Tag Archives: literary pretentions

Dear Aspiring Screenwriter

13 Mar

Dear Aspiring Screenwriter,

We are writing to thank you for the submission of your screenplay, The Common Life-Cycle of the Short-Beaked Garfish. We found it to be poignant and humorous with just the right touch of pathos, and feel that it is exactly the right fit for our studio. However, we do have a few notes about the protagonist Cate, and would like to see the following modifications made to the script:

– Name changed to something more “whimsical,” like Lula, Plum, Tulip or Pippa

– Tulip should have “quirkier” taste – maybe reads Salinger? Listens to “alternative” music? (Not too alternative)

– More emphasis on how “different” Tulip is and unlike other girls – should have a scene where she is dressed in feminine attire but holds her own drinking and trading lewd stories with the boys. Also maybe she drives a Vespa?

– Not sure why you describe Tulip as plain and “big-boned”????? Definitely should not be plain, unless in a girl-next-door or before-the-makeover sense. Audiences don’t respond to fat characters, unless in a humorous way. Should be no bigger than Jennifer Lawrence, maybe with her fresh-faced everywoman appeal. Viewers identify with Jennifer Lawrence.

– At least one scene where Tulip is lying on her couch in her underwear reading a book. Maybe David Foster Wallace to show her intellectual side?

– At least one scene where Tulip does something like jump into a lake fully-clothed to show how unconventional and care-free she is

– At least one sex scene – and no, the “awkward and uncomfortable blow job” she gives to the bartender in the bar bathroom does not count. Why does the scene end with her sharing a cigarette with him before she rejoins her friends? Why doesn’t she take him back to her place and then make him breakfast in the morning?

– Not sure that I buy Tulip as a full-fledged editor. Maybe an editor’s assistant? Seems more likely for a girl her age

– Definitely a vintage “feel” to Tulip’s look – full skirts (not too long), jewellery like you would find in your grandmother’s closet, “natural” looking makeup to emphasize her fresh-scrubbed beauty. Glasses with thick plastic frames for when she wants to be taken “seriously.”

– Maybe in the scene where Tulip is walking across the park describing her abortion to two of her close friends, some kids could be playing soccer nearby and accidentally kick the ball her way. Then she runs after it, and we see her doing some complicated footwork with the ball and running around with the kids for a few seconds before she kicks the ball into the net. Shows the ephemeral nature of life but also how quirky and unlike other people she is.

– Maybe instead of having an abortion she had a miscarriage? Or suffered the recent death of a family pet??? Not sure how abortion will play out with audiences, especially if she’s not consumed with regret. And really not feeling the line, “It was the easiest decision I’ve ever made.” Women don’t ever feel that way about abortion??

– Tulip seems to only have female friends?? Would like to see a male friend added to the mix, maybe someone who’s been in love with her for years and years. Maybe his name is Jack and he’s a sensitive, thoughtful writer type? Anyway how is Tulip going to drink with the boys if there are no boys.

– Not sure it’s believable that Tulip would break up with her boyfriend in order to pursue her career goals? She’s only an editor’s assistant after all. Maybe instead she could realize she has feelings for Jack?

– Instead of the “short-beaked garfish” maybe Tulip can be fascinated by butterflies. But quirky butterflies?

– Not sure why the script ends with Tulip boarding a plane by herself to Paris? Wouldn’t it be better if Jack went with her, and when they got there she helped him edit his book? No one goes to Paris alone

We very much look forward to reading your next draft! With these few small changes we really feel that we have a winner on our hands. Although of course little movies like this could never be our bread-and-butter (especially not with a female protagonist – that will eliminate at least half the population from wanting to see it), they are our labour of love and truly the work of which we are proudest. We very much look forward to producing The Common Life-Cycle of the Quirky Butterfly.

Kind regards,

Big Production Company


Waiting For Spring, Or, The Moon Is In Free Fall

21 Jan



















Tips For Writers

14 Sep

Write because you have something to say.

Write because you’ve always wanted to.



Write because you’re bored and don’t have anything better to do.

Write for yourself.

Write for other someone else, or maybe everyone else.


Write because it fills the emptiness in your heart or your soul or your pancreas or wherever your particular emptiness happens to be.

Write because nothing will ever fill that emptiness, and you want to find a way to connect with someone, anyone who might understand.

Write because your tenth grade English teacher told you that you had potential.

Write because your ex told you that your characters were dull and your dialogue stilted, as it’s a well-known fact that there’s nothing better in life than proving someone else wrong.

