I Gave my Daughter Movie Fame

ROBERT: What kind of stories have you been writing lately? Adventure? Romance? Teaching school?
NOVALYNE: I write down conversations I hear in my journal for practice. Sometimes I try a confession.
ROBERT: You got a lot to confess?
NOVALYNE: It depends, whether I write about what I do or what I think about doing. You know what, though? It still all gets sent back.
ROBERT: What was your last one about?
NOVALYNE: It’s a little hard to explain. It was called “I Gave my Daughter Movie Fame”.
ROBERT: (laughs too loudly) What’d you say?
NOVALYNE: It’s for the confessions. Aren’t those stories always a little bizarre?
ROBERT: (laughs) What’s it called?
NOVALYNE: “I Gave my Daughter Movie Fame”.
ROBERT: Really? And what’s it about? (laughs)
NOVALYNE: I’m not going to tell you until you stop laughing at me.
ROBERT: (stops laughing, motions for her to go on)
NOVALYNE: A woman has an illegitimate child, a daughter. The child is adopted by her aunt, but the mother can’t give her up, so she keeps helping her in secret, and…
ROBERT: (laughs softly) What? (keeps laughing)
NOVALYNE: Eventually she helps her become a movie star.
ROBERT: (laughs softly)
NOVALYNE: Very famous.
ROBERT: (laughs louder)
NOVALYNE: (laughing too) Stop laughing. It’s not that silly, is it?
ROBERT: Don’t pay attention to me. I don’t know a thing about illegitimate daughters or movie fame.
NOVALYNE: Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Well, I haven’t seen any giant snakes or big-busted naked women frolicking through the West Texas hills lately.
ROBERT: Oh, but I have. You look more closely next time.

(later)

NOVALYNE: I try to write about people with ordinary problems. Real people.
ROBERT: Now that’s where we’re different. I write about another age. Another way of life. Man struggling to survive. That’s my formula.
NOVALYNE: Well, you know those tiny farmhouses we passed on the way out? Those are the people I want to write about.
ROBERT: Not me. I can’t write about men who toil long on a farm, get drunk, beat up a wife who can’t fight back. Uh-uh, I can’t write about hate like that.
NOVALYNE: Well just cause you’re poor and you work hard don’t mean you’re hateful.
ROBERT: You’ve lived a sheltered life. You don’t know these people out here; I do.
NOVALYNE: Well, your stories sell, so people must want to read about muscle men who wrestle monsters and girls in skimpy dresses who don’t do a darn thing but sit around and watch.
ROBERT: (scoffs) You stick with me, girl. I’ll teach you about writing. And men.


Raise your hand if you know what that's from. Anyone? Anyone? It's from a criminally underappreciated film called The Whole Wide World. The ROBERT in question is Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan and Red Sonja (played to perfection by Vincent D'Onofrio). NOVALYNE is Novalyne Price, a schoolteacher who wants to be a writer (Renee Zellwegger, after her splash in Jerry Maguire but well before Bridget Jones).

This movie should be required viewing for any spec-fic writer that ever has to mix with the other kind of writer, the kind that writes about ordinary people with ordinary problems. There's a huge gap in understanding there, and it's for me the toughest part of dealing with other writers. They can't understand why you feel compelled to write about things that are impossible, and you can't understand why they feel compelled to write about things that are so implausible. "I Gave my Daughter Movie Fame" actually sounds readable to me. No child abuse or domestic strife or brave struggles against diseases. For me, those are the sorts of things I'm reading to get away from.

I took a creative writing class in high school with a friend of mine who only read books if they were based on a true story, so I became aware of this gulf between writers fairly early on. We would trade what we were working on, and neither of us could come up with anything to say. She couldn't grasp my need to create entire worlds that don't exist, and I couldn't see her need to write about things that didn't show me anything new. We made lousy critique partners, that's for sure.

I still occasionally have to read and comment on stories like these. I still never know what to say. I have a few more social skills than Robert E. Howard, I know I can't just laugh my ass off (especially since I'm writing these comments. LOL with a grinning smiley? Don't think so). And I know the writing is good, there is really nothing I can point at to the writer and say "fix this". It's a conundrum, not at all relieved when I read their comments on my work; clearly they struggle with the same inability to find anything to say. It's worse for me; there are more of them and they all enthuse over each other's work. I'm the only one scratching my head, moaning to myself that it wasn't really about anything.

All I can say is thank god for my spec-fic writing group. Finally I get to critique the cool stuff.