2015: Books I read

2015

Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys by Viv Albertine

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl by Wendy Jones

Londoners by Craig Taylor

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

Do No Harm by Henry Marsh

Ridley Walker by Russell Hoban

Snakes and Ladders by Dirk Bogarde

Truman Capote by George Plimpton

Cathedral by Raymond Carver

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver

Will You Please Be Quiet, Please by Raymond Carver

Joseph Losey: A Revenge on Life by David Caute

Touching from a Distance by Deborah Curtis

Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig

Possession by A S Byatt

All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

Your Father Sends His Love by Stuart Evers

Our Mother’s House by Julian Gloag

Alfred Hitchcock by Peter Ackroyd

Reds by Ted Morgan

Carol (AKA The Price of Salt) by Patricia Highsmith

The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

Irma Voth by Miriam Toews

Ripley Underground by Patricia Highsmith

The Shaking Woman by Siri Hustvedt

Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith

Seven Miles Out by Carol Morley

Reckless by Chrissie Hynde

Le Pigeonnier by Dirk Bogarde

The Yellow Wallpaper (and 2 other stories) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Miss Brill (and 2 other stories) by Katherine Mansfield

My Dearest Father by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

The Robber Bridegroom (and others) by The Brothers Grimm

As Kingfishers Catch Fire (and other writings) by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime by Oscar Wilde

Wailing Ghosts (and other stories) by Pu Songling

Traffic and The Roots of Honour by John Ruskin

A Slip Under the Microscope and The Door in the Wall by H G Wells

Of Street Pieman (and others) by Henry Mayhew

Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith by Andrew Wilson

A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride

At Hawthorn Time by Melissa Harrison

Ripley’s Game by Patricia Highsmith

The Boy Who Followed Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

Cockfosters by Helen Simpson

The Blunderer by Patricia Highsmith

Suspension of Mercy by Patricia Highsmith

My friend Lucy bought me the book that ended one year and started the next, and she had it signed by the author, with an accompanying sprig of holly denoting its status as a Christmas gift.

I started the year with a hideous bout of flu followed by dumping the Steven Mosby fan, though not for his love of Mosby. As a result of these two events, I read a lot in January – including Londoners, bought for me by the ex (we were together when I read it; exes soon after). He had also loaned me Ridley Walker, a book that was hard to read, hard to love, but worth persevering with. My friend Elaine bought me another hard to read, hard to love book for my birthday: A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing, which she inscribed with the words ‘You told me you would never be able to read this. Go on, challenge yourself.’ I made it. I didn’t hate it.

Four books on the list from this year (the two Bogardes, the Losey biog and the Gloag) speak of a new writing venture: a screenplay about an imaginary event in the life of Dirk Bogarde, based on a story of mine.

Rock biogs feature too. Aside from the brilliant, life-affirming Albertine book, I read Reckless and Touching from a Distance, both loaned to me by Jude, the former after she had reviewed it for the Guardian. Jude also bought me a bunch of Penguin Little Black Classics for my birthday, which accounts for several of the shorter reads in Autumn.

Finally, I crossed Reds and the Capote biog, both started in previous years, off my list.

I met Miriam Toews at the Bookseller Crow and bought All My Puny Sorrows, which I read, loved and found strikingly, deeply moving and helpful. It led me to Irma Voth, but AMPS remains my favourite. The filmmaker Carol Morley and I became Facebook friends after an inspiring interview she gave to Miranda Sawyer at Foyles on the publication of her first novel, and the chat we had as she signed my copy. The suicide of her father formed the basis for Seven Miles Out. She wrote this in my book: ‘Dearest Jackie! You are lovely! Sorry you “lost” your dad too.” She ended by wishing me luck with my writing. I treasure the memory of that night, from my tears as she read the opening pages about her father to the honesty of her answers to Sawyer’s questions and the obviously personal conversation I felt able to have with her. Her words – both spoken and written – had made me feel that I was in the company of a friend.

Todd Haynes is probably my favourite contemporary American filmmaker (it looks like he has taken over from Jim Jarmusch but I am behind on my Jarmusch films so there is still a chance that Jim will regain his place). When I discovered he was making a film version of Carol I decided I should read the book first. The Bookseller Crow ordered it for me. It started an obsession with Highsmith that saw me get through four of the five Ripley books, a Highsmith biography and several other of her novels before the year was out.