Write because you have a calling for it, you were born for it, because it’s the only thing you’ve ever wanted to do for your entire life.

Write because you only just decided yesterday that it might be neat to try to stringing a few pretty words together.

Write because even though your imagery might be clichéd and your metaphors weak and your reasoning best described as childish and unsound, you still have a noted talent fur cussing and it’s a scientifically-proven fact that a well-placed f bomb can make or break a paragraph.

Write a thousand words every day.

Write ten words every day, even if those words are nothing more than, “I hope you have a good at school, honey.”

Write one word every day. Today’s word is perigee; tomorrow’s will be sesquipedalian.

Write a book so strange and obscure that no major publisher will ever touch it.

Write something because you know that it will be commercially-viable.

Write serious fiction.

Write romance novels.

Write an epic fantasy series that’s actually a thinly-disguised takedown of your toxic workplace, starring your awful cubicle mate as vile R’hakhnae, the Insect Queen.

Write a review of the movie you saw last night.

Write a grocery list.

Write anything and everything, if writing is what you want to do. Don’t listen to people who want to peddle some kind of elite ideal of what it means to write; don’t buy into the idea that you can only refer to yourself as a writer if you’ve been published in the New Yorker or you have a stack of rejection letters a foot deep or you frequently stay up all night weeping softly into a glass of scotch because you can’t arrange exactly the right words in exactly the right order to say exactly whatever it is you want to stay. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you’re only a writer if you’ve spent a decade or more suffering for your art, starving in a garret in London or maybe Paris. Try to steer clear of the folks who will want to tell you that only one particular genre or style is real writing.


Just write.

In fact, I’ll even go so far as to say please write, because I promise you that there’s someone out there who’s dying to hear what you have to say, someone whose life might be changed by whatever sentiment you’re about to commit to paper or screen or cardboard-back-of-the-cereal-box. Write because you are the only person who has lived your particular life, and this has shaped your thoughts in such a way that you are the only one on this planet capable of expressing a thought in your own particular way.

Write because no other person who came before you or who will come after to you will ever, ever be able to do it in quite the same way that you can.

Write  because if you don’t tell that story, the one that’s been slowly burning inside of you for the past year, the one that sits like a lump in your throat that never goes away or plays incessantly in the back of your head like a bad song with a good hook, will never be told if you don’t tell it.

Write because you’re the only one who can do this and we’re all counting on you.

Write because.


You Are Worth It

4 Sep









You deserve this, all of this.

You deserve our delight in you.

You are worth it.


A Few Truths About Love

22 Aug



The truth about love is that someone can love you very much and still be careless or hurtful. Love is not a charm that protects you. Love is not magic. Love is not inherently good.

The truth about love is that your faith in it is misplaced; love is not a god or a system of belief or an altar at which you should kneel down and sacrifice. Love is a wild, dangerous force – exhilarating, yes, but also destructive. Loving someone else is like standing at the edge of the water in the middle of a hurricane; the waves that smash against the shore are mesmerizingly beautiful, but the threat of drowning is very real.

The truth about love is that it is a slippery beast. A slippery beast with teeth like razor blades.

The truth about love is that it is so bound up with regret that it seems impossible to separate the two. You regret the words you said, which you didn’t realize would come out so badly. You regret how vulnerable you let yourself be, how you cracked open your chest to reveal your still-beating heart. You regret all the chances you gave, the forgiveness you bled so freely. You regret the time not spent together, the days you sat side by side on the couch both engrossed in your laptops. You regret the time wasted arguing or sulking or spent in a state of deliberate misunderstanding. You regret the beginning, because it could only ever lead to this. You regret the ending, because of everything you’ll never get back. You try so hard not to regret everything in between, but you do. You do.

The truth about love is that so many of us have a hard time differentiating between love and habit.

The truth about love is that it’s not a panacea or a cure-all. You can have all the love in the world and still be just as broken as ever. Being in love will not fix you; after the first flush of romance you will find that you are in exactly the same place, except that now you have to worry about dragging someone else down with you.

The truth about love is that we talk about it as if it’s something we’re somehow owed, but really, it’s not. People deserve to be treated with decency and respect. People deserve basic necessities like food, shelter and clean water. People deserve to feel safe. No one deserves love.

The truth about love is that you would do it all again.

Vintage Photos of Hurricanes and Their Aftermath (4)

What It’s Like To Be A Writer Who Is Also A Woman

12 Aug

You will always be a woman first and a writer second.

