One year out of college I was literally thanking the Academy. I got up on that stage and dedicated my award to my recently passed father then went back to my life in Philly. I’ve been working every moment since to get back there.
Maybe I needed the life experience to grow as a writer. After all, as Holden Caulfield observed, writing is not a just knowing where to put the commas. I traveled. Spent three years in Costa Rica teaching English and translating. But, perhaps in a “pura vida” backlash, when I decided to come home, I did so with hardened intent.
I left my husband. Even moved in with Gertrude and Claudius for a time. I got a temp job where I froze in a dusty receiving office in a drug-infested North Philly neighborhood. But I finished a new screenplay. A revenge story. And it’s done well.
I’ve got two screenplays in the works right now. I still live in a bug-ridden, third floor walk-up apartment on one of South Philly‘s louder corners. I keep my dog, plants, books, music, movies and a handsome marine about me like insulation. And often think of a story I heard about my man J. Caesar. His dad died when he was young. Though he came from a good family, they weren’t rich. So he was always in debt as well.
Anyway, on his 32nd birthday, he was stationed in some mud hole in Spain, without prospect of even seeing Rome again, and he wept. He wept because Alexander had conquered the world by his age. He contemplated a good Roman end to it all. Twenty years later he had Gaul under his boot and was on his way to the world’s first, and most famous, point of no return by a stream called Rubicon. His life and death would change the world.
I’m not out for conquest and power, nor do I think the history of the world will hinge on my stay here, but I like the story. There’s a point in there somewhere. Alea iacta esto.
J. Lakis 
July 12th, 2013 at 6:08 pm
I am quite honored that you would follow my blog. Yours looks amazing and I know I will enjoy it. I would suggest a trip to India….it is life changing! Namaste. . . .Anne
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July 12th, 2013 at 11:14 pm
Thank you for the kind words. I’m hoping my screenwriting will take me to India. So far, it’s gotten me to England and around the US. Just missed New Zealand. I’m not counting on my screenplay set on Saturn’s moon Titan to pay off in quite the same way, however. Namaste (Darn but Lost really changed that salutation for me.)
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July 12th, 2013 at 11:55 pm
That is wonderful. Sounds as if you are already off on a lifetime of travel and being able to do what you what you love….You might enjoy a post I did about a young Indian movie maker. . . ..California Dreaming My family was really into lost so your reference is lost …haha on me! Namaste . .. Anne
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July 13th, 2013 at 12:06 am
Well, the good things are spread out, but that’s what makes them good, eh? I’ll check out the post. And, from all of us at the Dharma Initiative: Namaste.
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April 28th, 2013 at 2:12 am
The point is is that life is all about experience and how it can shape you as a person–and a writer.
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April 28th, 2013 at 12:15 pm
I want to agree, but with a catch. I’d say that not all experience is good in an intrinsic way. I’m just relatively fortunate in my family make-up and place of birth. There are far worse places I could be. North Korea jumps to mind. I think I was in a bad mood when I wrote last night!
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April 28th, 2013 at 12:17 pm
There are worse places, but it doesn’t change your experiences and what your feelings are about those. I don’t like it when people tell a depressed person things could be so much worse. That doesn’t change the fact that a depressed person is depressed.
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April 28th, 2013 at 12:44 pm
Couldn’t agree more. In fact, my experience is that approach makes the person in question feel worse.
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