2014: Books I read

As I typed out lists of books read, starting below with 2014 and copied from yearly diaries, I realised how many memories were attached to them – to most of them anyway. More than music, it struck me that reading was richly evocative of friendships, relationships, events and obsessions.

2014

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Paradoxical Undressing by Kristin Hersh

Hiroshima by John Hersey

Ragtime by E. L Doctorow

How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer

Perfect Lives by Polly Samson

The Examined Life by Stephen Gross

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

I Don’t Need You Anymore by Arthur Miller

The Fall by Albert Camus

Ten Stories About Smoking by Stuart Evers

Apple Tree Yard by Louise Doughty

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

After the Fire, A Still Small Voice by Evie Wyld

The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner

Serpico by Peter Maas

Collected Stories by James Salter

Desperate Characters by Paula Fox

By Blood by Ellen Ullman

The Paying Guest by Sarah Walters

Bad Behaviour by Mary Gaitskill

An Amorous Discourse in the Suburbs of Hell by Deborah Levy

Pollard by Laura Beatty

Black Flowers by Steven Mosby

Larry’s Party by Carol Shields

I remember crying at my desk in the office I worked in as I finished The Goldfinch. It had been loaned to me by a colleague – a sweet, smart and funny boy. He walked in one morning to see me with my head in my hands, tears sliding down my face. ‘Have you finished The Goldfinch?’ he asked.

I bought Paradoxical Undressing at my local independent bookshop, the marvellous Bookseller Crow on the Hill, run and owned by Justine Crow and Jonathan Main. It was at an event with the author, Kristin Hersh, at the publication of a new book and some music. She played guitar and sang; the shop was packed out, every inch of floor space crammed. It was clear that fans had come from far and wide; I felt oddly territorial, like I wanted to question newcomers. “Can you name three shops on Westow Street? No? Then piss off.” Kristin signed my book and let me take some photos with her; we discussed a mutual friend, Vicky – the first new friend I made at university and someone I saw for the first time since graduation in February of this year, in Grasmere, when she picked me up from a mini writing break and took me to stay overnight at her place in Hornby Castle. Yes, she lived in an actual castle. Well, a house adjacent to it.

There are some new authors on this list, too – by which I mean new to me. Unbelievably, this was my first ever Julian Barnes novel, although I can’t say it inspired me to want to read more. I read Rachel Kushner because of her appearance at another event at the Bookseller Crow, and Pollard came to me from my friend Jude, a book she loved and wanted to pass on. A boyfriend loaned me Black Flowers. I liked the plot more than the writing; and I didn’t love it anywhere near as much as he did. We didn’t last long; our incompatibilities were not just due to our difference tastes in reading matter. But when we first met, I was reading The Paying Guest. I messaged him the day before our first date to say, “I’ll be the one reading The Paying Guest“. After a couple of drinks he said, “I wasn’t sure how I was going to use that to spot you, seeing as how I don’t know what the book looks like. But I do know what you look like.”

Serpico was clearly the outcome of deciding – briefly – to give the unread books on my shelf a go.

I just had to Google the Paula Fox book, having no memory of reading it, of its subject matter or, seeing as how I don’t own it, who might have loaned it to me. The synopsis rang a bell, but there the story ends for me. I’d love to fill in the blanks.

The last full book I read, Larry’s Party, was a gift from one of my drinking, er, writing group. In 2012, 20 or so people formed the inaugural creative writing workshop at the Bookseller Crow on the Hill. Six of us hit it off and started a splinter group once the workshop had ended. We became friends. We see less of each other now, for writing and fun, but we get together for birthdays and weddings and for a Christmas meal, where we give Secret Santa gifts. There are two caveats to the gift-giving: we must give books and they must be bought from the Bookseller Crow. Kirsten had called up, spoken to Karen (our creative writing teacher, novelist, poet and part-time bookseller) who had recommended the Carol Shields. I had loved her short stories, and Unless, which I had read in 2005. I took Larry’s Party to Liverpool with me for Christmas. Reading it over dinner on Boxing Day, the waiter told me his mum had a copy. We chatted about literature for a bit. He reminded me of an absent friend, an old work colleague who had left his job and gone AWOL from the lives of me and my colleagues.

