TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 209

[Tobie Shapiro]

April 28, 2000007


Dear Friends and Lovers,

	I am printing out a screenplay that my 
step daughter-in-law has written.  She's entering 
it into a competition for some important prize 
for first time screenplay writers.  There will be 
thousands of entries.  Heather is bright, funny, 
full of personality.  At this point we are closer 
than my step son and I.  We write regularly.  She 
sends me bizarre URLs, strange pictures.  I don't 
know where she finds these things, but she must 
have a list of many friends that she sends these 
things.  I am privileged.  She told me a long 
time ago that she was writing a screenplay, had 
been doing so for a number of years.  The project 
that never dies.  She sent me a document in Word 
for me to read it.  She evidently respects my 
opinion.  She wanted feedback.  But here's the 
deal.  If she's already sent the screenplay in to 
the competition, won't my feedback only frustrate 
her?  "Hey.  There's a huge hole in your plot. 
On the first page, you say Ingmar is 30, which 
has him being born in 1977.  But the things he 
keeps referring to as part of his upbringing 
happened in the early 1960s.  The whole plot 
hinges on it.  You better fix it.  Do you want 
him to be 45?"  How helpful could that be?  Or 
even commentary about the consistency of details, 
personalities, dialect, behaviour, how can this 
be useful to her in any way.  Well, it could if 
she is planning on submitting it to a whole list 
of other possible takers, I suppose.  But 
shouldn't I wait until she hears back from the 
competition headquarters?  Of course, there is 
the distinct possibility that there is absolutely 
nothing to comment on, other than abject praise 
and awe.

	In the writing class I take, Andy, the 
teacher, has a whole system of rules and 
guidelines for offering commentary on someone 
else's work.  It's very intelligent and 
thoughtful.  He handed out a sheet, filled with 
writing, that was solely instructions, 
descriptions, examples of how to and how not to 
give feedback.  The goal is to be wholly 
positive.  This doesn't mean you can't suggest 
something that is critical, but it's in the way 
you frame it.  "I found that on page one, the 
character is drawn vividly.  I could see her, 
sense her, know her.  On page four, it didn't 
work for me as well."  You see?  You show the 
person how she/he has done it right and then 
compare it to something else that you don't think 
is as effective.  And you always personalize it. 
"I felt that . . .",  "For me, the fourth 
paragraph . . .".  Always preface it with 
reference to your own personal opinion, not 
stating it as a general fact.  Avoid, "This 
sucks!" or, "This is garbled."  I intend to use 
these guidelines when I give Heather my feedback. 
The results, if you follow the rules, are a 
useful, undepressing, undeflating,  unhideous, 
undiscouraging presentation of personal 
reactions, suggestions and ideas, which are meant 
to keep the writer writing.  And that's the whole 
point.  Keep the writer writing.  I would have 
appreciated some guidelines like that had been 
imposed on so many of the people, professional 
and otherwise, that have taken a look at my work. 
Okay.  So I was depressed, deflated, hideoused, 
and discouraged.

	Did I ever tell you you write well?  That 
piece really succeeded for me.  Your words work 
hard at their jobs.  Write some more!




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What Was a Terrific Idea

	What plagued me was that I had never been 
able to earn a living, support myself, outside of 
the donated job at my parents' business, 
LABINDUSTRIES.  Even though I did work hard 
there, harder than all the other employees, it 
didn't count.  It didn't count because I didn't 
have to vie for the position against half a room 
full of other applicants.  It didn't count 
because, as the boss's daughter, there were 
certain privileges afforded me that just wouldn't 
have existed in a, "real job".  At no other place 
would I be able to walk in to the boss's office 
during work hours, sit down at a chair, and make 
the boss laugh for half an hour.  At no other job 
would I be invited to go out to lunch with the 
boss and dignitaries from important companies, 
clients, relatives, friends, and not come back to 
work for two hours.  It is true that I put out 
more work than all the other office employees, 
but, still, how long would I have lasted taking 
two hour lunches, elsewhere?  How would some 
other company regard my act on Friday afternoon 
when the clock hit five, I screamed for joy, and 
jumped over my desk to run out into the weekend 
air?

	I worked at LABINDUSTRIES until I could 
pretty much do anyone else's job in the office. 
If anyone needed extra help, or if anyone were 
absent, I could fill in.  I suppose that's 
valuable.  But that didn't count either.  What 
would count?

	If I were getting paid to do the things I 
was good at, it would have counted.  That alone 
would have counted.  I tried thinking of ways I 
could earn my living as an artist, a writer, a 
musician, a zany.  Well, I could always teach 
cello.  And I did for a while.  But the pay was 
miniscule, not enough to get by, and the time I 
spent preparing for each lesson was enormous, a 
few hours writing special exercizes for them, 
composing pieces for them.  That was so full 
grown adults wouldn't get bored working hard at 
playing, "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star," and, "Go 
Tell Aunt Rhodie".  It was not what I loved to do.

