Joe Eszterhas comes clean Part II

On Wednesday, I had the privilege of interviewing Hollywood
screenwriting legend Joe Eszterhas whose memoir "Crossbearer: A Memoir of Faith" offers a candid glimpse of how the writer of the scripts for "Basic Instinct" and Showgirls" had his life transformed by God.


KH: In the things that you’ve written in the past, had you learned as much about yourself as you did this time?


JE: No. For many, many years — my backrgound — I came to this country when I was six years old. My first six years were in refugee camps (in Hungary), and then I grew up on the west side in a very blue-collar, back-alley kind of way. I got into a lot of juvenile trouble. I got into very serious juvenile trouble and almost went to jail.
From there, I started reading at a certain point and thought I could be a writer. I went from there into journalism. Most of the things I wrote about as a journalist, I was a police reporter, I was exposed to lots of shootings, violence and bloodshed. . . .I was exposed to lots of shootings. . . .what I was exposed to on a day to day level was this starkest, kind of violent reality. I became interested in serial killers and the moment that sets off a violent spree.
It’s that same kind of darkness, I explored in most of my films — not all of them. I’ve written films like “Big Shots” and “Musicbox” and a little movie called, “Telling Lies in America.” The ones I’m best known for certainly all came out of a very dark place. That’s where the stories came from.
What happened from that day in 2001, when I sat down on the curb and sobbed and asked for God’s help, I literally did come out of that darkness into a light I’ve never been in.
That’s why I said it’s very difficult to explain to someone who hasn’t lived it what God’s presence in your heart means. It’s a completely transformative view of the world. Thats the overwhelming, biggest sensation.

K.H.: What kind of reaction do you expect from the folks in Hollywood when this comes out?

J.E.: There’s a part about Tony Blair that I write in the book. . . He didn’ t like to talk about this faith — he’s a man of deep faith —because he thought that he would be viewed as “a nutter.”
I read that and I thought, “That’s it. He’s my fellow nutter.”
Everybody’s going to think I lost my mind. I don’t care. I’m very blessed to have what happened happen to me. In terms of the world’s reaction, those people who have been touched by God somehow in their lives will understand exactly what it is that I’ve gone through and am going through. I’m still a baby Christian and want to learn more about my faith. Those who’ve been touched will understand that, and those who haven’t will say, “Okay, that man has had obviously some sort of nervous breakdown. It doesn’t matter if he says he’s happier than he’s ever been, or he’s more fulfilled, and his priorities have been rejuggled and he feels more alive than he’s ever been.”

K.H.: About your ‘Joe on the Curb’ moment that you had, what made it the Christian God that you turned to? Is it because of upbringing?
J.E.: I think it is. My mom was very religious. My father worked for a Hungarian Catholic newspaper in Cleveland. As a boy, I was an altar boy, the religion was all around me as I was growing. I think what happened — when we look back and it’s probably over simplified — I was very close to my mother when I was a boy. She became a schizophhrenic when I was 13, and from there on, she was mentally ill and I believe that I was terribly wounded by that relationship.
(Her schizophrenia) was never treated because she spoke Enlgish language with the greatest difficulty. She was a very shy, very inward woman. From one day to the other, she stopped talking to me. I was really wounded. I really prayed and asked God to help her, to first of all help her, because of some of the manifestations of her schizophrenia I was seeing, and I saw the pain she was in and also to help me in that relationship with her.
I think I was so heartbroken that the classic cliche manner, I turned against God, and as I got older, that turning against God, that hostility turned into feeling God as completely irrelevant to my life.
So, I think that.
Then the other factor I think that brought me to the Christian God — a fact that I don’t write about enough in the book — that opened me up to the possibility of this kind of experience is Naomi (his wife) is very religious and has a deep faith in God.
You know, while we always disagreed about it — when the boys were little in Malibu and she would take them to church, I would make bad jokes about staying and home and praying to St. Mattress of the Springs.
She was very strong in her belief. I scoffed at her like I scoffed at Christian belief in my writings and my attitudes, but nevertheless it was there.
I adore my wife, and she has a profound influence on me — she always had. She’s my partner in all ways. I gained a respect for her faith and for her values and the big reason when we moved back to Cleveland from California, from Malibu, was we wanted to raise the kids in a way where their values weren’t “Malibu Values.” I still didn’t have any kind of faith in my life. I certainly didn’t have any belief in God. Nevertheless, that decision, looking back on it in retrospect had to do with the kids’ values.
It opened me up to the possiblity up to that kind of God experience. I think it was Naomi’s presence in my life and how much I respect her.

