Mothers Day Gifts

On this mother’s day, I feel blessed to have worked with my mom on her love project honoring her mother, “Model T Biscuits.” You can just feel the love as you read about their cross country trip to find a little farm of their own.  

As I look back, it is really a miracle that I became a writer. When I was in kindergarten, I was so shy that I couldn't even raise my hand to go to the bathroom.  I had great difficulty learning my ABC’s. So they held me back another year. Yes, I flunked Kindergarten.  I was put in a special class for students with learning disabilities. I remember being taught to tell my right hand from my left by holding up the hand I used to salute the flag.  In second grade, I struggled to learn to read by memorizing words, so I doodled on the handouts instead. The teacher complained that I was in my own dream world, put me down another grade and suggested that I be put on drugs. But my mom never gave up on me. She hired a nice young woman to write down my stories while I illustrated them (so I could see the connection between my imagination and words.) My mom was so ahead of her time.  I’m still proud of the resulting picture books, “The Stinky Skunk” and “The Roadwalker.”

The thing I love most about my mom is how she always encouraged us kids to develop our talents. When I was little I spent all my time drawing people.  Despite our limited income, mom always made sure I had art supplies. (Seems like every birthday I got art sets.)  Somehow she convinced a local artist, Jan, to give me free art lessons.  (Jan taught me a trick for drawing faces... Draw an oval with a curved line half way down it. That's where you put the eyes.) She had been commissioned to paint a portrait of our local celebrities Roy Rogers and Dale Evans for their museum. Inspired by her painting, I sketched a picture of them too. I remember mom driving me to Victorville and waiting outside the bowling alley for Roy Rogers so I could give him my little picture. He just looked at it and walked away.

Mom inspired me every day with her passion and dedication to her own writing.  On our birthdays, she brought cupcakes to school and read her story picture books to the class. One year she read a story about a little Mexican boy and brought a lopsided homemade piñata. I loved it! 

When my passion shifted to theater, mom drove me to the next town over to perform in Community Theater. I checked out plays and musical records from the library.  I listened to show tunes on my little record player and belted out the songs. I believe it was that love of plays that helped me to finally overcome my struggle with reading. I started writing show tunes and musicals.  My most cherished memory of my mom is climbing into her bed and singing her my latest creation. Of course, she thought they all were brilliant. On the last day of school before going off to college, I somehow found the courage to sing one of those songs, “At Last” to my choir teacher. He was inspired to write an accompaniment to it right there in the practice room while the rest of the class enjoyed their Christmas party.

Whenever I came home from college, I crawled into bed and sang mom my latest songs. After learning to critique in grad school, we would sprawl out on the couch as I critiqued her latest children’s book. One of those books was, “Model T Biscuits” which I eventually adapted into a screenplay.

directing a scene from "Model T Biscuits"

Mom and I have shared many priceless memories. We attended the Burbank Children's Film Festival and watched as Dee Wallace's acting students performed a stage reading of, “Model T Biscuits.” During the awards dinner, mom was so nervous that her stomach was gurgling. She kept escaping into the bathroom. During one of those visits, she ran into Shelly Long ( from Cheers)! She babbled something about how nervous she was. Shelly admitted that she was nervous too and gave my mom a comforting hug.

Finally, Dee Wallace (the mom from E.T.) announced that we had won the award for best short screenplay. Mom nervously uttered a speech about how her mother had inspired, “Model T Biscuits” with her sisu (Finnish for guts and determination.)  I am so grateful that my mom always showed sisu when it came to encouraging us kids.  That is the greatest gift anyone has ever given me. 

A Memorial to our Muse, Cousin Willo.

Sisu. One of my mom's favorite words. Finnish for gutsy. She loves to weave it through her stories about our Finnish ancestors. Wonder if she got it from our cousin Willo? I remember when Mom first started researching Finnish customs for her book, Model-T Biscuits. She sent Willo a list of questions about their family stories and growing up on the S. Dakota homestead. This got Willo a'thinkin'. She, in turn, self-published a book about her father, Axel Sacrison, and his art. What a gift she left for her children. Mom and I were thrilled when she sent us a copy of her next book, Cave Hill Finns: They Had Sisu!