During the year, I also read some of John Cheever’s stories (ploughing my way intermittently through his collected short stories); some of Ted Morgan’s Reds, which I started reading the year before, inspired by having read both E. L. Doctorow’s The Book of Daniel, and Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna – two books that have at their centre the Communist witch hunts of the1950s; some of George Plimpton’s Truman Capote biography; and I began reading Viv Albertine’s Clothes, Clothes, Clothes,  Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys, which leads me to ….

Five years

On 2 October 2011, I pressed my finger on the ‘Publish’ button, and my blog took up its tiny place on the internet.

It was Andrew – someone whose life has taken him out of mine, but who for a short while was significant to me – who suggested I joined him and the thousands – millions – of people for whom the blog had become the modern diary; for many of us it’s no longer possible to have a thought or a feeling or a memory (or a dinner) without sharing it with a world of varying size and interest. My excuse was, I’m a writer now. I must write. And have a home for my words.

I backdated my blog, so that I could include ‘live’ pieces about the scattering of my mum’s ashes which I started in 2009, when she died (The Long Goodbye); of readings at various short story events that had begun with my first ever accepted piece in January 2010 (Short Stories Live and True Storytelling Live); of the first exhilarating steps into publication in March 2010 (Short Stories). And then I added to it, as a way of keeping track of where I had got to, where I wanted to go.

I illustrated it with a photo taken by my friend Sophie in February 2011, to accompany a non-fiction piece I was writing about my fear of poetry, head down, pen in hand, looking like a writer, and I pressed ‘Publish’.

Five years.

The photo has changed. But the one that currently heads the blog is still a few years old – taken at my desk in an office that I left in May 2014.

And so much has left and changed in the five years since I pressed ‘Publish’.

The leavings: in May 2013, a heartbroken uncle, in his eighties and never the same since the death of his wife (my mum’s beloved sister and my much-loved aunt) in February 2011. In January 2014, shockingly and unexpectedly, my cousin Ron – one of my layer of family – the first of our gang of 17 to die. In the space of three years, the mother, father and only child of this branch of my family were cut from my life.

Then, in August 2014, Jim Hillier left, too. It hit me harder than I would have imagined, as I realised the impact he had had on my life. When I thought about how much he had changed it, what he had opened up for me.

It stopped for a bit, the permanent leaving. I may have left some amazing colleagues when I walked out of that office in May 2014, some of them hanging out of the window shouting after me as I tearfully made my way to a weekend in Leeds with another friend and escapee from that particular job, but the leaving was temporary. They are all still in my life, in one way or another. I attended the weddings of Alice and Kellye in June and August of this year. Only this morning, Dominic shared a memory on Facebook about a particularly hilarious time six of us spent as colleagues in Vilnius. My birthday last week was attended by Roberta (previous attendees Elaine, Tasha and Alice being on holiday or honeymoon; Dom now living in Singapore). As Jane prepares to return to Australia, Catharina will join the rest of us to say goodbye to her. Tasha now lives a few streets away from me, Matthew having accused me of drip-feeding her with propaganda about the area throughout the years we sat together in that office. Meeting for drinks, and parties, to eat food, to talk about life and books – all of these things still keep us together, because for a few years we were a perfect storm of colleagues who really liked each other, made each other laugh, spent riotous nights creating memories and hangovers, helped each other through the hardest of times, and so stayed in touch as one by one we leaked out of the cracks in that office.

But the permanent leavings: they’ve not stopped. We all know 2016 has been a bastard of a year; we all know about the high-profile deaths. But it started for me very early in January, when my friend Isabelle died from the cancer that had been discovered only 14 months before. At Easter, my cousin Ken, not one of the 17 I knew well, but one of the 17 nonetheless, died too.

