So yesterday, and for the last few days, I have been writing vignettes over in Facebook on my page. So grateful to NaNoWriMo, like you would not even believe it so this is who I am in there:
So, I am also so grateful for WordPress right now. The main two things I use are Facebook and WordPress. For writers, WordPress is the most amazing thing ever invented. Because it’s the blank page!
My first blog was under a nom de plume I had, from 2007,and I wanted to create a place, so that is Valentine Bonnaire. But in that blog I wrote all kinds of things including Depth Psychology things, and they are still there because, some of that stuff may be turned into books. So, man do I love WordPress and I never fail to say it. This novel is going to be written here in WordPress, so it is live.
Thank you Ma.tt, for being such a generous kid, and fantastic grown up.
So yesterday, I tried out the new podcast thing and over in FB I have some of the text as vignettes because we will not start writing until the morning of Nov 1.
I have a new Peter Pauper Press journal. The cover is Klimt’s “The Kiss” one of my faves. I used to have it up on my wall as a young Art History student in the 1980’s. So that looks like this:
So I just made a podcast in Spotify where I talked about writing and I am so gratful to Ma.tt I mean? That’s how a writer who can read poems and stuff. I used to use Soundcloud, but this could not be more fab. Also I FB’d it! Ha!
I will be writing the novel in here, because WordPress makes things sooooooooo easy!
And each day I will read the book as a live thing on the radio.
As a member of the Santa Barbara Writers Conference, I expected the book to go through traditional channels in publishing, for instance a Literary Agent, but since that did not happen, the rewrite as a screenplay is in the live web. If you are interested, leave me a comment here. The book was just over 50,000 words, and won in NanoWrimo that year. It was a first novel.
The cover is an image of mine, a scene of clouds from Summerland Beach.
HEART OF CLOUDS – SCREENPLAY
by Adrienne D. Wilson
~
for Walter Halsey Davis
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
————————— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
LOGLINE: “Love, it’s the only thing that really matters.”
CAST OF CHARACTERS
TEENIE ALEXANDER – a girl of thirteen (seen as a child, then as adult)
DEVLIN UNDERWOOD – a boy of fourteen (seen as a child, then as an adult)
MR. HONEYGARTEN – a very old man, perhaps 90
GRANDPA JESS – Devlin’s Grandfather – perhaps age 70’s
CHRISTINA ALEXANDER (Teenie’s mother) a woman of 40’s
JAX ALEXANDER (Teenie’s father) a man – late 40’s
GRANDMA – Devlin’s Grandmother – perhaps age 70’s
CLAIRE – Mr. Honeygarten’s first love, the love of his life – she is seen as a young girl, and again as a ghost in his old age.
DEVLIN UNDERWOOD’s FATHER – a man 40’s
DEVLIN UNDERWOOD’s MOTHER – a woman 30’s
DOGS
MELLOMAN – a Golden Retriever (about six years old)
BROWNIE – a Chocolate Lab (puppy)
GENRE – DRAMA – This is a FAMILY FILM, the ratings would be G along that scale. It’s the story of a young boy and girl who meet on a beach one summer, maybe the worst summer of their lives. It’s a story of memory, and the sea, and the very first crush one has, and so it is a story of great innocence, for all ages. It has a happy Hollywood ending.
LOCATION – I wrote the film to be shot in a small village along the Pacific Coast, such as Summerland and Carpinteria, which retain the images of “villages” from another time. They are still old-fashioned enough to be timeless.
FADE IN
OPENING SCENE ONE EXT. BEACH. EARLY MORNING
The camera pans across the vastness of the sea, on a crisp morning, in the clear light of the Pacific, blue skies, shimmering waves. We see TEENIE ALEXANDER (age 13) running away, as if running from home down the empty beach, in glimmering light. A dolphin’s fin emerges, and it leaps – to the sound of classical oceanic sweeping music. Pan to a structure ahead of her, a sea hut made of driftwood like the kind that surfers build along the beaches here. It’s early Autumn, in the magic light along the Pacific. She sees the structure off in the distance and makes for it, In her pocket she carries a small journal embossed with flowers and a Waterman pen, both gifts from her father.