K.H.: Now, you have to realize — I’m sure you realize — that as soon as this book comes out there’s going to be some Christians that are going to say “Joe is doing this because it’s just another way to make money.” What do you say to those people?
J.E.: Well, look, I’ll say a couple of things in answer to that. One, to go through throat cancer and the pain of throat cancer, not being able to speak, having a trache for almost a year in my life, that’s a pretty stiff price to pay if what you’re going to look at is how you can sell a book.
The thing that really caused me, when I sat on that curb, it was the first time in my life where I felt like I couldn’t do something by myself. That I needed help.
I’ve always been a control freak most of my life. My parents were immigrants and didn’ t know this country. I was put into a position as a child of sort of translating America to them and helping them make decisions about living in this country. I was pretty much controlling, I took pride in that. I was a big kid.
I got into lots of fights in Hollywood with people who sort of tried to mess with my writing or with an agent who tried to put me out of business.
I took great pride in being able to settle my own issues, one way or another.
What happened on that curb is I realized I needed help. I couldn’t do this. What I couldn’t do is overcome my addictons. They told me if I didn’t overcome my addictons I’ll die — if I didn’t stop smoking and drinking immediately.
I knew I couldn’t do that by myself. I’d done it so long. These were my crutches I’d always turned to.
I was the classic case of the functioning alcoholic. I knew I couldn’t do this by myself. Utterly desperate I surprised myself by hearing myself asking for God’s help.
The other thing I would say in response to that is I’m not sure Hollywood views anything in greater disdain than someone who is avowedly Christian, let alone someone who says, I’ve written 16 movies and I’ve been in this 30 years, and I don’t care what you guys think, but I’ve had an experience with God in my heart and I want to tell the world about it. There are risks, and I knew and I allude to the fact in the book that it doesn’t matter if I destroy my filmwriting career because I’m telling the world about what happened to me that day on that curb and the importance that God has taken in my day-to-day life.
I will risk that because I made a promise to God, and I intend to make good on that promise.

K.H.: Do you still find your addictions a day-to-day battle?

J.E.: Um, no. I find smoking a much more — if I walk down the street and I smell somebody smoking —it doesn’t turn me off.
I actually like it.(laughs)
I was in Hungary researching a film with Naomi in about 2004 or early 2005. It seems like everybody in Hungary smokes. The entire area smells, and Naomi is saying, “That’s really awful,” and I say, “Yeah that’s really awful,” and meanwhile I’m trying to breathe some of it in, you know, because it smelled so good. (laughs again)
I thank God, and I think it’s only because of God’s presence in my heart that I’ve had the strength to resist it. I think the only reason I have been is because God is helping me do it.

K.H.: What’s next for you?

J.E.: I’d like to write a film or a TV thing that’s faith-based. I’ve tried two things. I tried to get involved in a script about St. Paul, and they didn’t want to hear it. I wrote a lengthy outline for a TV series called “Saviors,” which would have been about a sort of gritty and urban — but holy — priest that gets involved totally in the lives of this community. He has some serious issues with the diocese in terms of his views on what the church should do. I thought it was sort of different, devout, but edgy kind of TV series with really interesting characters.
My agents and eveybody took it out on an auction to all the networks — Lifetime, ABC, NBC. Everybody turned it down.
I’d like to find something that’s faith-based that could be made as a film. One of the conclusions I’ve come to in terms of the faith-based material I’ve tried to sell, in my experience in the business, is there really is an anti-Christian bias in Hollywood. Even after the successes of the “Passion of the Christ” and “Narnia,” both movies are overwhelming, huge successes, they don’t want to make faith-based entertainment.Even in the remakes, everything is being remade these days, but those big successful movies of the 50s and 60s . . .those aren’t remade.
Imagine what the parting of the Red Sea would look like with digital effects. I would be willing to bet anything that if the “10 Commandments” was remade and recast as a big epic with digital technology that would be a worldwide, gigantic hit movie. But they’re not going to do that.
I think it’s going to be difficult, you know, to get anything made. Before it’s all over, I’m 64, I’d like to write a couple films that are faith-based that don’t have the dark prism that most of my other films have had.
The other script I’ve been working on for two years, I’m working on a thriller about the drug enforcement administration. I’m doing it with their blessing. What they do is really heroic because they keep the huge, overwhelming drug traffic that comes into this country down as much as they can and really in a day-to-day war.
With their blessing and cooperation, I’ve done a lot of research in the past year and a half and looked at files and videotapes and all of that.
Jack Nicholson is potentially interested in playing the lead. I’m still working on it. I’m hoping that sooner, rather than later, we get it into the production pipeline and get it made.
The other thing I want to do that is very important is I would raise my four boys and focus on what’s going on in their lives. They are from 14 down to 8. One of the reorientation of my priorities, is I’m much more focused on family and making sure the weekends, I turn into a roadie. All I do is transport kids to basketball games. Much of the rest of the week I’m going to McDonalds . . .picking up lunches.
That’s the way life’s supposed to be and I think those are the values we came back here for. Those are the values, thanks to God’s grace, I have rediscovered.
"Crossbearer: A Memoir of Faith" by Joe Eszterhas will be released by St. Martin's Press on Tuesday, Sept. 2. Pre-order from Amazon.com today!

