leena pendharkar

I’ve been enjoying the FIND writer’s lab so much.  It’s been great to get feedback in a group setting, and I really like the people in the lab.  The teacher, Meg LeFauve, has been giving us some really interesting exercises to help us dig deeper into ourselves/the characters.  I’ve done many exercises like this in the past, but hers are particularly interesting because they are personal, meaning they really get to your own core.  They are great exercises that pull from family history, psychology and a lot of other things.  Sometimes, these exercises can really fuck with you, because as you start digging into various layers of yourself and your characters, you find things that you really don’t want to.  I was brooding all weekend over the realization that my main character is a version of me, and that on many levels, I can be a pushover.  I’m a pretty strong person, and I believe I come off that way, but I realize that subtextually, I get pushed around a lot, especially by moody people…  Sounds like a therapy session, and sometimes writing can serve as that.  When you start peeling away layers and exploring, it can really take you to some interesting depths.  I’m pondering all of the feedback, and really taking time to flesh it out, rather than just jumping into revisions.  I’m sure that if I had done this five years ago, I would have been in panic mode, and trying to make the script as perfect as I could, right now.  But I’m older and wiser (supposedly) and I’m really taking the time to parse through all of the feedback and take it as I see fit.  When I wrote Raspberry Magic, I took so much of everyone’s feedback, I lost sight of my goals.  It was very confusing and overwhelming.  But that was many scripts ago….