In between that, Bowie. I liked Bowie. Always had. Not exclusively, not always enthusiastically, but he’d always been there; a backdrop, a soundtrack to every part of my life. I simply wasn’t prepared for the way I pinned all my grief onto him. I wasn’t prepared for the way I would become obsessed with having to hear his voice – not so much singing, but speaking. I downloaded podcasts and old interviews and as I wandered the streets of Limerick and Sligo on a work trip a week or so after his death, I listened to his cracked laugh – surprisingly regular and enlivening – and the sadness that slipped into his voice when he talked about his young daughter, about the possibility of not being there as she grew up.

Of course, when I cried about him, I was crying about Isabelle and the daughters she knew she would leave behind. And I was crying for my own past, for the things that I’d lost, or given up, or not taken better care of.

But then there is change. Good change.

New job. New friends to add to the old. Journeys to new places. New spaces in which to write and think and walk and swim and read. To recover and accept and see.

Ten stories published on websites, three in magazines and three in different fiction and non-fiction anthologies. Over a dozen public readings, including true storytelling revelations. A screenplay. An entire, complete screenplay.

The slow overcoming of the fear of the blank page, the blank screen.

And now a blank CD sleeve, courtesy of one of those new friends, a musician who has sent the writers and artists he knows a blank sleeve for his band’s forthcoming new release. All he asks is that we fill it.

And that’s the best thing we can ask of ourselves, of our lives, isn’t it?

Even amidst fierce flames the golden lotus can be planted

It’s been a strange year. The break up of a relationship for which I had reasonably high hopes. A dose of medication (for a seemingly innocuous nasal complaint) that sent me hurtling into my darkness, brakes off, no handrails. Work pressure and deadlines that kept me awake at night despite the nature of the job itself; certainly no lives were being saved. And worse than any of this – horribly, terrifyingly worse – the news that a friend’s cancer had returned and that her life would be over sooner than any of us – least of all her husband and their young daughters – were expecting.*

But amidst those fierce flames, there was something, planted by my dying friend. The realisation that I need to keep reminding myself that whatever life has thrown at me, I am still here. And the ‘here’ that I inhabit isn’t at all bad.

Sure, I’m not  anybody’s favourite – no one loves me best – but I still have wonderful friends with whom to grab a spontaneous drink, or spend a well-planned evening or short break. Sure, my job can be stressful but it’s interesting, and it pays me pretty well; and because I’m not saving lives, just editing words, I’ve adjusted my reactions to the stresses that the job brings. I try to remember the mantra I have used on and off for years when managing colleagues’ own stresses and worries: Nobody dies.

Instead of retreating to my default position of sadness and self-pity when thinking about parts of my life, I now concentrate on what I do have. It’s simple enough. It’s what many people do every day and yet my tendency to depression has often made this a challenge. But now I make a conscious effort to hoodwink the negative sides of my mental health; I work on reducing the doubts and the sadnesses, acknowledging their existence and then replacing them with an open laptop, a book, music, a film, a play, a gig, and human diversion if it’s possible and available.

So, I cherish my rented flat more than ever, planning ways to make it even nicer than it is. I curl up on the sofa or in my armchair and I read like it’s the last day that books will be on earth.

I visit the park near my home. I’ve done this a lot – it’s on my doorstep and is great for showing off the dinosaurs and the lake and the little zoo to visitors. But I realise that although I look at it, I rarely see it. So of late I have taken to immersing myself in Private Passions or Desert Island Discs or Witness, and walking and running around the park, stopping to see my surroundings, eyes open, head up. If it’s a quiet weekend, I might do this more than once a day. It gives me exercise, fresh air and hope. It takes me out of my head, a place I tend to spend more time than is always good for me.

I go on holidays – alone and with friends, for writing or resting or sightseeing; in July I travelled three times in the space of two weeks. I  went shopping and pub-crawling and walking in Dublin with a friend; swimming and reading alone in Dubrovnik. I ended the month with friends in their village near Dusseldorf, playing with their brilliant and boisterous six-year-old. And in between these trips, at home in London, I wrote the second draft of my screenplay. And then I booked a boutique B&B in Howarth for the day after my September birthday, in readiness for draft three.

