will you have the lemonade or the prozac?
Running news:
8.3 miles. An okay run--not startingly great. But I kept going.
I like reading the real estate section of the paper on the weekends: the big magazine-type insert with pictures and descriptions of the various properties. Particularly the fancy properties.
Why I'd ever need or want a $29,000,000 estate that has an 18,000 square foot house, various state-of-the-art luxury amenities like a screening room and spa, and 7.23 acres I don't know, but I like knowing they exist. I imagine if I could afford $29m. for a house, I could probably afford the staff as well.
If I could live anywhere in Los Angeles, I'd like to live in Pacific Palisades--veddy upper-crust, wall-to-wall celebrities, and damn nice home--so I read about the houses in that area first.
Imagine my surprise when I recognized one of the addresses.
I called my college roommate up. (She is not a celebrity and does not have a house from the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, but she does live in PP.) "You're selling your house?"
She is indeed. She let me know they'd printed the wrong price in the paper. Selling the house is making her crazy--she and her husband have already bought a new house, down the block, and not selling the first one is giving them sleepless nights.
I imagine it would. Oy. That's a splash of cold water. Darin and I had it so easy: when we decided to move down here, we called his brother and said, "Hey, want to buy our condo?" He did. And when we were looking here, I looked at a number of houses, pulled out the best ones, and then showed them to Darin, who pulled out the one he liked--this one--and we bought it about 24 hours later.
Ugh. You actually have to sell the house at some point. I guess Chuck knows all about this. I have indigestion at the thought.
Anyhow, if you ever read something from me in which a plot point revolves around finding an address in the real estate section, you know where it came from.
I got into a long discussion about writing in e-mail with a writer friend of mine. I've been barraging her with e-mails all week about the various ups and downs I've been experiencing emotionally, and she keeps writing back to tell me what I'm going through is normal and I'm not a freak. (I am, of course, but I appreciate the sentiment.)
Since it's much easier to quote myself than write new material, I share with you now what I said.
>I'm beginning to think I don't write anything because I'm
>protecting people from my imagination.I think you may be on to something here. Honestly.
Everything we say and do--and everything the people we know say and do--are fodder for our writing. Writers are always betraying somebody--usually themselves, but if not them, then someone else. Everything's fair game. How many times have friends cried on your shoulder about something and you've thought, "I can use this"? I know I've done it a lot. I get terrified at the thought of certain people reading my stuff, because they'll see how I've used them, how I've taken one little thing they've said or done and blown it up for everyone to see.
Or, even worse: they'll think I've done it even when I haven't. It's a bitch to get blamed for something you haven't done, particularly when your conscience is well aware of the things you have done.
Yes, people will always think that such-and-so actually happened. And even if it never actually did--and often times it has, in some form or another--we're always guilty of having it happening in our minds, of experiencing it vicariously. Which is pretty much the same thing.
The tough stuff, the really personal stuff, is the best material for writers. Because there's so much emotion connected with it. We have to expose ourselves constantly: if it's not something we've done, it's something we've thought about. As Len says, we're exposing our own shit to the world--and the trick is to make it taste like ice cream. (A horrible metaphor, but it pretty much cuts to the heart of the matter.)
And we go through it over and over and over again. Making up characters, putting them through horrible conflicts, living their emotions...and then saying, "Oh that, that's just something I tossed off."
It's safer to stay with stuff we make up and have no attachment to and can keep our distance from. It stays over THERE, whereas we are over here, safe and inviolate. When we imagine something and really let ourselves experience it mentally, we also experience it physically, just as if it were actually happening. This is one of the foundations of psychology -- if you keep remembering stuff where you acted foolish, you're going to feel pretty darn foolish NOW.
We get turned out by sex scenes in movies and books, and we get angry when we remember past injustices, and amused when we remember jokes -- but we feel all of those emotions here, now, in the present. Which is why stuff that's in my mind feels so deadly -- because I'm actually having the experience of those feelings. That's like the most unsafe thing you can do -- most people avoid their inner feelings, and here you are not only feeling all these things, but you're making yourself feel them. And your goal is to make OTHER people feel those things.
If that happens, then they're gonna know about YOU. About what goes through your mind and what you felt and what you think about. Even if it didn't happen in real life, you've made it happen in someone's mind -- imagining has the same result as experiencing, physically -- so what's the difference?
No wonder writers stick with the superficial and easy. The other way's ICKY. And way too personal.
And then I talked about some specific stuff that's been driving me to the brink of mania and despair THIS WEEK... I don't mention it here because, frankly, it's embarrassing, and people read the Web, you know?
And even if going through this doesn't make this script good, it'll make something I write in the future good. I swear to God, that's the only thing that's kept me sane this week.
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Copyright 1999 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com