Eszterhas comes clean

It's a far cry from "Basic Instinct" and "Showgirls."

Yesterday, I had the privilege of talking to Hollywood screenwriting legend Joe

Eszterhas, whose memoir "Crossbearer: A Memoir of Faith" will be released by St. Martin's Press next month.

In the memoir, Eszterhas pours out his soul to readers about how his fledgling relationship with God formed out of the helplessness he felt struggling with throat cancer and the ultimatum given to him by his doctors -- quit drinking and smoking or die.

Eszterhas also explores how his relationships with members of his family have impacted his ever-changing relationship with the unchanging God.

Here's a snippet of our conversation:

.

K.H.: What was your impetus for writing the book?

J.E.: Well, the sole impetus and the only impetus was that, you know if you want to put it in almost Hollywood terms — and they aren’t the right terms — it’s almost like I made a deal with God. I said in the beginning I was loathe — as I explained in the book — of even asking God to help me in terms of saving my life because I felt, how do you presume in a situation where I haven’t really thought about God in 40 years — and God hasn’t been a part of my life — to suddenly presume a relationship.

It was difficult for me to even put into language in terms of how to speak to God. I say the “Our Father” because it’s my favorite prayer and I say the Rosary, but I wanted to devise my own lexicon, my own glossary, of speaking to God directly. I quickly began praying during my walks. I walked very quickly after my cancer surgery, and I walked a lot. I’ve walked for seven years.

The walking became kind of a prayer, and I came up with my own way of approaching God. It was very, very difficult to do that.

I gradually formed my own way of speaking to God. I said to God, “If you help me I promise I’ll

tell the world about this.” I know who I am and I know that I’m a public figure. God not only helped me in terms of my addictions.

He ultimately saved my life; God changed my life completely. I get up in an entirely new way each day and each morning. It’s very difficult to explain to someone who doesn’t have God in his or her heart what it means to have God in your heart.

From that moment I got up off that curb, I felt the presence of God. I felt God in my heart. It changed everything in my life. It changed my relationships, it changed literally the way I view the world. So the book was a thank you, and I felt that I have told the world, and I’ve done to the best of my abilities what it means to have your life transformed by having God in your heart.

It was very difficult to write because the tone was very tough. I started and made the first attempts to write it in about 2003. I couldn’t write for a couple of years because writing was too tied into my addictions. I started smoking when I was 12 and drinking when I was 14 years old.

Through the years, I chain smoked while I wrote, but I also started drinking while I wrote. I drank, and I would sip coffee with cognac, but then I gave coffee up then I’d start sipping white wine or gin or something like that. Then suddenly, to be deprived of all that, I just couldn’t write.

Then when I finally did in 2003, I started making attempts at the process of saying thank you. The tone wouldn’t come together. It just didn’t combine itself. So for awhile I just took notes. I kept going back to it and back to it. I think in about 2005 or 2006, I started writing it.

Around 2007, I had a finished first draft. My agent lives in London and comes to visit me in Cleveland each year. We go out and watch a couple ball games and stuff and I said, “I’ve written this book.”

