You do not need to take a class with a “rock star” to be creative. This faith in the magical ability of experts to transform lives is ironic in our secular  society. Gurus, rock stars, life coaches, Oprah – they can make you change. Most people don’t go to a priest for career advice yet believe that taking the workshop of a famous person will cure their creative funk.

I was thinking about this after reading comments by a talented photographer friend of mine, Mary Kate McKenna. She was writing about “rock star” wedding photographers and their high-priced workshops:

REALLY tired of newbie photogs (I still consider myself a newbie in the industry!) doing workshops for other professionals, charging a lot of money, with no real business skills and embellishing the amount of money they make in the industry. Before attending a “rockstar” workshop, do your research.

Take a class with them and, the promise goes, you can be as successful and creative as they are. You can be a rock star, too, as long as you copy their methods and approach. They’re selling a dream, one that you can buy into just by plonking down your Visa card.

Taking a class is easy. It’s certainly much easier and safer than actually trying to be a rock star on your own. That path is risky and dangerous. By taking a class, you indulge in your dream but just a little bit. You go off for a weekend, absorb the lessons of the master, and then return to your life.

And I suspect that’s where it ends for a lot of people.

I see the same thing in screenwriting. There are many, many famous screenwriting gurus that you can take classes with. They have their own trademarked systems, reducing drama to quadrants with required steps. Storytelling is broken down, like diagramming a sentence.

So easy, your screenplay will just write itself, right? No. The screenwriting biz is another big industry selling a dream, the fantasy that a screenplay will make you rich and famous.

I wrote a screenplay, Mount Pleasant, that won the Film DC Screenwriting Competition. I did not become rich and famous but it was a tremendously rewarding experience, one that led to interesting opportunities like working with the DC Shorts Film Festival. But the rewarding part for me was writing the script.

For winning the competition, the DC Film Office sent me office sent me to LA to visit the set of the West Wing, during the final season. That was a great experience but, when I wrote Mount Pleasant, I had no idea that this was in the future. I wrote the script because it was a story I had in my head. I wrote it without any idea of where it would lead.

The problem with rock stars is twofold:

1. The focus on the reward. Workshops focus on an illusory dream of creative life. You will be rich and glamorous. The wedding photogs I know love their jobs but work awfully hard. They spend their weekends crawling around on ballroom floors, trying to get the perfect shot. And a workshop on writing would, if I had it my way, stress the solitary nature of the craft. Writers spend most of their day alone, in front of a computer.

2. Ceding authority to experts. Creativity is an act of rebellion. Aren’t all the millions of books, films and photos already in existence enough for you? What makes you think you have anything to add? The first step in your rebellion should not be slavishly following the teachings of some maharishi.

I wrote Mount Pleasant with the barest of screenwriting education. I had written short stories before and originally thought of the story as a novel. The screenplay format had always puzzled me but, after trying out Final Draft, I got it. I read books on screenwriting and started writing the script. I got stuck a few times but, after putting the script down for a few months, kept at it. I wanted to see it done.

My advice is simple. Do it yourself. After all the classes, once the guru has moved on to another city, it’s going to be just you. For some people, that’s inspiring. For many, it’s terrifying.

To write that screenplay, take that picture, or create that sculpture, you do not need to take a class with a rock star. You just need to get started. Invest your time and money in yourself, rather than some high-priced guru.

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I’m going to be writing for the Pink Line Project.  What’s Pink Line?  Describing itself as “a catalyst for the culturally curious”, the site is a guide to DC’s art and cultural scene.  If you’re looking to attend fun art parties in Washington, and learn more about the arts, it’s a great site to check out.

From watching rollergirls arm-wrestle to dodging skateboarders at a photo exhibit, I’ve enjoyed the Pink Line events immensely.  It’s an unexpected side of stuffy Washington that’s much more interesting than some boring Capitol Hill cocktail party.

I’m also really interested in creativity and risk-taking.  Creating something – a book, a painting, a photo, a dance – is a courageous act.  You’re investing your time and putting your ego on the line.  What makes someone decide to create?  What separates the person who thinks about doing something from the person who actually gets their hands dirty in the messy and uncertain world of creation?

