Bismillah ir Rahman ir Raheem
So it’s been a long while since I updated this blog. I could say that I’ve been crazy busy and it would be true.
But I have also been grappling with massive internal growth. No, I’m not pregnant. But I have embraced my identity as filmmaker, which has caused me to face some pretty deep-seated fears.
The year started out pretty standard. I submitted a draft to the Nicholls and did not get in. Surprise, surprise!
But I also wrote the crap out of a short script, ostensibly because I said I’d let a producer look at it. That producer passed and since it’s a topic close to my heart – breastfeeding failure – I decided I’d make it myself. With an all-female crew a la Zoe Lister Jones.
So far, no bites from producers. But I’m still young.
I also basically tore out my heart and put it on the page – I’m writing a feature about birth trauma.
I pitched the feature to my ladies, the Broads. Got mixed feedback, especially about how funny or not the concept was. Well, no one ever said childbirth was a particularly comedic premise. However,
In addition to that, I found myself for the first time in my life craving like-minded company. Not just because it’s rather hard to make a movie alone. But because I still can’t quite shake the feeling that I’m crazy to think I can.
I found it oddly enough on Facebook. In numerous groups set up precisely for this purpose – assuring each other that we aren’t crazy. Groups like Moms in Film and Binders full of POC Screenwriters. Hopefully some of these will transfer into real life friendships.
Craving is actually too strong a word. I start to feel bone-chillingly lonely and so I think I should have some friends. Some people on the same riotous who-the-hell-do-I-think-I-am path as me. I put some feelers out to people. Which results in immediate nausea and regret.
But more often than not, after meeting and chatting with said people, the nausea dissipates and I’m rather glad.
It’s the ‘rather glad’ feeling I’m focusing on.
In general I submitted more. Much more. And got rejected much more. I won about 5 rejections, not counting the pitches that didn’t go so well. And one non-starter of a project.
The rejections burned for sure – and yes, I do mean vomit. But the warm feedback when it did arrive put some salve on those burns (no, nobody puts salve on vomit).
There is an audience for my work. I feel like I simply need to build a better mousetrap.
Besides if this guy has the audacity to make a movie about two people with anal fetishes falling in love, well, a chaste movie about childbirth shouldn’t be too hard a sell.
Mostly the most precious thing I gained this year was self-belief. Certainty that I could ask the right questions and get the answers that work for me. That I would figure out when to hold them and when to fold them. That God will be there to catch me.
It’s a humbling feeling. I’m terrified, but learning. From books:
….video courses….
….and actual courses.
One step at a time. I’ll figure it out insha Allah.
Because frankly I want to make things. I don’t want to simply be rejected at higher and higher levels, which is essentially what screen-writing is. Nothing wrong with that, especially if you’re getting paid.
So this year, God willing, will be the year of making things. What are you guys up to this year?
Update:
I feel the need to pat myself on the back for the God-given awesomeness that has happened in my personal life.
I moved to Australia.
I haven’t had a panic attack in months.
Depression is much reduced though it’s proving to be more of a barnacle than the drama queen that was anxiety.
And I’ve weaned my now almost 3-year-old son off screens – only on the weekends and that too for a couple of hours only on one day. It frankly wasn’t distracting him as well as I would have hoped anyway, in addition to making him downright irritable. His toys are much more his shiznit.