Beyond Words...

The panelists: Jordan Peele, Emily V. Gordon, Kumail Nanjiani, Virgil Williams, Steven Rogers,
Guillermo del Toro, Vanessa Taylor, Greta Gerwig, James Mangold, Michael Green,
Scott Neustadter, Michael H. Weber, Graham Moore, and Aaron Sorkin

"I can't write until I outline every part of the story."
"I can't write with an outline at all."
"I love 3x5 cards."
"I spend a lot of time laying on the couch."
"I have to write to understand how I feel about something."

These are all things that were said last night by Writers Guild Award- and Academy Award-nominated screenwriters at the 2018 Beyond Words panel at the Writers Guild Theater. And they're all things that I've said to myself over the past seven months that I've been rewriting my feature film script. And over the past ten years as I've been writing script after script.

Last night reminded me that I am not alone in this profession. That I am not weird. That how I write, how I create, is not an anomaly but just how I write. We all write the exact same way. We all write completely differently. We all write. And that's what Aaron Sorkin pointed out when he said it doesn't matter how we do it as long as the words get down on the page.

These past few months have been exhilarating. To know that my story, the one I've been writing for so long, will be heard sooner rather than later, and seen, is amazing. But it's also not a reality yet. For now I am still behind the same desk, fingers on the same keyboard, fighting the urge not to check social media just one more time, or open up Words with Friends to see if any of my friends want to help me procrastinate just a few more minutes.

Yes, we've had meetings. Pre-production meetings during which we talk about story and budget and casting and it's so exciting. It really, truly is. I've started to really work on learning as much as I can about directing. I visited an acting class where I got to see a little snippet of the work actors go through to make my words sing and dance. Next week I'll go to the first directors' workshop event of the year through Film Independent and hear from Greta Gerwig, who's been Oscar-nominated for writing and directing her first feature film. And in just over a week we'll have a our first table read for the film. Twenty people will come together in a room and read my script aloud so I can hear what works, and what needs to be worked on. It really is terribly exciting.

But most days, I'm still sitting here, at the computer, typing away. If I'm lucky. Right now my fingers aren't doing too much typing. I'm doing a lot of reading, a lot of research. I've gone back to the television world and I'm working on a pilot. I'm writing about the military and Filipino sisters and nuclear weapons again. And I love it all.

And I loved sitting in the theater last night, listening to these amazing writers and directors share stories that made me feel like I was one of them. That we were all in this crazy writer life together.