I really started thinking about this subject after I wrote my book, Murder in Ocean Hall.  A friend of mine said that she knew a lot of people who talked about writing a novel but I was the only person who had gone off and done it.  I quit my job and took six months off to write the book.  Six months without an income, spending days by myself, alone, writing away in coffeeshops – a crazy act, for sure, but it was something that I absolutely had to do.

I think that creativity is something that’s in everyone.  There’s no such thing as someone who’s not creative.  Perhaps it comes up in unlikely ways, like packing their kid’s lunch or designing the perfect spreadsheet.  Or maybe they dream of taking paint to canvas one day.

For the Pink Line Project, I’m going to be writing profiles of local artists, filmmakers, photographers and other creative types.  I’ll be interviewing them about how they got started and why they felt they had to make art.  From these profiles, I hope to encourage others to think about their own creative dreams.

The first interview I did is with Jon Gann, founder of the DC Shorts Film Festival.  Check it out to discover how his impulsive nature and desire for community lead him to create a hugely successful film festival.

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It was a great festival again. I’ve volunteered with DC Shorts for more than four years now and each year it gets better and better.

My personal favorite film in the festival was Funky Prairie Boy. It won the Diversity Award (presented by Verizon). This short Canadian film is about:

A young boy living in a small prairie town during the early 1980s, befriends the only black kid at his school and soon discovers the prejudice that exists within his friends, his family and even in himself.

It’s got the most well-developed story of all the films I saw at DC Shorts. The characters seem real, all of them a mix of good and bad impulses. The short film captures the awkwardness of children dealing with adult issues of race and prejudice. Yet, it’s not an afterschool special, where the plot is driven by social points to be made. Instead, it’s a messy and funny look at kids trying to be kids. While they’re trapped in a rigid world that they didn’t create, they just want to dance and hangout.

Funky Prairie Boy

I’m not a fan of message movies. Funky Prairie Boy is above all, a good story, one that just happens to deal with touchy issues. Plus, it’s got some rocking music and excellent performances by the young leads.

I had a chance to talk to the director of Funky Prairie Boy, Mike Schultz, at the DC Shorts Awards Brunch. One of the great things about the festival is the accessibility of the directors. Identifiable by their blue badges, you can find them at parties, at Q&A sessions following the films and just hanging out in front of the theater. We’re so not LA…

Mike explained that this was a story long in development. It started with a script that was a recipient of  the Worldwide Short Film Festivals Giveaway Prize. Mike won a bunch of film equipment and then took a couple of years rounding up a crew to help turn his short screenplay into a movie. This time was well-spent.

As Jon Gann, Founder of DC Shorts said, this was the year of the technically competent film. Advances in technology have made it possible for nearly anyone to turn out a gorgeous looking short movie. However, the best cameras in the business can’t compensate for the lack of a good story, one with a beginning, middle and end.

Funky Prairie Boy is playing at 9:30 on Thursday night with other award-winning shorts at E Street Cinema. If you can’t make it, check out the Funky Prairie Boy web site.

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I’ve been involved in DC Shorts almost since the beginning. I volunteered with Jon Gann, founder of the festival, and  was a film judge for a couple years. Me and other volunteers watched and rated the hundreds of submissions that came in. We used a clever online system to do so. One key trait about DC Shorts is how professional and well organized it is, from top to bottom.

The next year, I was a screenplay contest judge, where I read short scripts that were submitted to the festival. We then did a live reading of the finalists at E Street Cinema; the winner got money to turn their script into a film.

In 2008, I was the DC Shorts Screenplay Competition Manager. In addition to reading lots of scripts, I got to work with writers, actors and a theater director to put on a show at the Navy Memorial. The finalists had their scripts read, with various degrees of acting and blocking. Jon appointed me to be “bad cop,” to make sure that the writers followed the rules, to keep it fair. We said no props or music to focus on the words in the script.

The six finalists of the DC Shorts 2008 Screenplay Competition were:

• The Note
• Shiva
• Two Lines and a Stick
• Taco Mary
• Geronimo’s Last Ride
• Last Drag

Dealing with bunches of actors in a theater is not something I ever really wanted to do. I’m more comfortable writing, hidden behind a laptop. I honestly considered breaking my own leg to get out of it! Or at least faking an injury. Despite this, it was really a wonderful experience, one of those challenges that you really learn from.