It is a treasure trove of old-timey photographs of our ancestors' homestead; Cave Hill Lutheran church; sheep wagons; the sisters decked up in their white Sunday dresses on horseback; Mumu weaving a rag rug on her loom; and Axel's wonderful painting of his mother in her puku (dress) and huivi (head scarf) walking past the homestead by the buttes. Inspired by their sisu, I pored over these family photographs as I adapted, Model-T Biscuits, into a screenplay.

One summer, all of us cousins stayed at Aunt Edna's house while attending the Finn Festival in Astoria. Since Willo had been such a help, Mom and I wanted to share, "Model-T Biscuits" with her and our other cousins. As the fragrance of fruit soup with cinnamon wafted in the air, we all sat around the kitchen table and read it out loud. I always felt a special kinship with Willo.  I was delighted to find another family member who was also into video production, so I sent her my short Western, "Desert Angel." Willo, Mom, and I share a love of all things Finnish and old-timey - themes we all wrote about on our blogs.

Cousin Willo and Aunt Edna at Cave Hills Lutheran Church

We love antique bottles: blue medicine bottles, ink wells, tinted with time, beautifully flawed, light filtering through, reminiscent of past lives. After seeing my Facebook post of glass bottles in a window cell, she started her own collection of blue glass that are posted on Willo's blog.

Reminiscing about Willo, I can almost feel her presence as the light streams through the antique glass in my kitchen window. Thank you, sweet cousin Willo, for sharing our family stories and the meaning of sisu. Lepää rauhassa.

Weavings of Another Kind: Braided Pulla and Love.

by Lorna Kerin Beall

In Model T Biscuits Mama, Step-daddy and six-year-old Lorna head cross country in their Model T picking apples along the way to stretch their meager nest egg until they can find a little farm of their own. Mama shows her sisu, the Finnish word for guts, determination, and ingenuity, when she’s faced with no oven in the apple-picking camp. She surprises Lorna and Step-Daddy by baking biscuits on the engine (actually the flat head) of the Model T.

Earlier in the story, Step-Daddy recalls Mumu's baking. He rubs his belly and says, "That house always smelled of fresh bread." 

Lorna answers, "Know how we made it? Know how Mumu and I got the bread so skinny? And made the outside so crispy? We rolled the dough out flat. Then poke, poke, poke, we poked holes in it. Then we baked it smack-dab! - on the bottom of the oven. Mumu even let me..."

While I was writing Model T Biscuits, I tried to weave some Finnish customs and language into the story. One way I did this was by including traditional Finnish food. My mama, as well as my Finnish Mumu who raised me up until this point, loved to bake heino leipä: Finnish flat bread, pulla: Finnish cinnamon rolls, and other braided kinds of pulla. My Mumu’s little home in Buffalo, South Dakota, always smelled of fresh-baked pastry. And the kahvi pot was always on for neighbors or passers-by who were welcome to pop in. Tugging her little sled, my small cousin, Willo Boe and our Mumu delivered homemade bread to shut-ins and other friends. In my story, the family heads out West and Lorna frets that Mumu won’t be able to deliver bread without her, since the wheel on her wobbly little wagon is broken.

The smell of fresh baked goods brings back cherished memories of Mumu and Mama baking in our big black cast iron stove. All kinds of love was kneaded and braided into these Finnish delights.

Here are two recipes that I included in prologue of, “Model T Biscuits.”  

MODEL T DROP BISCUITS

(Kids, you’ll need your Mama’s or Mumu’s help.)

Start up the Model T engine. Let it warm up.

If you don’t have a Model T, heat oven to 450 degrees.

Model T directions: Grease tin cake pan

Bake covered.

Oven: Use a tin cake pan. Do not grease. Do not cover.

