How Has Your Background Influenced the Stories You Want to Tell?

           

            I grew up in a small farming town in Ohio. No one had a lot of money, but we didn’t need a lot. If someone had shown up to school with a Gucci bag, we wouldn’t have understood that this was a status symbol and that we were meant to feel inadequate; we would have asked, “Why does your bag have Gs all over it and why are some of the Gs backwards?”

I’m a country girl; I want to tell stories about people loving one another without pretension, families finding peace in simplicity, and children creating entire worlds with their imaginations.  

            My junior year of high school, I was an exchange student in southern Brazil. When I arrived, I couldn’t speak the language and didn’t understand the culture. I’d never felt lonelier or more out of place in my life, and it seemed hopeless to try to fit in.

However, a year later, I didn’t want to go back home to the United States. I’d learned to speak Portuguese through immersion, and I’d created a new life for myself.

I’m a high school exchange student; I want to tell stories about loneliness, being the outsider, culture shock, adapting to new worlds, and discovering inner strength through hardship.

              After graduating from college, I drove alone across the country and started stripping at Spearmint Rhino, the best “gentleman’s club” in Las Vegas. Stripping wasn’t as wacky of a decision as it may seem; it solved my problem of how to find the time and money to write and gave me a fascinating topic to research.

I’m a Las Vegas stripper; I want to tell stories about strong independent women, human sexuality, sex work, persuasion and manipulation, mental illness and abuse, income inequality, capitalism and the world’s wealthiest men. I want to tell stories about the sacrifices people make for a chance to achieve the ever-elusive American Dream - to learn if what I’ve gained can ever make up for what I sold…

               I spent my first two months’ stripping money to attend a month-long yoga instructor training in Costa Rica. Becoming a yoga instructor was the best decision I’ve ever made. For over two years in Las Vegas, I taught yoga and wrote during the week. I published a comedy memoir about those years called The Yoga Stripper - it’s available on Amazon.

I’m a yoga instructor; I want to tell stories about spirituality, oneness, discipline, self-acceptance, self-knowledge and self-reverence.

Yoga has taught me that whatever stories I tell, whatever I accomplish in my short time here, whether this writing competition decides I’m special and picks me… or not… it doesn’t matter. There’s nothing outside of myself that could ever complete me; I’m already whole.

What movie do I want to watch?

I want to watch a movie that’s nice. Not complicated. Where everything works out in the end.

I’d like to see a love story where a handsome man meets a pretty girl… or better yet… where an average guy meets an average girl. And there’s nothing special about either of them… because there’s nothing special about any of us when it comes down to it.

Nothing special… only they both have really witty senses of humor… and they like to eat pizza together on the couch and watch cartoons.

And they love each other.

Man would they do anything in the world for each other.

And it’s simple and easy, and they have enough money so they don’t have to worry, but not too much money where they get bamboozled into thinking they’re fancier and more important than they really are.

Not nearly enough money so that the man finds a mistress and the woman gets desperate and poisons his beer… nothing so nasty as too much money.

And they’re HAPPY. Sometimes they’re REALLY very happy. Sometimes they get a little bit sad, but never so sad that it becomes depression. It never gets so real that the couple can’t get out of bed… and all the light leaves the room… and they can’t breathe.

Nothing so bad as real sadness and loneliness… only a little sad… only sad enough so that the good feels special and so they appreciate it more. Only that sort of sad.

And did I say that they love each other?

They LOVE each other. I want to say it again and again and again. There’s nothing nicer than someone you love, loving you back.

And this couple that the movie is about… they go on some sort of quest or adventure. They have some sort of goal that they need to achieve… because it’s not a good story if there’s not a goal… if there’s not obstacles to overcome. But… they won’t be too bad of obstacles… nothing that’ll make me cringe and pause the film and browse around the Internet looking at cat videos until I’ve calmed down enough to continue seeing the obstacles that my couple that I’ve just now created are facing… I don’t know… just obstacles like… the pizza is late one night… and the woman’s sister comes to visit for too long… and the man plays too many video games and the woman would rather play different video games.

But maybe this would work better as a tv show? Cause in TV the couple could never leave the couch… they could stay there together. In a movie, they’d be forced to go outside and gather the hobbits together to destroy the ring with Gandalf or something just as stressful.

Finally, I’d like it to be well written… even though it’s so simple and seemingly uninteresting… the way it’s written will make it interesting. A walk into the kitchen to get some coffee will be infused with such subtext and heart and courage that an audience won’t be able to dream of anything more.

That’s what I want to watch… just something nice.