This weekend, I was back in the small Wisconsin town where I grew up, which currently claims title to both Home and Not-Home. It’s Home because it’s where I spent my first eighteen years on earth, from conception (and believe me, this is information I did NOT need to know) to the summer after high school graduation. My mother still lives in the same house on Main Street, in front of which I learned to ride a bicycle, to rollerskate, to chalk an elaborate hop-scotch course, to hit black walnuts into the street with a wiffle bat. To write: after school I would climb the ash tree, settle on a branch a third of the way up with my back against the trunk, and scribble in my notebook. I liked to spy on people who walked, unknowingly, beneath me. I recorded their conversations and the way they travelled, hurriedly or leisurely, striding or strolling.
And of course, it’s Not-Home, because I haven’t lived there in a decade. Where once it was impossible to run a simple errand without seeing someone I knew – my teenage classmates staffed every store in the strip mall, the grocery store, the Ben Franklin, the video rental store, the Hallmark, the Subway, the Hardees, the hardware store – now I can push my cart around the grocery store for an hour and see no one familiar (aside from a weathered woman who looked like an older, shrunken version of my fourth grade reading teacher). I drive around town and compulsively explain the differences between then and now: “This whole neighborhood is new… when I was a kid this was all cornfield… when I was little these roads didn’t connect… this park was full of wooden equipment and an awesome merry-go-round that they ripped out after the third kid in a year broke her arm….”
I move through town with less ease now, feeling like an outsider. My partner and I made up an imaginary movie in which a long-gone townie returns to find everything different – not an uncommon theme – and kept referencing moments that would go into the movie. Our prodigal townie would be a friendly outsider whose every joke falls flat. The moment in the grocery store where we tried to joke with the guy handing out wine samples and he just stared at us – in the movie. Joking about the notices hanging on a community bulletin board – failing miserably at dog park small talk – navigating bizarre road construction – teasing teenagers at the petting zoo – all in the movie. As we described it, the movie wouldn’t even have a plot, really; it would just be a wild collection of moments, a long montage of homecoming awkwardness.
Film can be such a rich medium for storytelling, because it naturally lends itself to comparison in juxtaposition. You show a scene where a character moves through the grocery store with ease, laughing and chatting with everyone she encounters. In the very next scene she’s older and every attempt at conversation falls flat. You don’t have to explain that something has changed: the juxtaposition speaks for itself. Also, film almost forces you to engage setting in the story. After all, you can’t film a scene in a vacuum. Every scene has to take place somewhere. As such, film is a great medium for evoking place and its impact on character.
When they make the movie of my life, this weekend will probably look like a cross between Grosse Point Blank and The Big Chill, funny and twisted and a little sad, with an 80s soundtrack and a bunch of hilarious cameos. In the meantime, I’m going to use the principles of filmmaking to inform my fiction, focusing on place and juxtaposition to enrich my story.
Interested in Filmmaking? Check out our Screenwriting I class, Thursdays, September 18 to November 13; 6:30pm to 9pm. Call 773.477.7710 or email for more information.
The Printers’ Ball is right around the corner!
FRIDAY, AUGUST 22, 5:30 PM to 10:00 PM
At the Museum of Contemporary Art
Free Admission
21+
Here’s what I know about the event:
The Printers’ Ball is an annual celebration of print literature in Chicago, hosted by Poetry, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and Newcity. Over one hundred arts and literary organizations gather under one roof to present a diverse showcase of print publications including free magazines, journals, books, weeklies, posters, music, video, performance, and more.
To find out more please visit: Poetry Foundation’s Website
I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I’ll be able to beat the rush so I can snag some of the cool free stuff and meet some awesome literary people to network with. We’ll see if I can even get downtown before rush hour...wish me luck!
One of the best parts about StoryStudio is our huge community of awesome, talented people. Walk through our doors and next thing you know, you’re standing in a circle talking with a painter, an improviser, a bookmaker, a musician, two teachers, and a dancer. Everyone brings diverse interests and talents to the table, and as we know, nothing strengthens a community like diversity!
Another best part about StoryStudio is that we get to BRAG about our friends! Case in point: Ranjit Souri, SSC teacher extraordinaire, is also a stand-up comedian, musician, and essayist. You can experience his awesomeness firsthand:
TUESDAY, AUGUST 26th, 9:00pm
OPEN MIC NIGHT
UNCOMMON GROUND (Devon location), 1401 W. Devon, Chicago, 60660
ADMISSION: FREE!
Ranjit says:
“This is actually a singer-songwriter open mic, not a stand-up open mic. I’ll be performing two or three of my comedic songs. Uncommon Ground is a great restaurant, so you can eat a great dinner if you’d like, but that’s optional. There’s also a “pass-the-hat” donation-type thing, and at the end of the night one of the musicians gets the money. There’s a vote. Of course, if you come, I seriously want you to vote for the musician you think is best, whether or not it is I.”
Go Ranjit!!
Everyone is talking about going back to school so we thought we’d join in the conversation. In fact, that’s a lot of what we do at StoryStudio: start conversations and let our writers think new thoughts and put them on paper.
Come by Today, Tuesday, August 19 from 4p to 7pm to see the studio, find out more about Fall classes, register, talk to teachers and staff, or simply hang out.
We’ll have some nibblies and can answer any question about classes or basically anything to do with the studio.
These Open Houses are always relaxed affairs. And I love getting to talk to so many different folks about what they’re writing or reading or just generally thinking about.
And if you haven’t been at the studio lately, we have some amazing artwork gracing the hallway and classroom walls by artist Kevin Swallow. These photos show you a side of Chicago that lots of people miss, landscapes filled with emotion and light.
So join us tomorrow. We’d love to see you.
You could say I’m between projects these days. A few weeks ago, I finished a draft of a manuscript that consumed my life for months. I always thought I’d be one of those writers who immediately starts a new project, seconds after typing “the end.” I didn’t even have to start a new project; I’d been working on another story last fall, before the marathon novel rewrite started in January. I could just go back to that, I thought. No sweat.
What I hadn’t counted on was the intense emotional rollercoaster of the last few weeks of the rewrite. By the end of it I was kind of a disaster. I wasn’t sleeping well, couldn’t play nicely with others, found myself weeping for no reason… it was ugly. By the end of it, I’m fairly certain my loved ones thought about locking me up. And when I finally finished, I found that I couldn’t get my head out of the manuscript. Emotionally, I was still there, still with those characters, still mulling over their choices and characterization. Switching to a new project, I realized, was not going to be nearly as easy as closing out one document and opening another on my laptop.
I kept in mind the words of Virgina Woolf: “As for my next book, I am going to hold myself from writing it till I have it impending in me: grown heavy in my mind like a ripe pear; pendant, gravid, asking to be cut or it will fall.” I wanted that too. I didn’t want to take to my next book like a laborer to a trying task; I didn’t want to be writing merely to have written. I wanted the new book – in the beginning, at least – to be as enticing as first love. There will be plenty of time in the middle to feel like a bricklayer. Still, I was impatient to get back to writing, simply because I need to be writing to be okay.
How could I get back into the heads of characters I abandoned almost a year ago?
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