2 cups flour

l/2 tsp. salt

4 teaspoons baking powder

l/2 teaspoon cream of tartar

2 teaspoons sugar

l/2 cup of lard or shortening

¾ cup buttermilk (Used canned milk in the Picking Camp.)

Mix dry ingredients. Add the lard or shortening.

Then add milk. Stir gently till soft dough forms.

Model T: Drop by spoonfuls on a greased cake pan.

Oven: Drop by spoonfuls onto an ungreased cake pan..

Model T: Check frequently.

Oven: Bake for seven to nine minutes.

*Or buy canned biscuit dough from the supermarket.

Make and bake according to directions on the package.

Serve the biscuits hot with butter and honey.

IF POSSIBLE LOOK AT SUNRISE WHILE EATING.

MUMU’S THIN BREAD

(Kids, you’ll need Mama or Mumu’s help!)

l package or cake of yeast

l/4 cup lukewarm water

2 cups lukewarm milk

3 tablespoons sugar

l l/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons shortening

6 cups flour

Dissolve yeast in lukewarm water. Mix milk, sugar and half of
flour into the yeast mixture. Melt shortening and pour over the mixture.
Add the salt and the rest of the flour a little at a time kneading in to make a stiff dough.
Turn out onto a floured board. Knead again.

Flatten out dough with a rolling pin (roll-roll-roll) to about
l l/2 inch thickness. Punch holes with a fork (poke-poke-poke.)
And brush with milk.
Let rise only a short time.
Bake on greased cookie sheet at 425 degree oven about 30 to 40 minutes.

*Or buy frozen dough from store. Thaw. Put on floured board. Flatten with a rolling pin to about 1& ½ inches.
Punch holes with fork. And brush with milk.
Let rise only a short time.
Bake on greased cookie sheet at 425 degree oven 30 to 40 minutes.

 EAT THE THIN BREAD WITH YOUR LOVING FAMILY!

IN YOUR OMA TUPA! (YOUR OWN HOME.)

Critiquing My Mommy

Jana Segal

After getting a crash course in critiquing from Brandeis, I watched a news program about a tugboat being sunk to create an artificial reef because the boaters destroyed the reefs where the sea creatures lived. I thought it would make a great picture book, so I shared it with my mom. This is when I started critiquing my mom's children's picture book manuscripts. It was a bit of a stretch since I hadn't read any kids books since I was little. Not really my thing. A little too cutesy for my taste. I was more into reading plays and screenplays. Tennessee Williams. Grad school made me into a hardened critquer, but my sweet mommie learned to take it – and like it. The other day I was critiquing a fellow filmmaker's script before I could get to hers and she was actually jealous.

I used to type up a few pages of  notes, but I found it easier to jot down the notes right onto the manuscript. I'd send the whole manuscript back in the mail.  Sometimes I gave her feedback when I came home for Christmas. After catching up on family gossip, we would sit on the couch, my mom sipping from a jar of green tea, and go through my notes. When the price of long distance came down, I read my comments over the phone as she followed along in the manuscript. But this can be a long, tedious process – especially if she starts defending her writing. Argh! I forgot about that.

At first I had a problem with the cutesy word play in her children's stories. I wrote all over her manuscript, “Too cutesy!” She liked to make up descriptive words like pew-mongous (big stink) and puffle snuffle (the sound of the tired tug.) I didn't know how much cutesy was acceptable for children's books. This was a little point of contention. Mom insisted that it was her style. But it drove me crazy! Mom had created a captain character who pulled on his nose when he was worried. There were two phrases in particular that bothered me, “Old Snozzy yanked on his nose like it was a clump of seaweed;” and, “Still he jerked on his nose like a piece of beef jerky.” (Now, really, how often do you yank on seaweed or jerk on beef jerky?) 

