This song makes a direct appearance in the book.

Depeche Mode, “World in My Eyes”
Okay, okay, might as well put Depeche Mode in here.

Crystal Castles, “Tell Me What to Swallow”
My shuffle kept throwing this song into the mix one day as I was working through a weird, tricky passage in the book, and it totally helped. I’m convinced my shuffle is like my underworld spirit guide, leading me out of the morass of my own imagination into strange new places. Or something like that.

Tricky, “Feed Me”
Just a rad, slinky song.

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Posted in music on Tuesday, May 31st, 2011 | 2 Comments »

I Made It Through the Wilderness: Notes on Finishing My Latest Draft, And Slaying My Inner Literary Snob

Whew! Clink your champagne glasses with me, my lovelies, because I just completed my second big, big revision of this draft! Yayness all around, please…I feel like Odysseus just come home! (Of course, he came home to a bunch of dudes trying to cruise his lady and pillage his home, so maybe that’s actually an apt simile.)

I’m behind schedule in the timeline that exists inside my mind: I originally wanted to be done with this mid-month, but I got so frustrated because the words just didn’t come. Well, to clarify: the words were there, but the new ones that I wanted to replace them with just refused to make their way from my head through my fingers and onto the page.

I’d sit there stubbornly for hours, staring at my screen, reaching into my bag of tricks. I changed cafes, ate chocolate, called friends, went shopping, took walks, talked in my head to my characters. Nada, niente, rien. How frustrating! And how even more frustrating because my stuck-age always occurs in the same freaking spot: that bit of story before what some screenwriters call the act break between act two and three. Crucial, momentous, intense: the bit where an old-fashioned story breaks off and lets itself be carried away by the currents of the actions you’ve so carefully structured to happen.

But I got through. And I have to say, I’m bubbling over, because although I’m terribly superstitious to say it, I think I’ve cracked the damn case. MY BOOK’S ALMOST TRULY DONE!

Of course, I may be regretting saying that once I read my new words next week and realize that it could just be a crazy pile of merde. But let’s pretend it’s true, so I can squirrel away my most recent lessons from this round of revision, and share them here with myself just in case I forgot for the next go-round.

1. EARLY BIRD CATCHES THE WORM = SAD BUT TRUE

The biggest breakthrough I made was actually because I began getting up before work to work on my novel. This normally isn’t a problem — that’s how I finished all my film school applications ages ago. (A part-time job in itself, I assure you, applying for film school.) But lately I’ve been beginning at 7AM, so this means getting up at 5:30AM. I am a night owl, so this was excruciatingly hard. I know I sound like a baby when I say it, but coming from a recovering insomniac who realizes how precious and beautiful sleep is, it’s a huge thing to shift. Something about devoting the freshest part of my energy to writing, though, really held true. I wasn’t giving my labor of love the scraps of my energy and attention, when I was tired after a day’s labor; I was giving the best of it instead. Early morning, plus the Pomodoro technique I told you about here, helped me focus and be highly efficient, and it made a huge difference. You truly cannot underestimate your physical condition as a factor, even when doing something so mental and imaginative as writing.

2. SOMETIMES YOU JUST HAVE TO BRING THE CRAZY

This may make sense only to writers, but sometimes you get to a point where you have an idea for where your big massive story could go, and you think it, and then there’s a tiny part of you that goes: Oh, no, that is too freaking crazy. You can’t go there. That is just too nuts! So you talk yourself out of it, because it’s a big risk: it upends your careful planning, takes you in an unpredictable direction, and what if it’s wrong? Then you’ve probably wasted at least one month on the mistake! I came to that point during writing this go-round, where I was just like, Hmmmm, okay, I’m a little stuck here, what can I do? (That actually sounds a lot calmer than I felt. I was more like, “FUCKING SHIT WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH ME? WHY CAN’T I FUCKING WRITE?!!!!”)

At first I thought it was a problem of craft, and I did all my little tricks to spook myself out of it. And some of them helped a lot, but then I got stuck again. I realized the problem went deeper: I wanted to do something super-outlandish in the story, but then it would bring me into Crazy Fantasy Novel territory, and I had kind of unresolved feelings about that.

Part of you may be thinking, “Duh, Kat! You’re writing about freakin’ werewolf skater boys! That’s total Crazy Fantasy Novel! Why are you tripping?” I mean, I love those books. That’s why I’m writing them, right?

But no, friends, I had to enter some Heart of Darkness territory here, mostly to do with a strange internal pressure I feel to be more “literary.” It’s kind of exemplified by an encounter I had during film school, when I ran into an old creative writing prof I studied under in undergrad. This person is a poet; I had been mostly a poetry writer as an undergrad and frankly, I had been very good, got published, won awards, etc. I was happy to see Professor and we caught up happily on a bustling sidewalk in New York, and when we got to me being in film school, this person kind of wrinkled their nose and expressed a little disappointment that I left the craft of poetry. “You had such promise!” was the phrase that I remembered most.