He said, “That’s not the way it’s supposed to work. The way it works is you tell me you have an idea and I go to publishers and I get you a deal to write a book.”

And I said, “If I’d have done that, everyone would have thought I’d lost my mind.”

He said, “What’s it about?”

I said, “It’s about God. It’s about my relationship with God and the importance of God in my

life.”

He said, “Really?” and cocked his eye, and he said, “It’s not exactly a Joe Eszterhas book.”

I said, “Well, it’s certainly not what people would expect.”

He took it to the publisher of my previous book. There’s an editor there named Elizabeth Beyer, whom I liked a lot. Elizabeth read it in its first draft. She liked it. She wasn’t knocked out by it. But she liked it enough to challenge me to deeper to go into areas she thought I’d avoided. . . .I get a couple of really strong new drafts, and I thought that her advice was very, very good and the book improved.

I dedicated (the book) to my mom and Naomi (Eszterhas' wife) because my mom became a central character. Even in the scenes where she’s not there, I felt her presence in the background. The final book finally came together totally after all of that time and with Elizabeth’s help.

I gave the book to Father Dan and Father Bob just to make sure for accuracy’s sake and for advice. They both truthfully challenged me further in the ending part of the book — with moments of doubt and pain, faith and belief — came out of the suggestion that Father Bob said:

“We all have our doubts and we all have our moments of doubt and pain. I think if you could get into your heart and write about that, that a lot of people could identify with that and it would help them.”

It went through that kind of process. I thought that process ultimately made it better as well. We were finally done. Naomi read it, and she hugged it. (Laughs) She’d never hugged any of my books before.

K.H.: Did you learn anything about yourself while you were writing it?

J.E.: Oh, yeah. I learned a lot because the entire period of this time was time of discovery and rediscovery of myself and my values. By putting this down in writing it was almost cathartic.

Certainly in terms of everything about my mother and my dad and my daughter and my biological daughter — one of the things that happened to me throughout the course of the past seven years — I think my heart opened and my ability to love blossomed. I think that was accentuated even by the process of putting it down into writing and by the book itself. By describing what was happening to me and going through that writerly plumbing process to try to find the right words for what I was going through, even accentuated the experience of itself, of what I was going through.

It became a twofold kind of blessing.

The presence of God in my heart and writing about that presence made me contemplative and reflect on it. . . . .One of the things I discovered, and I think it’s in the book, is in the course of writing 16 films in 30 years as a screenwriter, there’s a tendency to view heroism in very dramatic larger-than-life, action-hero, big-screen terms.

What I realized going through this process is that true heroism is in the lives of ordinary people.

People like Noreen (a family friend about whom Eszterhas writes in the memoir) who’s been fighting cancer for 12 years. That cancer has gone through God knows how many parts of her body. It’s an endless and horrible fight that she’s waged for a long time with unbelievable bravery. It’s like going out to the next well . . .we’ve worked out the liver and now it’s going to the lung. Now we’re going to work this out.

We work this out as prayer and faith as her constant, as she moves to the next step.

That’s mind-boggling heroic.

My biological daughter — my granddaughters — have this thing called mitochondrial disease. Susie fights a fight every day — day to day — to make their lives better in a non-stop manner. Her entire life is devoted to that. That’s truly heroism, I think. These are little things, but all big things that I’ve learned through the coarse of this.

Coming tomorrow: Eszterhas talks about how "Crossbearer" came from a different place in his heart than the scripts for "Showgirls" and "Basic Instinct" and what kind of reaction he expects from Hollywood when his memoir is released.

Thick skin is in

Feedback...it's a necessary evil.

Recently, I shared my entire manuscript with an agented writer in an attempt to get some good feedback. I asked her not to spare the red ink.

Be brutal, I told her. Be honest, I implored.

And she was...incredibly, refreshingly, wonderfully honest. Halfway through my mss, she sent me an e-mail regarding issues she saw with my scene goals/story goals. The voice, setting and stuff like that are your strong point, she told me, but she explained in excrutiating detail the problems she saw regarding the clarity of my scene/story goals.

The close of her e-mail, "Talk to you soon (I hope)," made me grin, but she told me in a subsequent e-mail that she was generally concerned about my reaction to her honest feedback.

But I asked for honesty. I asked for brutality.

Apparently, some writers don't like honesty.