‘My producer’ – R – and I met the week before my birthday to go over draft two. I knew I had achieved a lot of what he had suggested during discussions of the previous draft. I’d developed some scenes and characters, clarified the plot. I had formatted the script using the proper software. I was behaving like a Professional Screenwriter. But I had ignored other pieces of advice in favour of my original scenes; I thought I had failed to consider properly some minor elements of structure and the role of some of the characters.

And then there we were, outside Nike Town, Oxford Circus. We hugged hello. Then he gave me another hug, because ‘you have an excellent screenplay. One more pass and it’s ready.’ I was speechless. We went to a nearby bar for celebratory cocktails. I drank a Martini Royale, because it seemed apt for the period in which the film is set – the mid-1960s. He fired up a fancy piece of equipment and we went through his script notes. It was mostly positive: some great women characters; I’m apparently good with voices and have a gift for dialogue; the script is moving and funny.

I allowed myself then, as I do here, a semi-humble glow. Semi-humble because I was and still am genuinely surprised and thrilled, but also really, really pleased to be validated by someone who knows what he’s talking about, and I don’t see why I shouldn’t sing about that.

Whilst contemplating our cocktails we looked over the PDF of the screenplay for his comments, and he developed his criticisms. I have an occasional tendency for clumsy exposition; I’ve written ‘the worst scene header’ he has ever read (I’m oddly proud of that); there are ‘too many scenes of DD in nightclubs’ (what? There can never be enough scenes of DD in nightclubs, in my view). He gave me advice, the kind a writer can really act on – to do a series of different ‘passes’ through the script, reading it for different reasons. I have to do a DD pass (resituating this particular character, an act that will also allow me to develop her relationship with the central character and therefore illuminate more aspects of his life). Then there’s the KA pass, making sure that a previously tricky character, one that I had finally ‘got right’, was serving a significant part of the plot. I must do the DB and AF pass, to check that their relationship is cemented, not by adding extra scenes but by ensuring that what does take place between them tells us what we need to know about their life together, and helps to explain the actions of DB.

There are a couple of structural issues to deal with. I rarely find this kind of thing easy, but this time I have a solid base upon which to work, with a currently successful approach to the interweaving of the current and the past.

And so here I am, in Haworth by way of Leeds and Keighley. I have a view of the Bronte parsonage from my window; the moors upon which I take a morning run and an afternoon walk spread out before me like butter, as far as the eye can see. On my first run I listened to Joan Bakewell’s Desert Island Discs. Harold Pinter makes a brief appearance in my screenplay, so listening to Bakewell discuss her affair with him was useful and interesting. She also spoke with passion about ageing and being open to ‘friendships’ (in response to a question about romantic relationships). I’ve always liked her but she became a beacon to me during the course of the show: smart, wise, sensible; a life of the brain and the emotions, lived fully. Zadie Smith and Andrea Levy accompanied me to and from Hebden Bridge. I took the bus up to Heptonstall with the obvious intention of finding Sylvia Plath’s grave. My first mistake was going into the wrong cemetery. I could have looked it up before I visited, but part of me was cherishing the idea of walking amongst the graves and happening upon Sylvia like a longed-for accident.

Instead of relying on the internet, I spoke to my friend Kellye, who visited the grave earlier this year, and she sent photos to guide me. This led me to the correct location, and from there it was easy to find Sylvia. I gasped a little, let a few tears fall, thought about Sylvia and what drove her to this tiny, overgrown grave, with its long dead bunch of red roses strewn across it, at the position where I imagined her belly would be. I thought about my mum and my dad, the dead in my own life. And I let my hand move over the name and the inscription and I let the words seep into my head.

And I came back to Haworth – and I’ll go back to London – to live again in my writing. And it’s where I’ll stay, because it’s something I will always have. Something permanent amongst the necessary and inevitable temporariness of life.

 

*Updated on 9 January 2016. Isabelle made it through a low-key but lovely Christmas at home with her husband, their twin girls and her parents. They were all there when Isabelle died on 3 January.

What we love

CUT TO:

Montage:

INT – VARIOUS HOTEL ROOMS – DAY/EVENING:

A woman in her mid-40s. She looks surprisingly youthful for her age, and immediately we recognise her as someone we want to be or be with: aside from her obvious beauty, we just know, we can tell, that she is clever and funny and kind. This is JACKIE. She is shown in a variety of hotel rooms. In an armchair, on a sofa, on a bed, at a desk. Laptop open, sometimes tapping away, sometimes staring out of the window at the sea or a river, notebooks strewn, half-empty glasses of wine in some shots. Walking around, distracted, looking at Facebook, emails, texts. She examines her face in the mirror. She paints her toenails.