Ever since then, it’s just been haunting me in this subterranean way that I was barely aware of, like a little virus nagging at me in the operating system that is Kat. I had to wrestle with it, with the tension between what I “should” be doing and what I really wanted to do. Could I have been a good poet? I’m sure, actually; I was pretty confident of my talent in that area. So if I have all this talent, shouldn’t I be being more literary? Am I really wasting my potential? Am I wasting my time? Shouldn’t I be doing something more legit? Why am I writing such a ridiculous book anyway?

But the answer is so simple, really: Because it’s always been something I wanted to read.

It really just boils down to that for me. I’ve always wanted to read a really romantic, dark, sexy love story when I was a teenage girl, about a girl who was made stronger and more fully herself from love and romance, not weakened by it. One where desire and sex are liberation, not a way to diminish and disempower yourself. I like stories with clear, strong lines, heroic feelings, epic romances and mysterious boys. And yes, I love the supernatural: ghosts, fairy tales, dragons, battles, Tolkien, King Arthur, werewolves, demons, angels, all that stuff. Those stories are the ones that stay with me the most — why wouldn’t I want to aspire to that? And come on — stuff like “Buffy” are my favorite shows and characters ever. Let me be true to my heart!

So basically, I had to tell my inner Poetry Writing Prof to shove off and just roll with it. It was a bit like being my own literary therapist. And truth is, I’m still telling inner Poetry Writing Prof to shove off. But I do it enough to let the crazy happen, storywise, and boom! Energy, momentum, fire in the belly: exactly what my story needed at that moment. The story zipped along nicely, and now I’m gearing up to give it a read and hopefully one more polish before I stick a fork in it and call it done. Because, yay, it’s almost done, and I got to slay my inner literary snob for the time being.

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Posted in Progress Reports, Writing on Friday, May 27th, 2011 | 1 Comment »

Going From Movies to Novels, i.e. Was Film School A Big Waste of Time? [Video Blog]

I graduated from film school last May, so it’s been officially a year since I’ve been a MASTER OF FINE ART. Last year’s memories are hazy with exhaustion, but one thing I remember: I had decided to write the idea of my next screenplay as a novel instead.

No one around me really understood this, and I didn’t really, either, myself. Everyone around me was in a frenzy of lining up work, consolidating their contact lists and renewing any connection that could get them a job, a deal, a project. I did have a small web-based video project in the works, but here I was, embarking on writing a novel.

What was I doing? Did I really just spend five years and huge amounts of money….just to start writing a book instead? In this video, I go into some of the making-of for that decision…a few moments that set up my disenchantment with film, and the moment when it all opened up for me.

This is kind of a long video blog! (Think of it as making up for my last one being two weeks ago.) It’s a very personal question, actually, and well, if someone’s willing to listen to 12+ minutes of me talking about it, then I’ll be more than happy to give them a personal answer.

I actually shot this vblog a bit ago but held off on putting it out there because at first I was worried about sounding like a big whinging idiot. But it’s a pretty honest account of a few moments that connected together to bring me away from filmmaking into fiction writing. I think it’s also pretty honest about the difficulties and problems facing the film industry as a whole when it comes to gender. I do a bit of feminist irritant-ing about it, I guess, but it’s very true. You look at the participation of women at the leadership level in filmmaking and then compare that to the visibility that women have in literature, and I’m sorry, you actually just cannot compare.

I did cut some bits for time (!!!) — I went a little into my other building frustrations with narrative film as a medium, mostly because it takes so long to get a film from page to screen, especially contrasted to blogging, which I’ve been doing since 2003. Another thing I cut was my growing realization that I didn’t want to wait any longer to GET WORK OUT THERE. I wanted to produce work faster, get work out in the world faster. Vite, vite, vite! And finally: it costs thousands upon thousands up to millions of dollars to make a film. It costs me much less to write a novel!

And also: writing stories in novel form just feels great, and right, and true for me right now. You can’t discount that.

The unspoken question is whether or not I see myself going back into film. At this point, no, not in the conventional sense, although I think after this novel I’d like to shoot something small, personal and just very, very “for myself.” I think I will always work on screenplays, because I genuinely love the form and it keeps me in practice on the parts of storytelling that I find most difficult (economy, action, plot.) And also: I’m having too much fun with my books right now, and I think I have a few more novels left in me. I always follow the fun, so look forward to more and more stories coming here soon.

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I think I’m enjoying the video blogs a little more, now that I settled on the Q&A format to guide me a little. I get a few questions on screenwriting, film school and blogging, so I might tackle those in future video blog entries, but if anyone has a question they’d like me to talk through, please email me at kat (at) nogoodforme (dot) com.

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Posted in Video Blog on Sunday, May 1st, 2011 | 3 Comments »

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