Building Upon an Old Holiday Tradition

It's Christmas. Sort of. I haven't gone to bed yet, so even though it is the 26th, it's still Christmas to me.

My daughter and I have a special tradition of spending a weekend in the City during the holiday season to finish up - or start - our holiday shopping. (For those not from the bay area, the "City" is San Francisco.)

But it's really more than that. It's time for us to talk and reconnect without the haze of day-t0-day demands. This year, we talked about collaborating on a writing project. She writes short-stories with incredible characters - yet with more starts than finishes. I've wanted to try a screenwriting project that is outside my comfort zone, and something for a teen audience might be it...

As we talked, she shared the first 6 pages of a new story she's working on. It's a kind of Jason Bourne meets Agent Cody Banks from a female perspective. I loved it! At 16, she has an uncanny ability to bring her characters alive with dialogue that is so natural - I doubt she ever agonizes for just the right word. Yet when she writes, she doesn't know quite where she's heading. That's where we had great fun as we tried out different motives and backdrops for her characters to shine...

Our plan is for each of us to take the opening set-up and run with it. It will be interesting to see where we both end up and IF there is some way to mesh the two unfolding dramas.

Imagine if every December we embark on a similar creative effort... Hmmm.

SB