Okay, I promise this is not just an excuse for me to use another obscure 80s lyric as a title.
I’ve been working on the Just A Geek rewrite for the past few hours, and I thought it may be interesting to WWdN readers to see some of the progress I’ve made.
I think I mentioned a few weeks ago that I’m doing major rewrites, and it’s taking a lot longer than I expected. I mean, I thought I’d have galleys out to reviewers by now, and I’m on page 101 instead. I think it’s okay, though, because I get happier and happier with each rewrite, and that pleases my inner perfectionist.
I’m taking my time, because I don’t know when I’ll have this luxury again (that was some great advice someone else gave me — I can’t recall who, though.)
The biggest note I got from one of my friends (who is an award-winning author, so he knows what he’s talking about) on my first draft was, “Expand the story! There’s all this interesting stuff in here, and you totally gloss over it. If this is a confessional autobiography, be confessional!! Put us there. Let us feel what you felt!”
When I read Amarillo Slim’s autobiography a few months ago, I grokked what he (my friend) was talking about. There’s this legendary story of Slim playing dominoes with Willie Nelson, and kicking Willie Nelson’s ass for something like a hundred thousand dollars. (It may be more than that, but my book is in the other room, and that sounds like walking which sounds like work.) The point is, Slim spent pages and pages building up to the game, and then spent less than a paragraph on the actual event! I felt so let down, I almost threw the book across the room. It was only my lazy aversion to walking that stopped me.
As I’ve worked on this rewrite, I’ve heeded my friend’s advice, and dug deeper than I did in the draft he read. I think I’ve developed quite a bit as a writer since that draft, too, and I am grateful for the chance to call “do over” on most of that stuff. If only I could do that with some of my really poor movie choices . . .
So here is an example of some of the changes I’ve made. The original is first, and the rewrite follows.
When I worked on Star Trek, I always struggled to fit in with the adults around me. It was tough, because I could relate to them professionally, but on a personal level, no matter how hard I tried, I was still a kid and they were still adults. In November of 2001, I got to share the stage with Jonathan, Brent and Patrick, the so-called Big Three of Star Trek:The Next Generation. Though I had been performing in a very well-reviewed sketch comedy show for almost a year, and shared the stage with huge movie stars every week on the J. Keith vanStraaten Show, I felt incredibly nervous and uncertain as the da. I worried that with The Big Three present nobody would want to talk with The Kid.
Boy was I wrong.
I took more questions than the rest of the guys combined — and most of them were about my website!
I felt sort of bad that I was getting so much attention, but I was also pleased. I felt like I’d finally grown up, and the reaction of the guys when we were backstage validated that.
That was the introduction to this weblog entry. In the rewrite, I’ve folded the entry into the body of the narrative, and added some new stuff:
When I worked on Star Trek, I always struggled to fit in with the adults around me. It was easy to relate to them professionally, but on a personal level, no matter how hard I tried, I was still a kid and they were still adults. I often thought that Wesley Crusher could have been a much richer and more interesting character if the writers had taken advantage of that very real turmoil that existed within me, and used it to add some humanity to Wesley in between the Nanite making and polarity reversing . . . but I guess it was more fun (and easier) to write for the robot. I can’t say that I blame them.
For whatever reason, I was never been able to entirely lose that teenage angst, and whenever I attended a Star Trek event, or saw one of the cast members, I immediately felt like I was 16 again. Because of that feeling — and, if I was willing to be truly, fearlessly honest with myself, the fact that I hadn’t done very much with my career since leaving the show — I avoided Star Trek events (and that inevitable feeling of shame and angst that accompanied them) for years. Of course there were exceptions, but they were few and far between.
In November of 2001, I was presented with an opportunity to share the stage with the Big Three of The Next Generation: Brent Spiner, Patrick Stewart and Jonathan Frakes, at an event called The Galaxy Ball. Robert Beltran, an actor who played Chakotay on Voyager, hosts it each year to benefit the Down Syndrome Association of Los Angeles, Doctors Without Borders, the Pediatric AIDS Foundation, and some other worthwhile charities. When I received the invitation, that familiar angst and apprehension sprung up immediately.
“What will I talk about? What have I done? How can I face them?” The doubts were relentless.
“Easy, I answered, “You’ve got your website. You’ve got the shows you do at ACME. You’ve got a wife and stepkids. You’re not a kid anymore. You kicked ass in Vegas, and you can kick ass again. Besides, when will you have a chance to be on stage with these guys again?”
“You’re right,” I told myself, “but if you keep talking to yourself like this, they’re going to throw you out of Starbucks.”
I looked up, and offered a smile to the girl scouts who were staring at me. I bought several hundred dollars worth of Thin Mints to solidify my reputation as an eccentric millionaire playboy who hangs out at Starbucks in his Bermuda shorts.
When the day came to go to the ball, I dressed in my finest gown, and bid my wicked stepsisters goodbye as I got into my carri —
Wait. Sorry. That’s not my story. That’s Todd Bridges’ story. I often get us confused.
On the morning of the ball, I had a major fashion crisis that reflected the nervousness and turmoil I felt. I was going to wear a suit, but I felt like I was playing dress up. I put on an ironic hipster T-shirt and black jeans, but then I felt like a child. I settled on this cool black cowboy shirt with eagles on the front and jeans. I looked at myself in the mirror that hangs on the back of my bedroom door, and thought I looked kind of cool. I ignored the explosion of discarded clothes that littered the rest of my room, and left the drawers open when I left.
The whole drive to the ball, I went over material in my head. I prepared jokes and did improv warm up exercises. By the time I got there, I felt like I’d been on stage for three hours.
I parked my car in the self-park garage. I convinced myself that it was stupid to cough up seven bucks for a valet to drive it forty feet, but the truth was all the other guys have luxury cars, and my VW seemed a little . . . unimpressive.
I made my way to the green room, and discovered Jonathan Frakes, who had arrived ahead of me.
“Hi, Johnny,” I said. I felt my face get warm.
I huge smile spread across his face as he stood up.
“W!” he said, “You look great, man!”
He closed the distance between us in two strides, and wrapped his arms around me in a big bearhug.
“You too,” I said, and waked over to a table where some food was set out. As I munched on a carrot, he said, “How have you been?”
It was the question that I always dreaded. I would always smile bravely, ignore the knot in my chest, and say something like,”Oh, you know . . . Things are slow, but I have an audition next week.”
I just finished this bit of the rewrite in the last hour, so I haven’t gone over it yet with my critical eye, so I’m sure I’ll make some more rewrites to this before it’s finally sent off to the printer.
There’s more, (like what happened when Patrick and Brent arrived, and what happened while we were on stage, but I don’t want to give it all away. 🙂