My question is: What good is it to ask for feedback on a project if we disregard what we're being told? It's quite all right to send out a mss to a crit group and hope for them to come back with feedback like, I love it! Don't change a word! But if it isn't honest, feedback will do no darn good.

I know developing a thick skin to less-than-rave reviews from our crit partners is easier said than done. (I'd rather get them from my crit partners before publication than from the Washington Post afterward.) It's okay to sulk, cry, stomp around, get angry (although it's more productive to take your dog/cat/fish for a walk) to clear the emotions conjured by negative feedback BUT we should be grateful to our crit partners for taking the time to give us feedback.

After all, we asked for it.

* * *
Thanks JC -- you're awesome!

Phoner with a Hollywood legend

I'm interviewing Joe Eszterhas!


Joe Eszterhas found fame writing the scripts for movies like "Basic Instinct," and "Showgirls." Not long ago, however, he found himself struggling with cancer and addictions that were stealing his life.


He turned gave his life to God, and recently penned a new book called, "Crossbearer."


I felt a strong connection to Joe's plight in reading this book.

Look for more about later on this week!

Proof

A friend of mine once told me everything we endure as humans is either God sent or God used. I believe her. I have proof.

One night two summers ago, I sat in the garage at my house talking to a different friend about how God used the experiences with the deaths of my paternal grandmother and maternal grandfather to teach me something about myself. (I blogged about the experience here.) The friend told me I was really lucky to have such insight on how quickly God worked in my life even though it took 10 years.

"Many people wait a lifetime for hindsight to become so clear . . . for the bad things that happen to us to have a purpose," he said.

Little did he know, God was about to work that miracle on him, too.

Months earlier, he had been in a serious car crash that broke his back. After a night of partying, he lost control at a high speed on a patch of ice on a desolate stretch of highway. His car rolled, but luckily, his amp -- a very heavy projectile at that point -- stayed in the back seat. He could have been killed.

Instead, he spent time in the hospital recovering, and when he finished, his friendship with my husband and I solidified through music. The night I told him about my grandparents, he confronted me about my husband's drinking. Because of the accident he endured, he brought up his concerns about my husband's safety when he drank and drove. Essentially, he removed the blinders from my eyes and allowed me to see my husband's problem. Before that, I'd been an enabler.

Without that conversation, I wouldn't have intervened with my husband's drinking. Without the accident our friend endured, he wouldn't have brought it up.

When I pointed this fact out to him several months later, he looked at me like I'd socked him in the stomach. Not steady in his own faith walk yet, I'm not sure he believed the providence of what occurred or whether he just chocked it up to coincidence.

To me, however, it was proof .

Tales from the human pin cushion

One of my mother's favorite sayings is, "You can't get blood from a turnip."

Well, as it turns out, you'll have a hard time getting blood from her youngest daughter, too.

My doctor ordered a series of blood tests last weekend. He's baffled by my inability to lose weight and wants to rule out insulin resistance. Testing for insulin resistance is a fairly simple procedure, he told me. You have your blood drawn at the hospital, and then they will have you drink an orange substance. Two hours later, they'll draw blood again.

Piece of cake, er, no, that's too much sugar. Piece of turkey, right?

Yeah, that's what the lab techs thought, too.

But I'm a complicated girl. When I had blood drawn before my wedding, it took seven needle pokes before they found a vein willing to give up blood. Finding a vein for the IV was the most painful part of the labor/delivery process when my youngest was born. At one point, I thought I wouldn't be able to give birth because they couldn't find my veins.

I've been warned by nurses and lab techs everywhere not to ever, ever, for the love of God and my own body, donate blood at the Red Cross. Shucks, and I have O Negative blood.

They use itty bitty needles for my tiny, tiny misplaced veins that like to like to roll away and escape. And if, by chance, a lab tech catches one, it's rare to see it give up more than a few drops of blood.

I give props to the gal who drew my blood at the hospital on Saturday. She found a good vein -- by my elbow -- on the first stick. (I'm actually talking about my elbow, the back of my arm, not the elbow pit.) Unfortunately, two hours later, another lab tech wasn't so lucky. After poking me in two separate areas and listening to me tell her four times that most lab techs get lucky finding veins in the backs of my hands, she called in the girl who successfully drew blood the first time.

