From the desk of . . . Jen

As usual, lots to say and little time. As I said I was going to be in my last post, I've been away for a few days.

First, John. I love that you wrote honestly. Please know (all of you) that if I think anything is awry, as in not enough volume in contributions, etc., I'm not a shy girl. I'll write and say something. Everyone writes differently. That said, it will not hurt my feelings one little bit if at any point (though sooner is probably better than later) anyone thinks this is not for them. Seriously. None of us know where this is going. I love that you came here and said that so everyone knows what you're thinking. That's all part of the writing process.

And as I've said often here, this project is not just about crafting a good finished product. I wanted to do this (and hope you all did, too) because I wanted to put some 'play' in my writing process. So far, it's even better than I'd expected. On days when I'm exhausted from my site, my day job and being a momma, I like that I have five reasons not to just crawl into bed and 'write tomorrow.'

Fun stuff:

Mike. Love the proposed ending. Really do.

Back to the intro post, too. You said food. Trask said The African Queen. I'm leaning toward a classic movie. Maybe something with similar tropes as ours. I considered The Natural after re-watching this weekend. The baseball theme is cool since it's a J.P. thing. It's also deeply invested in 'seeing' and how the relationships in our lives either tear us down or build us up. That works here. Anyway, I'm leaning toward the classic film because I like the idea of tangential references to it (i.e. our individual post responses) being recognizable, and something that could spark a variety of conversations (i.e. costume, food, actors, themes, etc.) So you could totally talk about food. If you've seen The Natural, one of my favorite scenes is when Hobbs is eating Italian with one of the managers his first night on the team. You could let that lead you into town to feed a craving for Italian. Right? But all of our posts, though we may not name it, would make at least one clear reference to the movie. I'm up for other film suggestions, too.

We settle on that. Then we all head off. And you can do that here or on your own. Let's focus and do that before we do anything else. Then we can all go off and work on our own 10 pages. And please don't panic about that number. It's not a term paper. Ten pages of dialogue, due to spacing, flies. You won't be able to fit what you want into it. It's roughly 10 minutes of screen time. Two scenes.


But even if you don't post your actual working script here, please stop in to comment and even ask questions, such as, Is it believable that my character would . . .?
Or, if my character said this, what do you think her mother would say?

Hearing everyone's voices is nice. Even if not in mass volume like mine. What can I say?