No, but I read the...

How do I know that I am back from vacation?
1) It was about 90 degrees in Philly today.
2) I didn’t take any naps.
3) When I look out my front window, I don’t see any water.
4) I didn’t read 200 pages of fiction today.

I could probably go on and on but that would be depressing so I am going to focus, for awhile anyway, on #4 but re-phrase it. How do I know when I am on vacation? I average about 200 pages of fiction or creative non-fiction a day. Yes, I read about 800 pages last week. Of course, that number is nothing for big readers or “real” readers. I do enjoy reading, I just don’t do enough of it when I am not in Maine for a week. I read. Of course, I read. It is a big, big, big part of my job to read. In the heat of the school year, I can read as many as fifty student screenplays in a week and, if that sounds like a lot, it is but it is not the same as 800 pages of fiction.

Screenwriting, as I teach it, is almost the antithesis of conventional prose writing and it takes me awhile to adjust to reading books. Screenwriting is closer to music composition than it is to prose. A film, like a symphony, is meant to be experienced in a single, uninterrupted sitting. Would you leave an orchestra’s performance of your favorite Beethoven piece mid-way through and then return the next night to hear the rest of it? Have you ever driven around longer than necessary or stayed in the driveway after your arrival because your favorite song was on the radio? Screenwriters and filmmakers strive to create a piece of visceral, visual music, something that draws you in, sweeps you up in it’s drama and carries you away. Do not hit the pause button!

So, I read a lot of fiction while I was away: “A Long Way Down” by Nick Hornby and “The Corrections” by Jonathan Frazen. Wow. I am so glad that I am a screenwriter because I could never be a novelist. As a writer, I love to read books that would be ill-suited to cinematic adaptations. I love reading a book and thinking, “This could never be a movie!” Partially, I think that movies and fiction are completely (okay, largely) different art forms and lately, I feel like I have been coming across a number of books that are really thinly veiled movie-bait. All due respect to her, but it is pretty hard to not imagine Rowling sitting there, writing Harry Potter and thinking “This would be a great movie!”

I remember reading “Shopgirl”, the harrowing, hilarious novella about clinical depression by Steve Martin, truly one of my idols and such a major influence on me. “Wow,” I thought, “this could never be made into a film, how wonderful.” Later, on NPR, I heard Martin talking about how he thought that the book could never be made into a film --- and then changing his mind about it. Needless to say, I was disappointed with the film version (for the record, I haven’t liked most of his films), disappointed that Martin had second guessed his first instinct about the book and even more disappointed that he had miscast himself in a crucial part. We’re cool now, he made it up to me with his memoir, “Born Standing Up.”

Of course, I had to go ahead and dare myself, I couldn’t just let things lie, could I? What’s the point anyway, I would have found out soon enough. With great trepidation, a gnawing in my gut, I made a quick trip to IMDb and found that adaptations of both “A Long Way Down” and “The Corrections” are on the boards for 2011 and 2012. I guess that’s the way it goes. Maybe I’ll just read the dictionary on vacation next year. Maybe I’ll just work on screenplays while I’m away --- I would have gotten so much more work done this year if I had not brought so many really good books with me.