THE HOLLYWOOD RAGE PAGE

Every word Which we have the freedom to use Is a boy Or a girl as fresh as a prom corsage in a pine box In a bone white church That sits high atop a field of markers a million Stars of Bethlehem Many of whom will share the name Unknown. Every word Which we have the freedom to use Is someone’s dream Someone’s child Someone’s love Someone’s pain which the wind has carried off the returning flight of dust and seeds to an unimagincally distant place which is reachable solely by the asphyxiating ache of a parent’s prayer. Every word Which we have the freedom to use is as holy and sanctified as the endless death march miles of desiccated battlefields and lost at sea oceans which stand as memorials constant reminders that words are meant for Declarations of love and independence and Constitutions, Anthems and Pledges of Alleigenace and vows and plays and scientists and philosophers and bibles. There is a reason that our very first word and ou...

The hardest part of being a writer is the juggling of self-sharpened blades as I try to navigate my blindfolded way towards the balance between fantasy and reality. Spoiler alert: there will be blood. Some days it is an effortless act and nary a bandaid is required. But on other days, it’s like my inner director keeps yelling, “cut!” and that is exactly what I do.  Repeatedly. No writer likes to cut anything, but in the college of the mind, it is a required course towards earning the degree of the completed draft. Okay, that is the rather brutal, medieval version of what I do  Let’s look at it through, well, a different kind of lens. The development of a first draft script is like the three trimesters of pregnancy.     First comes the idea of birthing something which inevitably leads to its conception.    I am ready to write the birth of a notion. Once I have been impregnated with the seeds of an idea, the ...