A Different Muscle

We all have certain gifts. Mine is the ability to read a story and immediately recognize the underlying structure. It’s in my DNA. After one read, I can provide a writer with the structural fixes they need to tell their story. This has paid the bills for a long time, with jobs as a reader, then developer and producer. But writing my own work is more of a struggle. You can know a lot about the craft of story. That doesn’t make you a writer. My happy place, my comfort zone, is helping other writers tell their stories.

That’s not the same thing as writing. Back in my Hollywood days, I wrote a couple of screenplays, if for no other reason than to understand what the process was like for the writers. It was fun. But recently I set out to write a memoir, not to publish it, but for curiosity’s sake. I wondered if my chaotic life made sense. Could it be told as a story? The best way I know to create order out of chaos is to write it out. As a story. On paper.

After about six months of writing and thinking, then writing and thinking some more, I found a story line. But it wasn’t the whole story. After another two years, I’d restructured the thing to focus on a different element. An improvement, but still not the whole story. What was missing?

I knew what I didn’t want. I didn’t want to write a gossipy Hollywood tell-all. I didn’t want to write a misery memoir. But what was I trying to say? That question came up time and time again from beta readers and writing groups. It’s humbling to put yourself out there. Sometimes humiliating. You think your message is clear, but your readers don’t agree. So you go back to work.

Having spent my life working with writers, I can tell you they work hard. They experience crushing rejection. But the best of the bunch, the ones who achieve their goal, never, ever, ever, ever give up. They put the work in. I weigh in, along with other mentors and groups and readers. The writer listens. They take the bad news along with the good. They go back to work. Like Joan Didion, they find out what they think and how they feel. There comes a time when they send in a solid draft. It shows dedication to craft. The hours at the computer. The investment of time— and money.

Nothing makes me happier than to say to one of my writers, “It’s ready.” I dream that someday, some way, I’ll be able to say that to myself. Meanwhile, I learn every day from the writers I work with in my happy place.