This lady took one look at me and shook her head. "Don't take this the wrong way, Kathryn, but I was hoping you'd be gone before I got back from lunch," she said with a laugh.

No offense taken. I'd hoped that I'd be gone by the time she got back from lunch too.

She didn't have as much luck the second time around. Even looking higher up on the same vein, she scored only a droplet of my pulsing lifeforce. She discovered a good-looking vein on my left index knuckle, but that just sounded too painful even for her to chase. So, after two unsuccessful sticks, she handed me off to another lab tech who finally found success . . . in a vein on the back of my hand.

At least I got a Snoopy Band-Aid for my trouble.

The freak of the week

My husband calls me a freak of nature. I know it sounds mean, but I believe him.

For almost three years now, I have been making a desperate attempt to lose weight.

I know, I know. Big deal. Everyone struggles with body image issues.

Not quite the way I do. Three years ago, I made the decision to get fit and lose weight. I want to be around to see my kids, grandkids, great-grandkids. Given my genetic predisposition for heart problems, I needed to start my fitness regimen sooner than later.

So, I went by the book and started with an easy 20 minutes a day on the eliptical. I worked my way up to 25, 30, then 35. Eventually, I was alternating between 45 minutes a day on the eliptical and walking 4.5 miles outside. Not only that, but if I stuck something in my mouth, I wrote it down and tallied the calories at the end of the day.

Unfortunately, the scale didn't budge. My muscles tightened and grew, and I figured I'd eventually start seeing the fat fall off my body. I knew my metabolism had raised because I would eat, and my stomach would growl with hunger no more than an hour later. But after 18 months of gaining muscle and not dropping any fat, my curiosity piqued about what exactly was happening.

So, I went to a doctor and had them perform a "metabolic breath test." The 10-minute test measured my calorie usage through respiration. I received a printout that told me I needed to eat . . . are you ready for this? 2,500 calories TO MAINTAIN my current weight. Have you ever eaten 2,500 calories? It's a lot. According to my notebook in which I wrote down my food consumption, I struggled to reach 1,800 calories in a day. Plus, I was burning another 350 during my workouts.

And yet -- like the zipper on so many pairs of my jeans -- the scale refused to budge. Why wasn't I losing weight?

Yeah, now you know why my husband calls me a freak of nature.

Tomorrow, I'll tell you about my visit to the lab last weekend and why I've been told NEVER to show up at the Red Cross to donate blood.

The shadow of the Arch

Once upon a time, a little girl made a long journey to the big city. It was her very first trip to a big city. Staying at the duplex her aunt and uncle rented in a suburb, she tried to obey her mother's warning.


Stay close. This is a big place, and you never know who's out there.

The little girl tried, but the temptation to explore this new world -- where folks came in a wonderous variety of colors and everyone spoke English but talked funny -- overwhelmed her. She ventured just outside her aunt and uncle's yard toward the front of the duplex, where a young woman sat on the front porch smoking a cigarette and drinking something in a red plastic cup that reminded the little girl of the drinks served at Pizza Hut.


She greeted with woman with a friendly hello.


The woman, who barely looked as old as the little girl's 18-year-old big sister, offered a friendly greeting back and asked her who she was.


The child introduced herself and explained, "I'm visiting my aunt and uncle with my parents. Do you live here?"


"I do," she said as a man her age stepped onto the porch and sat next to her.


The little girl greeted him and asked if he lived there, too. He said yes but seemed more pensive than talkative to the girl.


"Are you married or boyfriend-girlfriend?" she asked with a sly smile.

The man and woman exchanged amused glances. It seemed as if they'd been asked this question before and didn't know how to respond.

"Neither," the woman answered.

Just then, the little girl's mother stepped around the corner of the house and scolded her for wandering out of the yard. After all, it's a big place and you don't know who's out there.

So, the child followed her mother back to the yard and to the house. The little girl allowed the chance meeting to dwindle in the back of her mind. During her long hours in elementary and junior high school, she wondered about that woman and her relationship with that man. She allowed herself to conjure fantastic stories about why they lived together but weren't an item.

By the time the little girl started high school, she began writing down ideas about those two strangers she met in the big, beautiful city. She even thought about the paths their lives took them on after that chance encounter. The woman recognized him as her dark knight. He recognized her as his muse. They fell madly in love, but they didn't live happily ever after.

The tale became tragic. One that must be told. One with a moral...

