LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL

I am sitting on my bed in a snowstorm, reflecting on the brilliant writing of the pilot for Lessons in Chemistry on Apple TV, and how it only begins to show the arc of complexity that a singular life can have.

I am thinking how it’s hard to write without getting lost in the character, but that that writing a screen play forces dialogue and pacing of interwoven characters and plot.

I am thinking about how incredibly strong the themes spoke to me, moving me to tears when the protagonist in a more patriarchial gender disqualification role is validated in her colleague.

She walks in at the pinnacle of her tv show fame, confident, decisive, and obviously in charge. 

We see her next, in her past, working as an overqualified lab assistant who also serves as 50s housewife, making coffee and cleaning up, while being excluded by her male peers and only able to work

She exists in the best version of her self within her limits until she intersects with a valuable but difficult colleague, and together they offer a better world than on their own. 

There are flashbacks, though, and the show ends in her fleeing this new arrangement based on fear propagated from a previous yet to be defined, but clearly traumatic event.

In between there is a meeting of the minds, and the chemistry of a man and a woman seeing and valuing each other in a beautiful relationship that makes me crave more. There are sweet endings (how does she get out of an obligatory beauty contest at work that only objectifies the women further) and gorgeous food, and a burgeoning relationship that is bound to get beautiful and messy. The themes run deep and the chemistry is gripping. What happens next is the brainchild of talented writing, and I am hooked! How do I take my ideas, and transform them into something resembling that?

I can’t quite get the pacing and the tension, but I was sitting here on my bed, singing The First Noel from the pages of a Christmas magazine where I made notes about the epiphany cake that I just made last night. We have visitors, and Rebecca is being a good sport in a curtainless living room on a pullout couch. Meanwhile our guests came, and realized that one is highly allergic to our cat, despite us living in an apartment within our house, with the litter underfoot in the bathroom, and the living room and dining room off limits. In my head, and some of my correspondence, I carry the impending death of a woman I spend 4 hours trying to save the day before yesterday, and the myriad complicated patients that I left behind. 

Surely that story could be just as interesting, if I could just write it! 

IDEAS: 

Write as a screen play (simplified but strong dialogue, scenes present but not written advancing plot)

State the obvious, brilliantly

Find an object to carry through (pencil)

Create a cast for my favourite characters

Don’t be limited by typical life. Write an extraordinary

Create chemistry

Think sound, visual, (smell)