Not knowing much about children's writing, I often referred to dramatic concepts I learned in the theater. I encouraged her to strengthen the character's goal and motivation, add more action and conflict then build to a climax . My mom created her own unique style using her descriptive gifts to great effect in exciting action sequences. Her colorful, bouncy descriptions also added to the fun of the underwater see world. While working on the rhythm of some phrases, I started playing around with cutesy wording myself. It's fun! Recently, I read a rewrite and actually missed some of the “cutesy” words she had cut out!

When she finished her tugboat series, mom started on a new kind of book inspired by her family history called, Model T Biscuits. I was so excited about her story that I asked her if I could work on the screenplay adaptation. After critiquing rewrite after rewrite, I knew the story so well that it only took two weeks to write the 35 page script. That felt great! (Especially since it took me YEARS to write, Walking with Grace!)

When adapting the book for the screen, I tried to find ways to show the internal dialogue through actions and dialogue. (For you new screenwriters – nothing goes in the screenplay that we can't see or hear. The one exception is the one sentence description when you first introduce a character.) The book version includes little Lorna's jealous thoughts about the little rich girl in a white dress that her mom took care of in the city. I added a scene where Lorna sees a similar white dress in a store window and changes into it so her mother will love her too. I also worked on centering the story around the conflict of their financial difficulties during their cross-county trek. If they didn't have enough money, they wouldn't be able to get their little farm.

I was honored to do the adaptation so I could stay true to my mom's vision. 

PATCHWORK WRITING

by Lorna Kerin Beall

After Jana did the screenplay adaptation of Model T Biscuits she had several of her filmmaker friends critique it before sending it out to a contest. Some had the feeling that our protagonist, 8-year-old Lorna, was a little too whiny and needy and therefore not completely likable. A few of my writer friends had the same opinion. (While others loved her just as she was.) My opinion, Little Lorna was me! Now what was not likable about perfect little fictional me? Ha! Obviously I was too close to the situation to see clearly. Perhaps some of you may be able to relate to this problem when basing fiction on your own lives.

In Model T Biscuits,  little Lorna was overjoyed to be reunited with her Mama after being raised by her Finnish Mumu. She was also anxious that Mama might not stick around. So what was the problem? Lorna didn’t really want Mama and Step-Daddy (who were newlyweds) to hold hands, smooch or have privacy at bedtime. After getting her friends’ feedback, Jana suggested that I have the parents hang a sheet in the corner of the migrant apple-picking shack, and have Lorna come to accept it. This enabled me to have Step-Daddy duck under the sheet and to give Lorna her rag doll in order to show his love and tenderness early on. So honoring their feedback by patching up that issue inspired more creative ideas!

Besides working on the screenplay, I continued to tweak my children’s novel, Model T Biscuits, which the screenplay was based on. Advice from our writer friends was extremely helpful. We weighed each suggestion carefully, though we might not always take it. Later I joined a local critique group, which is invaluable, and have been privileged to work with my SCBWI mentor, Leslie Wyatt on my children’s novel, Wormy Bean Winter.

Patchwork quilts are sometimes stitched by a group of caring hands. I am grateful for the writers who have helped us stitch (or take out stitches) in our writing endeavors.

How to Grow a Thick Skin (or Getting Your Writing Critiqued)

by Jana Segal

I am a strong believer that getting good feedback is an indispensable part of the writer's craft. After adapting my mom's childhood story Model T Biscuits into a short screenplay,  I gave the script to five screenwriters/filmmakers to critique. They all said that the little girl was too whiny and needy. It made her unlikeable. (Hey! That's my mommy you're talkin' about!) But if five people agree, there must be something to it. We rewrote it, making her less needy and we won two screenwriting contests.

Now, I know from experience that it is hard to have someone tear apart your creation, your baby. But I have found, that as the writer, I am just too close to the material to know if I am getting the point across. Sometimes I'm too subtle or sometimes I think something is there, that just isn't. I guess my mind fills in the blanks.

I remember my first college playwriting professor, Doctor Louis saying, “It's not as coherent as you think it is.” Ouch! I thought, “What's not clear?” While digging through my college papers, I found a scrap of paper that read, “Writing is rewriting. Doc.” Truer words have never been said. (I still get a yearly Christmas poem from Doc.)