And that moral?

Don't let your children wander out of your sight in a big city because they might spend the next 28 years dreaming up absurd stories about the strangers they meet!

I have to admit, though, I am still curious about the woman and man with whom I had this conversation.

Going postal

I mailed my manuscript today to an agented writer friend in Pennsylvania. I need feedback from other novelists. I hope my adventure at a local postal center earlier today when I tried to mail it isn't any indication as to the feedback I may receive from her.

I'm a believer in hard-copy edits. I don't like sending enormous files online. So, when I mailed my hard-copy, I sent an SASE with it so my friend could send it back to me all covered in red ink. ;-)

I tried to explain to the girl at the counter, "I need equal postage for both envelopes."

I figured they'd sell me stamps because the last I checked, that's the only postage they sold.

But...they metered both envelopes.

I said, "No, I need stamps for one of the envelopes because you can't send a letter metered in one state from an address in another state."

She looked at me like I'd gone round the bend. This was after I explained to her that it was an SASE. She said in a duh voice, "It's postage. You can send metered mail wherever."

I said, "I know, but the woman who is getting this is going to mail it back to me from Pennsylvania with this envelope so it has to be paid for with stamps and not metered because the postal service has restrictions on how meter labels are used."

I finally just told her I needed $5.05 worth of stamps on one envelope and the metered postage could remain on the other. She fulfilled my request, but not without looking at me like I was committing a felony.

Lord, deliver me from the mail...

Travel the gravel

Whoa! Did I freak you out?

Did you log on today and say, "Wait a minute! This isn't Kat's blog."

Sure it is. I just felt like I needed to change things up a little. After much wrangling with my computer at home, I finally managed to come up with a photo for my blog title that looked somewhat professional and a little bit snappy.

You likes? The photo above is actually a screenshot from the video I put together for the song, "Gone." (Look in the YouTube list at the side to watch the video.) It was shot on a rural road north of Tilden, Nebraska -- a tiny town about 30 miles away from where I work.

I've heard a lot of people say Nebraska is boring, but I believe those people have probably only experienced what's along the main roads. To really appreciate the beauty of Nebraska, you have to travel the gravel. You have to find the minimum maintenance roads (although not after a rain storm.

I grew up believing heaven looked like the land beyond the gravel roads in the cuthills of Northeast and Central Nebraska and the rolling green sanddunes in western Nebraska. In fact, several chapters of my novel are set in the rural countryside of Greeley County. It can get monotonous after a couple of hours, but there's nothing I love more than taking a daytrip west.

I love the beauty of the countryside out there. It's a nice change of pace from the mini-city in which I work.

So, in the spirit of that nice change of pace, I thought I'd change the landscape of my blog for awhile.

I hope you enjoy it!

As if I don't have enough to do

Before I start writing, I'll just tell you I'm not complaining.

Really, I'm not.

I'm merely questioning my sanity.

Last week at our church's pastoral council meeting, we were informed that the church lacked a teacher for eleventh-grade CCD (religious education). I've considered teaching religious ed before. After working five months in the library of a local high school, I discovered how much I loved working with teenagers. Before the end of the school year, the students would not only ask me how to find a book using the out-dated card catalog (it was a long time ago), but they would ask my advice on relationships, what to wear to the prom and the best way to get out of reading "To Kill a Mockingbird" in Mr. Bivens' class. (The answer is you don't. It's a good book. Read it.

But whenever the opportunity arose to teach religious ed, I usually allowed someone else to step into the position before I volunteered. I figured if God wanted me in that position, He'd find a way to get me there.

Weeeell, He kinda interfered long enough last week to get me to say, "I suppose I could do it," at the meeting and then He snuck back out again. Before I knew what was happening Father and our religious education coordinator were expressing joyous gratitude over one less thing to do.

I stepped back and said, "Well, I probably better look at the curriculum first. What will I be teaching?"

Morality.

Yesterday, Father asked me again if I was still interested in teaching the eleventh-graders. Of course, I said yes. I couldn't say no. Not after God interfered and all.

Sometimes I wonder what God has up His sleeve. This should be an interesting -- not to mention busy -- school year.

I vote no politics

I haven't hid my feelings in the past. I hate politics.

I mean I absolutely HATE politics.

