My Moment in the (Tuscan) Sun
The realization of dreams always looks different from the other side. From the dreamer’s side. As a little girl, as a teenager, I wanted little in this world more than to have a book published. Let’s be quite clear: I had no clue what this book would be about. But somehow I thought that If I managed to have a book published legitimately, my life would be complete. I would have, quite definitively, arrived.
I didn’t really remember these very clear thoughts that chased me and motivated me for a number of important years in my life, until last night. Until I went through the mail, and opened a large envelope sent in from England. In it was my fully executed book contract for the book tentatively titled What To Expect When You’re Building A Screenwriting Career, to be published by Michael Weise Productions.
Looking at the contract – a few legally driven pages of content – sitting on my bedside table, I was reminded of a moment inUnder The Tuscan Sun. It comes at the end of the movie, after Frances fought and won her battles against loneliness, owls, and a big old Italian house. Earlier in the movie, defeated at the end of one such battle, she laments to her friend that this was not what she wanted for her life. Fast forward to the end, a wedding and start of a feast taking place at her house. Her friend, Martini, reminds her: You said you wanted there to be a wedding here. And you said you wanted there to be a family here.Frances answers You’re right. I got my wish. I got everything I asked for.
The message? It may not look how we thought it would look, how I thought it would look back when I was a starry-eyed teenager to get a book deal, or what Frances thought it would look like when she first dreamed of filling that house with a wedding, with a family… But just because it doesn’t look like we thought it would look, doesn’t take away from the powerful, down-to-earth, every day realization of our dreams.
So last night, as far as I am concerned, I got what my six-year-old son would enthusiastically call a double gift: My very own Business of Screenwriting book deal, which will allow me to share with so many writers years of screenwriting-centric industry-relevant knowledge I’ve gathered. And, no less important, a reminder of just how powerful the medium that we are all working in can be, whether it makes us laugh, or cry, rips out our hearts, takes us on a journey, teaches us wisdom or crystalizes the meaning of a powerful moment in our lives.
It was indeed a lovely moment in the (Tuscan) sun.
