Wordsmithing In The 21st Century



photo by Mary Beetle Carroll 2011

 Are you one of those people who  have a great story to tell? Do you procrastinate and find reasons not to move forward and get it done?  Well don’t let terrible handwriting hold you back!  Technology was made for you and me!  

We all started out with crayons, chalk and pencils. In the past, the next progression was to a variety of pens: fountain pens, quill pens, fancy pens of exotic woods or precious metals and of course, the ubiquitous Bic.

They all wound up in the desk drawer dried up and obsolete. We all probably went through our parent’s desk drawer with their own collection of pens, matchbooksm pocketknives and other interesting junk. Look at  today’s desk drawer and you will find blank cds, usb cords, sandisks, old mp3 players, and yeah a few dried out pens.

 Next came the manual typewriter; My  grandfather grudgingly let me use his Smith Corona when I had to turn in my first typed paper.  It took me two weeks and I had to redo it five times.  

 

The Apple IIE was the first computer I  bought.  I liked that you could  cut, paste and save your work. It made editing so much easier. I think it was then I was getting an inkling that I would succeed; eventually. It still didn't grammar and spellcheck, though. That would have to wait until the invention of Word Perfect.

 It took me until just a few years ago to start writing stories that I made up. You know; Fiction.  My grammar is so so. I couldn’t give you the parts of speech or diagram a sentence if my life depended on it.   I welcomed the pesky little green and red lines that told me something was wrong.

Things are a bit more complicated writing a script or story on a laptop, but the results can be stunning and fast. I wrote 26 pages of my script this morning in about two hours. There is nothing like being motivated, jazz on the radio and ice cold tea to drink while I  write my masterpiece. I easily type over 100 hundred words a minute on a computer, can make corrections on the spot and can globally  replace a word with another.  The ability to be awesome has come to my desk.

My "masterpiece" is a story about my grandmother who was a teenager during the Mexican Revolution. She used to tell it to me when I was a kid.  It is about the day she met the most famous person she would ever meet. It has been stuck in my mind for 2o years waiting to be let out.  That time is now.  Taking a course in scriptwriting is giving me the confidence to write this script.

Writing this script is a means for me to honor my grandmother and family with a story that tells our story but would still be entertaining and uplifting even to strangers. Themes of hope, despair, love, perseverance and survival are universal and we all cheer when the bad guy gets it, justice is served and the good guy gets the pretty girl.

 I want to make people feel like they are actually there and to feel the things the characters in my script and movie feel. The only thing I need to do now is check the stars and make sure I have the backing of the universe and I think I will…! I can see it now: "Coming soon to a theater near you "Lemonade and Justice."  A young girl finds love, finds justice and keeps her family together when her father is murdered by an unscrupulous employee in a Mexico wracked by civil war.....