JACKIE (V/O)

I love my writing retreats. For the last couple of years I’ve been heading to British cities to write – mostly to work on my short story collection, but of late to work on the screenplay based on the short story I wrote about Dirk Bogarde.

I’d had the thrill of the original request to write the screenplay; the wine-fuelled, excited meetings, me and Robert, our words tumbling over each other as we imagined it, talking about meaning and inner life, and subtext and themes, considering our dream cast.

I’d had the slightly more prosaic schedule of what to do, and when to do it.

CUT TO:

INT – LIVING ROOM – DAY

JACKIE sits staring at the schedule. We can see a picture of Dirk Bogarde on the top. JACKIE is smiling. We can make out the words in one column: January – write screenplay. We can see out of the window and can tell from the weather that it’s summer.

CUT TO:

INT – LIVING ROOM – DAY

JACKIE sits staring at the schedule. She is no longer smiling. We can see out of the window and can see from the weather that it’s winter.

 JACKIE (V/O)

Looking at that schedule months after receiving it, I was faced with how little I’d done. How I’d struggled with the first set of tasks that preceded the writing of the script. And this was because I was thinking too far ahead, too much in the future; seeing the bigger picture rather than trying to focus on how to get to that; trying to take that massive leap to the end rather than the necessary small steps that comprised the journey.

In the end it came down to this: if I don’t do it, if I let this chance pass me by, if I let another year come and go…

I knew I wouldn’t forgive myself.

CUT TO:

 INT- LIVERPOOL HOTEL ROOM – NIGHT

JACKIE is hunched over her laptop. It’s not going well.

JACKIE (V/O)

Last December, I spent a few days in Liverpool struggling with the film treatment. It’s supposed to demonstrate the structure of the film, scene by scene. I sent something to my producer, and met with him to discuss it.

CUT TO:

INT – MEXICAN RESTAURANT – EVENING

JACKIE and ROBERT are downing mojitos and gorging on tacos and guacamole. A pen and notebook lay between them on the crowded table.

ROBERT

I get the sense that plot isn’t your strong point.

JACKIE

Oh, that’s brutal.

ROBERT

It’s true though, isn’t it?

JACKIE (nods)

Yeah. Yeah. At least you said it with kindness.

ROBERT

So, this is what I’m going to do…

CUT TO:

INT- TRAIN – NIGHT

ROBERT is on the train to Manchester, scribbling away, occasionally looking at his reflection in the train window. Every now and then he looks at JACKIE’s treatment and  sighs.

JACKIE (V/O)

Robert went away with my story and my ideas and what passed for my treatment, and he created a structure to the film that made sense of what I wanted to do. This strucure, based in part on what I had started, but going much further than that, helped me to solve the problem of how to turn this little story into a feature film, with all its necessary character and plot developments and changes.

CUT TO:

Montage of red carpet ceremonies in LA and London. JACKIE appears on red carpet at the Golden Globes, the BAFTAS and the Oscars. We see her laughing with Brad Pitt, who looks clearly besotted with her. George Clooney tries to get her attention. Mark Ruffalo clearly finds her hilarious. She is seen locked in intense coversation with Cate Blanchett and Todd Haynes. We see her rejecting the mani-cam with a withering look. Lipreaders can tell that in answer to ‘Who are you wearing?’ she replies, ‘I’m not wearing a person. I’m wearing a dress. I also wrote a whole screenplay, although I did have some help from a man. Do you want to ask about him?’

JACKIE (V/O)

Yes – awards season came around and I spent too long planning my Oscar/Bafta/Golden Globes acceptance speeches, and not enough time writing. And so I thought, if I don’t do this, if I let this chance pass me by, if I let another year come and go….