I got my first lessons in critiquing while attending Brandeis University. The playwriting program consisted mostly of a weekly script reading performed by third year actors and then feedback lead by a dramaturg. (one of my fellow, overly competitive playwrights) Finally, it was my turn. I had them read my beloved musical, “Seeker” a true story about a legally blind woman who dreamed of being a dancer. I left in tears because another playwright was laughing at my baby, my award winning musical! The playwright confessed that while she was reading it, all she could see was the Saturday Night Live skit where the blind dancers ran into each other and leaped off the stage. Needless to say, I didn't find her feedback very constructive. Seems kinda funny now.

I learned how to write screenplays by reading books and having my script, “Walking with Grace” workshopped (ie. critiqued) at the Frederick Douglas Creative Arts Center in New York. “Walking with Grace” was inspired by a true event in my life when I took care of sweet elderly couple who was dealing with the wife, Grace's, Alzheimers disease. It was really a love project, but I was too close to it to see it objectively. I had written it with Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn in mind. In fact, I looked at a picture of Jessica while I wrote. I sent a query letter to Ms. Tandy through her agent. Mr. Cronyn sent me a handwritten response saying that they could never read my script because it was too depressing. His wife was going through the same thing. So, I needed to mellow out the harsh reality and show more of the love I had for Grace. At the FDCAC, they said that they couldn't believe that a 20 year old would stay in an abusive situation like that. So I had to make my character a granddaughter rather than a home health aide. I had to develop that character's backstory and write another draft that revolved around her as the main character. 

I had every draft critiqued.  I suppose at some point, every writer and filmmaker I knew had read my screenplay. For the price of some sweet and sour meatballs, a group of Tucson screen actors read my script aloud around my kitchen table and gave me some more feedback. It was touching to hear my words performed. It all paid off when a local Theater Company, Damesrocket, did a reading with a director and actors. It was very full-filling to see the audience's reaction to my work. (And a rare treat for a screenwriter.) A man came up to me crying. He said that the old man reminded him of his father. 

I highly recommend putting together a writers' group with people you trust to give you honest, constructive feedback. Feedback is an iffy thing. Sometimes it can hurt. You have to put on a thick skin and pick and choose what feedback is useful. Some people just wont get it. Sometimes they don't even like the genre. My rule of thumb is that if several people say the same thing, it's worth considering. But in the end, it is your writing.   

Piecing Patchwork Memories for Wormy Bean Winter

 by Lorna Kerin Beall

    When Jana and I accepted our screenplay award for Model T Biscuits at Santa Clarita, and she’d given her articulate acceptance speech, I stammered a few nervous sentences. I managed to end by saying that it was my Finnish mom and her sisu, (the Finnish word for guts and determination) that inspired me to write Model T.
   
    Later, as I pondered my mother’s courage, I began to remember what I heard about her childhood as her family homesteaded on the South Dakota prairie. I didn’t have much to go on at first. I recalled that she’d told me that her younger sisters, Irene and Leona had slept in the same bed with her which kept them warmer in the bitter winter weather and caused them to roast like sticky marshmallows in the summer. We had a black and white snapshot of Mom, her brother Gus, and Irene and Leona playing with bits of broken crockery using snake holes in the side of a Butte for a cupboard! (Scary.)
                                                                                                                              
      Mom, Dad and I had a small farm in Prosser, Washington. Mom loved to work outside with cows, calves chicken and such. All of our cows and calves had names. I had a steer named Cocoa that I rode all over the farm. I only fell off one time, when he jumped over a little ditch.

    Mom told me several times that when she was a child she’d been stuck in their homestead shack doing inside chores while her sister, Irene, who would’ve loved changing places with her, got to work outside. There was enough outdoor work to go around since they had to haul water from way out by the barn, carry wood in and ashes out, and chop out a multitude of wounding cacti.  I know they all had to pitch hay from dawn to dusk at haying time.

