So the Oscars were held last week and as a movie lover I watched every minute. I judged fashion, critiqued thank you speeches, and booed when my favorite didn't win. In short, I had a great time.
One of my favorite moments, always, is when the writers get their Oscars. Most of the Oscars go to pretty people: Actors, directors, producers, musicians, people who find themselves in front of cameras a lot. But when you get the make up people and the writers, especially the writers, you get people who typically do not see the front end of a camera ever. In the case of writers, as we writers know, we spend our days in shadows, staring at computer screens, praying the words falling out of our fingers make sense to our brains.
This year was a good year for writers: John Ridely and Spike Jonze, both pretty good looking guys, both pretty good with the speaking. So yay, writers, you did us proud.
The quote of the night, however, went to Robert Di Nero:
He's not wrong. We writers do battle every day on many fronts. Whether we're battling with willful characters, our own mental blocks, or spell-check, writing is a battle, a war, something we dream about but really sort of hate doing.
One of my favorite quotable women, Dorothy Parker, gave me this:
And she's not wrong, either. how many of us bang our heads against the desk, wishing we could stop the voices, stop the ideas, stop the stories because there's always a disconnect between our brains where everything is brilliant and our fingers, which often don't produce what we have in our heads and we simply do not know how to get the brilliance out of our heads!
Watching the Oscars, my friend and fellow author, Linda Schmalz, and I always dream of the day we are nominated for an Oscar for best screenplay. (And it would be a adapted screenplay because we would, OF COURSE, write the screenplay for our own novels.) We think of what or whom we'd wear. We'd talk about who our guest would be, and where we'd sit, (in the back of course) and what our thank you speech would be. It's our dream to one day be at the Oscars, knowing that great actors said our words and people watched the actions in our books brought to life and they liked it.
Which makes me wonder: What are your dreams as a writer? In reality, my dream is to one day support my family with my writing. But in my dream of dreams, I'm getting an Oscar.
There are so many pinnacles for writers...what do you aspire to? What's your biggest dream goal? Best seller list? Book signings with people wrapped around the block? National Book Award?
You don't really have to say it out loud. Just admitting it to yourself, just having that dream, that's the point. Having that dream goal, the goal that will probably never happen, that's what's going to keep you going when it's dark and the coffee's cold and your hands are cramping and all you want to do is lie down in front of the TV and melt into your couch.
But as long as you're dreaming big, it's a good idea to write a thank you speech...just in case...so you don't sound stupid when you win.
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