SCENE TWO INTERIOR NIGHT TEENIE’S ROOM (flashback)
Teenie is sitting on her bed trying to block out her parents JAX (40’s) and CHRISTINA (40’s). Their voices are getting louder and louder as another fight over money begins.
SUDDEN KNOCK
JAX
(Speaking softly)
Honey can I come in? I have something for you.
TEENIE
(nods her head, as door opens)
Dad…
JAX
(holding embossed journal and pen, her gift, squats down to hand them to his daughter, cups her face)
I have to leave tomorrow, honey. I wanted you to have these.
(PAUSE, then)
You have a heart made of clouds, you know that?
TEENIE
I do?
JAX
(gruffly, hugs her)
Never forget that okay? Never lose that little twinkle in your eye.
The unexpected magic yesterday of being down on Summerland beach. The last time I was there was at this time last year, after Walter Davis, my screenwriting teacher at the SB Writers Conference passed. Two writers who were important to me passed last year, he and Kate Braverman.
The last thing Walter ever said to me, was, “Let’s go to France.”
I spent a great deal of time last year at the end of summer on the beach there, with the driftwood structures, as those are a main theme in the book I have written for children. Well guess what? I met the artist on those, and is there ever a fantastic one there now.
Funny how life works, the passage of one year. The Conference wasn’t on this year because of the Covid.
I feel better in Summerland.
So Odin and I went, after a whole year almost, at Sunset. Today I am taking the book down to them, to see what they think of the themes. It is great to meet people like that, in such a sacred, sacred place to me. Most of my location shots last year were down in that area all the way to Loon point.
It was written to go to film and in scenes. I may just write that right here in WordPress, like I did the play before the Conference last year. I took a short story and simply converted it over into a play. From Walter I learned to write character studies, as that is what he did, and my book was an answer piece to his film “Do You Remember Love.”
Well, I know those guys I met on the beach are going to love it, because it is the local childhood I wrote that exists here. My heart went into that book, and all my training as a therapist, as well. The thing is Walter didn’t even care. Well? I may put that book for sale right here in WordPress I am so angry that he couldn’t even bother to get back to me. My opinion of Hollywood isn’t that great. Anyway, my best year at the Conference was a few years ago when I got to meet Janet Fitch who studied with Kate Braverman. Her “White Oleander” went to film and is one of the classics.
There is more to life than crochet, perhaps. Or anger. Seeing that driftwood structure made my day yesterday, it really did. I shot the cover for the book right off the beach there.
I said, “You can design Devlin’s hut. My god look what you have built here.”
I asked him if he did the ones last year and he had.
How incredible is that?
xxoo!
On the crochet front I am working on something called the Fruit Garden CAL that reminds me of Brideshead Revisited, a series I loved very much once, back in college years. The character of Sebastian and his Teddy. I love Waugh and other English writers. Always have. CS Lewis came to me in a dream that last few pages of my book.
All the pix of what I saw on the beach last year are over in FB and I’m not. I’m giving it a wide berth. The other day an old friend called and said the rumor on FB was that I was dead. Not yet.
Here is some crochet. I have not done things like this since I was 13 with my best friend, not kidding. I had to work in corporate hell, and maybe the next book will be about the newspaper years and what it was like for women on the job. Today is going to be fun.
If this isn’t the most gorgeous design what is?
Janie Crow’s Fruit Garden CAL in Ravelry and Youtube
I didn’t have one of her kits, with her colors, drat.
I am going to finish this, yep.
I plan to.
Hope all of you are well. This virus thing is so hard on us. To be at the empty beach yesterday was fabulous, and Odin my dog loves that beach.
Of an old year going out, and a new year rushing in, and the redesign of myself as a writer. I do wish all of you the best.
I was looking at what F. Scott Fitzgerald had to say, earlier this morning and it fits so I had that up over in Facebook, and again here. 2019 was a very crummy year, and so… this was a conjunction the other night, very massive, of Venus and the Moon hanging low over my city.
Adrienne Wilson 