Fred Hultstrand History in Pictures Collection, NDIRS-NDSU, Fargo 

My grandmother ( Finnish Mumu) also inspired me. My Omaha cousin had written several inspirational articles about our mumu’s sisu. If I remember correctly these were published in some senior citizen magazines. As a child our mumu was once surrounded by a wolf pack and survived. And as an adult she’d encountered a different type of predator - the two legged kind - whom she met head-on with a pitchfork.  
                                                                                                                           
Hearing about these incidents and talking to my cousin, inspired me to begin writing a middle-grade, multi-cultural novel, Wormy Bean Winter. It would be loosely based on our family’s homesteading adventures on the prairie. Since it was to be a children’s novel, I made my mom the 12-years-old protagonist, always keeping in mind that all of her family members had a lot of faith and sisu.

  But where to start? I formulated a long list of questions, ranging from “How far did the family have to carry water?” to “Did you have a Christmas tree?” I even asked, “Were you hugged and kissed a lot by your parents?” I sent my questions to my cousin, Willo Boe, who lovingly and eagerly began to help and contacted other family members. In fact, she was inspired to write three wonderful non-fiction books of her own with amazing photos about our family. (These have been invaluable help in my writing.) In the first, she wrote in the acknowledgments, “Without my cousin, Lorna Beall’s curiosity regarding our grandparents’ lives, none of us would have considered the project.”

Our family heritage is a beautiful patchwork quilt pieced with both soft and more durable rag pieces.

How I Came to Write "Model T Biscuits"

Lorna Kerin Beall

    I have a very poignant memory of one Sunday when I was 6-years-old. Recalling this incident is what inspired me to begin writing Model T Biscuits. Remembering the experience makes me feel like I am that little girl again.

    I was attending the Cave Hills Lutheran Church, near Buffalo, South Dakota, with my Mumu (my Finnish Grandma.) I clung to Mumu’s hand. Though all the folks, who seemed very big and old to me, were friendly, I had a lonesome feeling way down in my tummy. I missed my freckly, redheaded Mama. Unable to find work close by, she was away working in the big city of Chicago as a governess. I had trouble saying the word “governess,” and Mama had told me I could say, “nanny.” She sent me a postcard with lots of tall skinny buildings on it. They looked scary. But the XOXO’s she scribbled on the other side of the scary postcard made me feel all better.

    One time when she was home for a visit, she showed me a picture of the boy and girl she took care of, Charles and Jacqueline. They were standing as pretty-as-you-please in front of a big mansion. “Is that our house, Mama?” I’d asked. She shook her head, and reassured me that someday we’d have our oma tupa, our own home. I tried very hard to pronounce the girls name. “Jac – Jac…” Mama told me I could call the little rich girl Jackie. Jackie was dressed in a frilly white dress that was prettier than any I owned. And Charles had a white shirt and shorts on. Also suspenders. I wished I knew what color those suspenders were. Everything in the photograph was black and white. Even Mama’s red hair. She was in the picture, too, holding onto the children’s hands. I didn’t like that. She was my Mama.

    I knew my Mumu loved me. Our little stucco house always smelled for homemade thin bread. She called it a big Finnish word I couldn’t say, something -- leapa. Only she spelled that last part “l-e-i-p-ä.” Mumu and my Aunts loved to chatter away in those hard words that I couldn’t understand. I don’t think they wanted me know what they were saying. From the funny looks on their faces I knew they were telling secrets.

     Mama married my Step-Daddy, and they came to see us. They said they were going to Wash-ing-ton, State, to see his sister, Sill. They promised to take me too. But I didn’t believe them.  I always raised a big noisy fuss when Mama had to go back to Chicago after a trip home, so she’d sneak off in the middle of the night. I was afraid they’d sneak off without me.  So I hid away in he back seat of our
Model T.

    And that’s where and when Model T Biscuits begins.

