Tribeca Film Festival

Last Wednesday my husband’s latest film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. It’s called Knife Fight, and it stars Rob Lowe. You can check out the trailer by clicking here.

Though my guy’s been in the film business for a while now (he started as an assistant at DreamWorks back in the day), it’s only the last five years or so that his own films have started doing the whole festival thing. Coincidentally, it’s also in the last five years that we started our family. So while he’s been traveling to France, New York (he had another film, “Splinters,” at Tribeca last year), South America and such, I’ve been home taking care of the babies. Which is fine, really. I mean, who wants to walk down the red carpet when they can stay home and change poopy diapers.

Ah-hem.

Needless to say, I was pretty excited to go. My dad came down from Idaho to watch the kiddos (thanks dad!) and I took the red eye Tuesday night to New York. I crashed into our hotel bed around 5am, slept untilI felt like waking up, ate, read my book, slept some more and basically lounged the day away until it was time to don the fancy duds and go to the screening. I got to walk down the red carpet and wait in the back with the cast until the screening started.

The theater, the largest at the festival with 900 seats, was packed (sold out, in fact). The Q&A after was great. The festival threw an after party at this cool, basement bar all lined in brick (what is it with New York and brick – they love that stuff) in the Village. It was a great night all around. Here are a few photos:

Sometimes it can be challenging being a creative couple. Sometimes our creative angst can lead us to lash out at each other, or be moody in unexpected ways, but sometimes, it’s awesome.

And Then One Day…

My girl loves stories. Not just before bed, but any time of day, all day. As we march up the stairs for breakfast each morning she usually says “momma, will you tell me a story?”

I usually respond that I need coffee first, but she will eye me like a hawk, and as soon as I’ve got that mug in hand she will repeat the request (and repeat, and repeat), until I start spinning the morning’s yarn.

Lately, my stories have all been about carrot and sandwich. They have had some great adventures. They hitch-hiked across country to visit our friend Jacqui in Virgina, they opened a dry cleaning shop, and fought pirates for treasure on Carrot’s private island (that he bought with his riches earned through dry cleaning).

It’s a fun ritual, even if sometimes I don’t feel up for it first thing in the morning, but the thing I love the most is what I’ve learned about my girl’s sense of story. When I’m setting up the story sometimes I get to rambling. I’ll tell what carrot is wearing, or what trouble sandwich is having with his wife, or whatever, and when it’s gone on too long my girl will say in a loud voice “and then one day…”

Brilliant.

I know she’s just bored and wants me to get on with it, but really, she is illustrating one of the core principals of story telling. You open on a world with a status quo, and then one day something upsets that status quo and viola – you’ve got a story.

Even kids get this, and yet, I feel like a lot of writers struggle with it. I’ve heard young writers talking about telling a “true” story where nothing contrived happens, or worse yet, where nothing at all happens because that’s life, man.

Bah, I say. If that’s life, then my four year old is living it better than you.

Is it Really Only Wednesday?

Both my kids seem to have some sort of stomach thing going on. I’ve been thrown up on so many times that I might stop showering afterwards and just wait til the end of the day when I can wash it all off at once (okay, not really). I’ve changed sheets 3 times in the last 8 hours, and the washing machine can’t keep up. The whole hose stinks of stomach acid. I’m exhausted, cranky, and slow. So this is parenthood.

I kept my girl home from school and am waiting for the doctors office to open so I can call and ask when I should worry. Hopefully this will all pass quickly. She’s watching Ice Age while I try to get a little work done, and frankly, I think she’s loving being sick. I remember loving it when I was a kid – stay home with mom, eat lots of yummy soup, watch movies – what’s not to like? Being (or acting) sick always seemed like a small price to pay.

Anyhow, assuming I can find any time, I’m plugging away at the novel today. I’m trying to look at it scene for scene. What I’m finding is that as I wrote it, I put scenes in some places that aren’t really scenes. That is to say, nothing happens. Still, as I look at the overall structure, I think my instincts were right, there needs to be SOMETHING in the places I put those scenes. Now I just need to figure out ways to bring in conflict and or revelation so that the scenes aren’t just place holders, but actually serve to move the story along.

I’ve been dying to re-read Winter’s Bone, but I can’t find my copy. I hate that. I remember the structure of that book being really satisfying. No long flashbacks or rumination, and yet you get the sense that you really know the main character. I want to look again at how he did that.

Anyhow, I’m rambling. Check back Friday when I have (hopefully) gotten some sleep and can present my thoughts in a more organized fashion.

Back In the States

We’re back.

Actually, we (the kids and I) got back from Indonesia on the 13th. I took a couple days to unpack, wash everything and repack for a trip to my dad’s in Northern Idaho. We spent a week there, came back home on the 23rd, did some crazy last minute Christmas shopping, and bam – Christmas. Daniel made it home around noon on the 25th (direct from Batam and jetlagged all to hell), but we were all here (including his folks, my sister-in-law, her guy, his parents and my mom) for a lovely day together.

I felt like I was holding up pretty well, given everything I juggled over the course of a month, but as the craziness wound down I started picking fights with Daniel. I was feeling anxious about the fact that I hadn’t written anything in weeks. Five weeks, actually. FAR too long.

Turned out, all I really needed to do was ask Daniel for  day to catch up on some writing. After a stupid fight this morning he graciously took over all the kid duties (and doodies) so I could lock myself in my office and do some writing.

