But a couple of months after I started this story, my sister died tragically in her home. Her young son was the only one there when it happened. Needless to say, that story went on the back, back burner. And I soon resolved myself to the fact that I would never finish it. I just couldn’t bring myself to delve into that subject matter again since it hit so close to home.

Four years passed.

You know those mundane actions we do that require little thought—shower, vacuum, clean out the stinking litter box—and cause the mind to wander? Well, that story kept popping up whenever I grew quiet. It even haunted me in my sleep. One evening, I finally gave in and opened that old file with a lump in my throat. I read what I had, edited a few things (it’s hard to keep the editor side down), and before I knew it, I was adding to it. I was saying, No, no, no, this wasn’t about a creepy story in the woods. It was about denial. And the lead character wasn’t a ghost, she was a real person dealing with pain the only way she knew how. And the sheriff needed to come to the foreground, to play an integral part. And this had to happen, and these characters should appear here, and move this here, and that there, and delete that, and oh, by the way, this is now a screenplay, not a novel.

It’s as if the entire story had already been written, and I merely took dictation. Transformed intangible into tangible.

I don’t know how else to describe the emotional impact of this particular story but as inspirational. Never, and I mean never, had I experienced anything like it in the creative process. I was up close and personal with something I could neither see nor touch, but it was as real as the keys beneath my fingertips and as reliable as the rising sun. Whenever I sat down to write, there it was, leading me on.

I completed the screenplay within two months. In April of this year, I entered it in The Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting, a highly esteemed competition hosted by none other than the Academy Awards folk.

And… well… I made it to the Quarterfinals. One of only 261 entries to survive from the 5,224 entries entered. That's as far as I went, but now I'm receiving phone calls and emails from Hollywood production companies who want to read my script! Isn't that just the hoot of all hoots?

Of course, this doesn't guarantee that any of them will want to scoop up my little screenplay and transform it to the next level of tangible: a movie. But it's fun having them ask for it.

Let's see where this goes.