CUT TO:

INT- HOTEL ROOM – MORNING

JACKIE sits at a table in her hotel room. There’s a real difference to her approach here. She is focused. There’s no internet action. She is looking at notes, scribbling things out, typing them into a screenplay, consulting one of the many pages marked with notes in one of Dirk’s autobiographies. She drinks water and eats fruit.

JACKIE (V/O)

It’s Easter weekend and I’m in Glasgow. A bafflingly sunny Easter. A swim in the hotel pool, breakfast, and then writing like it was My Job. Several hours of ‘INT – PUB – EVE’ and ‘EXT – PARK – DAY’ before walking and sightseeing and eating and more writing. Yes, like it was My Job.

I had notes, I had the treatment, I had the pages I’d already worked on. I went through the story again, through Robert’s notes, through my own. Whenever I added a scene from the treatment, it was crossed off one of the many pages I was working from. I’d start writing something based on a single line of description, sometimes not sure where it was going or what I wanted to achieve. Then I’d give Dirk a line to say. Then someone else would speak. Dirk would reply. I was writing the conversations and scenes required to illuminate the plot and characters; fleshing out the situations; taking the parallel plots forward. But there was more to it than that. I was creating and developing these characters through how they acted, what they said and – importantly – what they didn’t say.

For other scenes I’d know exactly what I needed to achieve. Sometimes it was as straightforward as the requirement to produce a plot point, get us from A to B, show something that was essential to a later part of the film. Other times it was the more abstract necessity to demonstrate sub-textual feelings, metaphor, the less tangible elements of character and situation.

I had a system to show me where the structure was unbalanced, where to add a  scene, how to make links between situations and feelings from the past and those occuring in the present.

I left Glasgow with over 60 pages of script and nearly every scene crossed off my treatment. Then back home in London I made it to just over 70 pages. And then I sent it off. And I waited. And I waited.

CUT TO:

INT – FLAT – EVENING

JACKIE looks at her phone. There’s an email from Robert: ‘Received screenplay. Will read as soon as possible….’

CUT TO:

INT – FLAT – DAY

JACKIE looks at her phone. There’s a text from Robert: ‘Sorry I haven’t finished reading it yet, I’ve been preparing for Cannes.’

CUT TO:

INT – FLAT – DAY

Another text. This one lights up her face at first, and then she clearly starts to worry: ‘Speak to you tomorrow evening about DIRK? Would 8 be ok?’

JACKIE (V/O)

And then. And then…

CUT TO:

INT – OFFICE – MORNING

JACKIE is at her day job, the morning after ROBERT has arranged to talk to her about the screenplay. Her desk is a mess. She looks at her computer, at the work for the day ahead. Her phone flashes. There’s another message from Robert. It says: ‘You’ve done a great job. Looking fwd to speaking later.’ The relief washes over her face.

JACKIE (V/O)

And we did speak. We talked for an hour and a half. He started with the good stuff – his positive views on the characterisation, on some particularly good scenes, on the dialogue. We talked about who might play the main roles and we got excited and spirited (and yet again I refused even to consider Oscar Isaac). And then we talked about the strucure (still too much of a mosaic in places, leaving scenes too early); about a character whose part in the film is more significant than in the story, and who needs to have his role more defined; about some of the good stuff that needs to be made very good, brilliant, in fact. He thinks I can do that. He’s still cheerleading for me.

I was with him on all of it. There were no suprises in the criticisms. Just some very constructive, very useful advice on how to improve individual scenes, reveal characters, foreshadow events. Some homework to help me solve a key problem. The promise of more detailed feedback and help with formatting. Practical stuff. And the quote of the night: “Jackie, it’s very clear from reading this script that you’ve never seen ‘Our Mother’s House’.”

FIN

Credits: Images and text reveal what the characters are up to now.

Image of Jackie sitting at her desk, laptop open, index cards of scenes stuck on the wall in front of her.

Text: Jackie is currently avoiding working on the second draft until she ‘gets, like, some more detailed written feedback’. But she has clarified some stuff about this newly significant character.

Image of Robert on a yacht in Cannes.

Text: Robert has been in Cannes where he’s been pitching the idea and ignoring Jackie’s advice to look down the back of a millionaire’s sofa for the loose change that would finance the film. He knows best. That sounds sarcastic and it’s not meant to be. He really does know best.