I believe my monumental dislike for all political debate and the mudslinging that always accompanies it stems from working as a reporter during election years. I've worked at a newspaper for 10 years now, so this presidential election will be the third I've endured in the media.

So, why am I writing a blog post about politics?

Well, in case you haven't guessed, this is a rant.

I also serve on the parish council of my church, and we had a meeting last night. (I'm Catholic, but like John Kennedy said, don't hold it against me.) A representive from one of the other church organizations attended our meeting last night as a guest, offering an update on what his organization is doing as far as charity in the church. Before he relented his position at the podium, however, he began a lengthy diatribe about which presidential candidate deserved our vote. Based on a single issue (you guessed it -- abortion), he told who NOT to vote for.

This was not our pastor who said this. In fact, our pastor sat in the corner and said very little.

I literally had to restrain myself from walking out of the room, which would have been a very cumbersome thing to explain later because I'm sure everyone would have assumed by my actions that I'm pro-choice.

But that's not why. (Frankly, my feelings on the issue are not anyone's business and will remain unspoken. See? I'm learning how to be a politician already.) Honestly, I would have been perturbed if this guy would have told me who not to vote for based on his feelings about NAFTA or the Vietnam War or the Yalta Conference.

I wanted to walk out because I just HATE politics. They don't belong in church. And the election of a political leader needs to be based on more than just his or her stance on a single topic. The wanna-be leader's stance on other social justice issues need to be taken into account.

But I stayed in the meeting, bit my tongue and decided to suppress my irritation until morning when I could write a scathing blog on how much I hate politics.

The end of the Road

I finished it!

Last night, I finished the revision of Long Road.

I feel like opening a bottle of bubbly...except I have all that editing to do now.

Housekeeping?

Curse me and my endless tinkering.

I used to laugh every time my paper's publisher came to our end of the building and told our news editor we needed "bump up a half point" or "tweak this and that." I wonder how many of our readers actually notice.

I've gotta give our publishers props. He knows what he's doing. He's been in the biz since the day he was born.

So, in honor of my boss, I did a little tinkering of my own to my blog. Did you notice?

I moved some things around and, most importantly, added a blog roll containing links to some of the blogs I visit most on the Web.

SATB? Neither, I'm a writer

Shhh...listen. Do you hear that?

No? Listen closer because I think I found it.

What?

My writer's voice.

A few months back literary agent Rachelle Gardner hosted two-part contest on her blog. The first portion of the contest asked writers for the best opening line. From the opening lines she found most appealing, writers were asked to make up a compelling first page.

I didn't win. Sorry.

BUT, my entry ranked at the top of the list.

How do I know? Because she critiqued it on her blog.

Her assessment started me thinking about what that entry had that Long Road didn't. I eventually realized it was the opposite. The main character in Long Road felt distant and disconnected and the writing was, well, it was written liked I'd write a blog or a newspaper story.
Straightforward. They were just words strung together without a real sense of person or feeling.

So I looked at my own connection with my main character and ways to make that connection deeper. I took serious notes from my favorite writers and worked on developing my own way of describing what they described.

For the past few months, I've been revising Long Road from the first-person, and I'm almost done. I didn't realize it until working on a separate project last week that I had discovered my voice. I recognized it in the piece I wrote that was completely unrelated.

I finally understand what agents are talking about when they talk about voice.

Yea! I'm Kat Harris. Read me roar!

Patience, the virtue which hath escaped me

Patience definitely isn't your strong point. Is it? Long Road's leading man, Nick Tyler, says this to Heather the heroine (sounds like a new comic book star, doesn't it?) at one point of the story.

Heather the Heroine ;-) is a lot like me is some aspects.

Over the weekend, I finished the second to the last chapter of my first-person revision. I feel like it has taken forever to reach this point.

Why? Waning patience, I guess.

But some wonderful things have happened to me over the course of writing this revision.

I've met some other awesome writers online (JC Lamont, Sue Seeger, Katy McKenna) and received helpful critiques from readers on the Authoress's Web blog.

I've also learned a lot about scene construction, character depth and how to properly post a video to YouTube. (Hey, I'm a little behind.)

Yesterday, I was blessed with an idea for the short epilogue to Long Road with which I've struggled for a long time. I'm sure the end of the week will come before I get around to writing it. I'm so excited I'm about to jump out of my skin.

It feels good.

It feels real.

It's a pretty good day for a Monday.