When people refer to you, they will call you a “woman writer,” or “feminist writer,” or some other variation on that theme. There will always be some kind of qualifier added.

When your works are published, they will be included in women’s anthologies, or perhaps taught in women’s studies classes, or shelved in the “chick lit” sections of bookstores. This will feel simultaneously empowering and isolating. You know that this fact will guarantee that large segments of the population will choose never to read your work based solely on these classifications.

It will be thought that only other women can relate to your writing. When discussed by literary critics, your books will be described as works that all women should read; no one will ever call them works that everyone should read.


Speaking of men desiring to fuck you, you must be very careful when interacting with male readers of your work, especially if those men are also writers. If you are married or in a committed relationship, mention this up front. Watch every word you say and make certain that none of them could ever be misconstrued as flirtatious. Do not ever behave in a way that might lead you to be accused of leading a man on – especially in situations where the man is in a position to promote your work. Remember that all of your motives will always be suspect.

Speaking of men, the first attributes used when describing you will be your relationships or lack thereof.

If you are married and/or have children, these things will become the focal point of any brief biographical sketch made of your life. Any other accomplishments must take a back seat to the fact that you have managed to find someone to put a ring on it and then convinced them to procreate with you. Your name will always be preceded by something like wife-and-mother-of-two, as if those titles are more important than any other that you might earn in this life.

If you are unmarried, you will be pitied. If you don’t have children, you will be pitied. People will wonder aloud what is wrong with you; it will be thought that your devotion to your career has left you lonely and barren. Your appearance will be dissected, your life choices examined as if under a microscope; perhaps the idea of medical infertility might be discussed. Anyone and everyone will have a theory about why and how you failed to produce children.

If you write about yourself, about your life and your feelings, your writing will be called confessional. The word will be said with a sneer; it is not meant as a compliment.

If you write about issues larger than yourself, your work will always be touted as a feminist perspective or a woman’s perspective on the subject; you can never have a thought or opinion without it being viewed by the rest of the world as being coloured by your gender.

If you write about the discrimination and inequality that women face, and don’t immediately follow up with a list of double standards imposed on men, you will be accused of misandry. If you discuss violence against women without adding in that yes, sometimes women can be violent towards men, you will be accused of misrepresenting the facts. If you don’t qualify every discussion about women’s issues with the fact that, yes, men have issues specific to them, then you don’t believe in equality.

You will find yourself inhabiting a scarcity mindset. If another woman achieves fame or success by writing on the same subjects as you, you will assume that all praise and recognition have been used up. Having grown up fed on a media diet of cartoons, books, video games and sitcoms featuring only one or two token female characters, you will truly believe that there is room for only one woman at the top of any given field. This will lead to intense feelings of jealousy any time another woman succeeds; this will lead to the desire to tear other women and their work down, in order to make room for yourself. Should you experience any kind of success, you will find yourself the target of the same type of fear and envy. You will become the subject of take downs by other women who see you as an obstacle standing in their way.

You will quickly learn that being seen as someone who embraces the middle ground, someone who constantly qualifies all of their beliefs with statements like, but I can understand the other side of the argument, will be greatly beneficial to your popularity as a writer. Seeing issues as black and white will earn you the label of “extremist,” and cause others to distance themselves from your work. As a woman, you will constantly need to tone it down, bite your tongue, and above all else present yourself as being sweet and unthreatening. Otherwise you will not be taken seriously.

You will quickly learn that constantly equivocating will lead others, especially women, to dismiss you as wishy washy. You will be accused of backtracking. Men will tell you that they do not enjoy your writing because it is lacking in bombast and ego. You have to come across as firm, uncompromising, certain in your beliefs. You have to approach writing with a take-no-prisoners mentality. Otherwise you will not be taken seriously.

You will quickly learn that when you challenge the glaring inequalities in the old boys’ club of the literary world, you will be branded as angry. People will insinuate, or outright say, that any obstacles that you might face are evidence of your lack of talent and commitment, rather than a systemic and deeply ingrained misogyny. You will be called paranoid and crazy, accused of engaging in victimology; no one will want to acknowledge how very sad and frustrated it makes you that you have to work twice as hard to be considered half as good.

You will quickly learn that you cannot ever, ever win.


Fiction: Georgiana

17 Jun


It’s important to find the perfect words.




























Exactly the term she’s been waiting for.














“Don’t call me that,” she spits out.




“What do your friends call you?” asks Eric.






Eric looks at Peggy, who shrugs her assent.



