It took about an hour to get back in the swing of things, but now it’s flowing. So far I’ve written three pages in my Northern California book. I had originally hoped to finish it by now, but set aside that goal when we got on the plane to Indonesia. Still, I only have 25 pages to go. I’m seriously thinking about staying up late the next few nights and writing my ass off to see how close I can get to finished before the 1st. I doubt I could get 25 pages done in four days, but maybe…?

I also caught up on my Digging Deep blog. My partner in crime on that one was understandably a little miffed when I told her, out of the blue, that I just wouldn’t have time to post, so it feels good to get back on that horse too.

And then, of course there’s the novel, and oh, yeah, a screenplay I’m thinking about all the time lately. Sometimes I just feel like I’ll never reach the finish line on anything ever again. Which is why it would be nice to finish up the Northern California book as planned.

Oh well. In any case, it’s good to be back.

Here are a few photos, just for fun.

The view from our hotel in Batam

Monkey in Singapore

Visiting the set with Daniel

Snowball fight with Grandpa and Nana in Idaho

Sleigh ride in Idaho

Now back to the writing.

Dissolving Stitches

Three weeks ago my baby boy had a minor, outpatient surgery to fix a hernia in his groin and allow his left testicle to drop into place. It went very well, despite my fears about the general anesthesia. The incision was just above his left hip, and the stitches were actually made underneath the skin, so all he had was a few thin strips of tape over a developing scar that will be quite small once he is full grown.

But then yesterday the stitches (which the doc said we would never see because they are dissolving stitches), began poking through the skin of his abdomen. The site thankfully doesn’t look infected, but I wanted to check in with the doctor just to be safe. Here’s how it went down.

Me: “I’m concerned that the stitches that are supposed to dissolve are pushing through his skin.”

Nurse: “No, they won’t do that, they’re dissolving stitches.”

Me: “But they are, I can see them.”

Nurse: “But they won’t.”

Me: “Okay. Let’s pretend for a minute that my son’s ‘disolving stitches’ ARE in fact pushing through his skin. Should I be worried?”

Nurse: “I’ll have to call you back.”

So now I’m waiting to hear. While I’m waiting, I am beating my head against the opening paragraph of the feature article that’s due next week. It sucks. I can’t seem to find an in to the story. It’s making me crazy and I really want it to be good. I almost hope the doctor does need to see my boy so I have an excuse to avoid working on the article a little longer, but then again, no. What I really want to have happen is that the next time I change his diaper the stiches have amgically dissolved like they’re supposed to. Then I come back upstairs to my lap top and find the intro to my piece has written itself, and it’s stunning.

Is that so much to ask?

Back In LA

I‘m back!
Back in  LA, back to my blogging, back to working on my novel, back, back, back.

Let me get you up to speed on what happened over the last month. First of all, and most important, the little guy has basically been given a clean bill of health. The cardiologist, urologist, nephrologist, physical therapist and his GP have all checked everything thoroughly and aside from one slightly undescended testy which should come down on its own in good time (how embarrassed will he be in 10 years when his friends come across this?) ALL IS WELL! He’s been scanned and ultrasounded from top to bottom (they literally had to scan his butt crack at one point, to check his spine), and it seems that we are finally coming through the other side.

It’s hard to express how relieved I feel as he begins crawling, laughing and eating real foods like Cheerios. He’s still small for his age, but he’s gaining well again since I weaned him (no lectures from the LLL, please). Everything’s coming up Baz!

Celeste had her fourth birthday party, which was a blast. We set up the kiddie pool and her new slip and slide and this rainbow thingy that shoots water, and the kids (all 14 of them!) just played and played while the grown ups hung out over BBQ and beers. It’s good to be home.

My writing has been very self indulgent, which is awesome. The freelance work I struggled to get done while we were in SF has slowed dramatically since we’ve been back, leaving time for my novel. I revised the first three chapters last week and wrote 10 new pages. I’m hoping to make some more progress this week. I feel like I might be hitting a grove with the rewrite, but I don’t want to jinx it.

In other exciting news, a company my guy is working with wants to shoot a low budget horror flick and their writer flaked (or something, I don’t really know the whole story). All I know is that Daniel asked me on Thursday – “do you still have a copy of ‘Straws’ anywhere?” (“Straws” being  the script for a horror flick I wrote in 2004). I said yes, but it needed work. He said “do you think you could have it presentable in 24 hours?” and I said hells yes, and dropped everything to rewrite it as best I could in such a short time frame. I’m actually pretty happy with how it came out, though if it does go ahead it will need a few more revisions. So, now that’s out there in the universe. Who know what will become of it, but it’s kind of fun to see an old project revived.

The only bummer of our return to LA has been that Daniel has still been traveling for work. He’s been back and forth to SF, and this last weekend had to go to Singapore for a business schmoozing thing. I’m missing him. He gets back tonight, then has to leave again tomorrow morning to go back up to SF to check out the first rough cut of Knife Fight (yeah!). Hopefully his schedule will calm down soon and we’ll finally get a chance to go to dinner to celebrate our 7th wedding anniversary.

So that’s the news from this end. I’ll be back to blogging two/three times a week now, children and work load permitting. Thanks for hanging in during my short hiatus.

tah