How it worked was that the writers all got to select actors from a pool that Jon provided. The actors were local, pulled from people Jon knew and Stonehenge, the open casting session held annually in DC. Some of the writers (most of whom were from out of town) talked to the actors beforehand. Others just selected people based upon a packet of headshots that they got to select from. Some of the actors appeared  in more than one script reading.

The writer and their cast first met the day of the reading. We provided them a meeting room at the Navy Memorial for them to rehearse in. We held rehearsals all day long,  so each group had time of their own. Tables were pushed aside in the conference room as we watched, American Idol style. They would generally read out the script first, then the writer would offer their feedback. Certain lines would need to be stressed; the delivery was wrong on others; tone it down on this part. Writers who had made short films or plays were more comfortable in giving direction to the actors.

A very talented theater director, Linda Murray from Solas Nua, was there to help them stage the reading. She provided advice on choreography, how to arrange the actors on stage to highlight what was happening in the script. The actors also pantomimed actions in the script, like eating and smoking. I learned a lot from watching her, about how move people around on a stage to make things more interesting. Lots of simple old theater tricks.

I was there as timekeeper, rules enforcer and DC Shorts problem-solver.

No props, no music, no costumes. Questions about props came up frequently. I was strict on this point. People asked about costumes – I said they had dress in normal clothes. The only thing that slipped by me was one woman’s red wig – I honestly thought it was her real hair. Additionally, there was a lot of concern over the microphones and microphone stands in the auditorium. It turned out not to be an issue, for the acoustics were good enough (or the actors loud enough) that mikes weren’t needed for the most part. Several of the actors came from the theater and could really project.

Jon wanted a simple reading. But, inevitably, if you bring actors, they will act. They performed the scripts, as if they were doing a play. Some of the performances that seemed rather broad in the rehearsal room really worked on stage.

One writer and their group seemed to be heading toward failure, at least in the rehearsal room. They weren’t listening to their inexperienced writer. Evidently, they continued to rehearse all afternoon and got it together, putting on the funniest performances of the night.

Like I said before, I’m not a theater person. I’m a writer and was unprepared for the inevitable drama of opening night, even if it’s just for a reading of short screenplays. The group that had the theater before us ran late. One of the writers lost their scripts. They had to be retrieved from the garbage at the last moment. An usher got stuck on the Metro. She burst into tears before instantly recovering as I said not to worry about it. The folks at the Navy Memorial were extremely helpful but they couldn’t figure out how to play the video introduction to the reading.

I was most concerned about having it run on time, without long breaks. We had all the actors and writers sit in the front row of the theater, so they could easily get up when their turn came. Stands and stools were quickly rearranged as each group performed. The theater was about mostly full and the audience seemed to really enjoy the show.

And, afterwards, they got to pick the winner. Using a telephone voting system (again, like American Idol), they chose Taco Mary by Mary Novak.

With money from DC Shorts, she then went off and made her movie. You can see Taco Mary at DC Shorts on Sept 10 at 10 PM, Sept 12 at 9 PM and Sept 13 at 1 PM.

And come see the drama of writers and actors at the DC Shorts Screenplay Competition Reading on Oct 17 at 7 PM.

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My screenplay Eurabia is set in the near future. In this dystopian story, America has lost the war on terror and Europe is controlled by radical Islam. However, the CIA has a secret plan to change the course of history…

Read the first ten pages online.

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I’ve been a judge for the DC Shorts Film Festival.  Am I more of an expert than you are on short film? Possibly.  Am I more knowledgeable and astute than a vast crowd of film buffs?  No, of course not. When it comes to judging short films, festivals are limited by the number of judges that can be recruited who will actually show up to watch and review films on cold weeknights when you’d much rather stay at home and watch American Idol than sit through some 17-minute long experimental work on the depressing urban landscapes of Flint, Michigan.

So, I say, the more the merrier. I think people who will bother to go to a site, watch the films and then judge them will be pretty fair. They’ll also be motivated to go to the festival. After all, they helped program it! This is a great way of getting more attendees by making people feel a sense of ownership for their local festival.

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