	Well, what if I were to get published?  I 
wrote short stories.  They were good.  Shouldn't 
I send them in to magazines?  Yes, indeed, I 
should.  I sent them in to The New Yorker, 
Atlantic Monthly, all the prestigious, high end 
publications whose paid authors were big names in 
the literary world.  Why shouldn't they publish 
my very good short stories?  I'd type up and copy 
a short story, write a cover letter that was eye 
catching, a bit off:

"Dear New Yorkers,
	Enclosed, you will find my short story, 
'Around Eight', which I wrote all by myself. 
Honest.  I would love to be published in your 
magazine.  I've also enclosed a self addressed, 
stamped envelope, as instructed.  Please 
disregard the fact that when you read my name you 
thought, 'Who the hell is this?'  While it is 
true that I am not famous, it is possible that I 
could be one day.  You could help me do that.
	Yours,
	and, let's face it, mine,
	Tobie Helene Shapiro"

	Then I'd sign it, kiss the short story 
sweetly before slipping it into the envelope, and 
send it on its way.  And I'd wait.  I'd wait as 
if my future hung in the balance.  I wouldn't 
move from the spot until I got an answer.  Two 
months down the road, I'd get a letter in the 
mail from The New Yorker, the envelope in my own 
handwriting.  I'd open it, apprehensive and 
firming up my resolve.  The short story would be 
within.  Paper clipped to the story would be a 
small rectangle of letterhead with a form letter 
educating me to the fact that they had no use for 
my story at that time, and thank you for 
submitting it.  They did not add at the end of 
the sentence, "You untalented, worthless cipher." 
But that's what I read.  I would put the whole 
mess, envelope and all, in a stack of random 
papers, crawl away and not submit another story 
to anyone for years.  There was something 
impractical about the way I went about this, but 
I couldn't figure it out.  Getting published and 
earning a fortune was obviously not going to 
happen.

	I produced a pile of very funny cartoons. 
I sent those to the New Yorker, too.  No soap.  I 
drew a few risque cartoons and sent them to 
Playboy.  I didn't even get an answer.  Okay, so 
I wasn't a cartoonist either.

	I had seen the terrible struggle of 
trying to land an art gallery when I was with 
Harry.  I had a sense that without training and 
some degree in art, also minus a few hundred 
slides, I couldn't count on being a famous 
artist.  Ah, the world was so unfair.  It wreaked 
havoc with my non existent self esteem.  So many 
of the people in charge had told me I was an 
untalented, worthless cipher.  It was hard to 
persevere.  So I didn't.  I kept thinking I would 
get the nerve to send in another story.  And once 
every few years I did.  Same results.

	One afternoon, I was sorting through all 
the come-ons and advertisements in the mail.  I 
was contemplating my anonymous state as an unsung 
genius, and I thought of a way to put all my 
talents together in one project that could earn 
some money.

	What if I offered a subscription service 
to people who were just as weary of receiving 
junk mail as I was?  I could guarantee these 
subscribers that a certain number of times a 
month, they would receive in the mail, a short 
story, a work of art, a cartoon, a weird letter, 
music on a tape, something extraordinary, serious 
or hilarious, that I had manufactured myself. 
They would pay for this mail that was guaranteed 
to be wanted, every month, and I would deposit 
the money into the bank.  I had to come up with a 
name for this service.  It should be like many 
long or ridiculous names of the 1970s and 1980s. 
It had to have puns in it, like shops such as, 
"Great Lengths," for a hair salon, "Sew What," 
for a handmade clothing store.

	E. Pizzle, Ink.  Junk Mail Whiplash

	It took hours chortling through Roget's 
Thesaurus and, "Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary of 
Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous Words," to 
flag down all those hard working words.  Just the 
debate alone between spelling it, "mail," or, 
"male," took a hefty chunk of time.

	I had a concept.  I had a name.  I had 
plenty of creative product already done and in 
shape to reproduce.  All I needed was the 
gumption and business sense to launch it.  Who 
would be my subscribers?  It was a terrific idea, 
a great idea.  Too bad I didn't have the gumption 
or business sense to do it.  Beyond that, I 
didn't have the faith in myself.  The fear was 
that for the first time in my whole life, I would 
suddenly run out of ideas.  My pen would dry up. 
My head would get brittle and little shards of it 
would break away.  Maybe my art work wasn't 
reproducible.  Maybe no one would want it.  Maybe 
I'd get back the personal equivalent of the 
anonymous New Yorker rejection slip.  I 
contemplated E. Pizzle, Ink.  Junk Mail Whiplash, 
but that's all I did.  And instead of being 
delighted with myself for coming up with a grand 
idea, I shamed myself for not being brave enough, 
ingenious enough, to carry it off.  I was not 
merely a failure.  I was a dazzling, mind 
boggling failure, because I was so saturated with 
potential that having it unrealized was a joke on 
me.

	I played a joke on me.



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-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net