Family and Family Heritage Inspire Writing

by Lorna Kerin Beall

Who would think that a little girl raised in a tiny farm house with only two books to her name, (“Heidi” and “Cherry Ames, Student Nurse”) would develop a life long love of reading and writing. I have been writing for over 50 years, publishing articles and short story manuscripts in magazines such as Guideposts. One was reprinted in a Hallmark book. These minor early successes encouraged me to persevere and develop my distinctive voice. During this time I was also progressing to children’s picture book manuscripts. Having raised six children and taught Sunday school for disabled children, I saw a need for more books that dealt with children's issues. So I wrote books that centered both on light-hearted issues, such as discovering the simple treasures in life, and more serious issues such as child abuse. Wanting to communicate to children, I volunteered to read my picture books in my own children’s classrooms. It meant so much when I saw the flicker in the kids’ eyes.

About 20 years ago, I attended my first SCBWI conference. Seeing all those people writing children's books opened up a whole new world to me. Since then I’ve completed quite a body of work, writing both picture books and children’s novel manuscripts. My middle-grade novel, “Model T Biscuits” is very dear to my heart because it is inspired by my experience of being reunited with my mother in 1948 after being raised for my first six years by my Finnish Mumu (Grandmother) in Buffalo, South Dakota. This became a family project when my oldest daughter, Jana Segal, worked with me on the screenplay adaptation further carrying on our family heritage. Our script won first place in the Santa Clarita International Family Film Festival as well as the Moondance International Film Festival short screenplay contests. At Santa Clarita, we had the pleasure of seeing our script read by actors from the Dee Wallace acting studio.

Some years back, I attended a family reunion in South Dakota and heard stories of how my Finnish grandparents survived the harsh prairie winters in their homestead shack. They really had what we Finns call sisu or guts and determination. These family stories inspired my historical fiction, middle-grade novel, “Wormy Bean Winter.” This past year, I was honored with a Missouri SCBWI mentorship to work on “Wormy Bean Winter” with children’s author, Leslie J. Wyatt. That experience was incredibly rewarding, and I know that my manuscript is much stronger thanks to Leslie.

I am grateful for my small town upbringing in Buffalo, South Dakota and Prosser, Washington that taught me the value of family and heritage that influences my writing today.

The Rocky, Twisted Road to Finding My True Passion

by Jana Segal

I spent my childhood dreaming of being a musical theater actress. There weren't many opportunities for acting in the small towns where we lived in the high desert and then rural Missouri. And there was no money for dance or singing lessons. Being a writer herself, my mom always supported my art and drove me to an nearby town to be in a couple of community theater productions. Mostly I checked out Broadway albums from the library and sang along with them. I had always had a gift for writing songs but I had never played an instrument, so I couldn't write them down. So I would sing my creations over and over until I learned them and then sing them into a tape recorder. One of my best memories of growing up was sitting on my mom's bed and singing her my latest song.

No one in our family had ever gone to college, but I put together an audition piece from the musical, "Chicago" and applied to Avila College. By the time I got to Avila on a performing arts scholarship, I was longing to act. But they didn't let Freshman perform in plays. My heart was set on doing musical theater, but I found that the other Performing Arts majors had years of dance classes and voice lessons. Anyway, it didn't help that I threw my knee out (trying to do the splits on the couch like my gymnast sister) right before taking my first ballet class. But I did my best to amuse the nursing majors in the dorm, practicing my clumsy pirouettes down the hall. One of my wiser ballet teachers said that I had the soul of a dancer (if not the body.) At this time I was also writing plays and songs, so I tried to learn to read music and sight sing. Unfortunately, there was a mean nun who would humiliate me in front of the class because she resented that I had never learned an instrument. Overwhelmed by voice lessons, piano lessons, dance lessons, scene production, and acting, I never did learn to sight sing. But encouraged by my playwriting professor, I wrote two musicals, “Magic Shoes” and “Seeker.” (A music major wrote down my melodies and arranged the accompaniment.) Boy did I show that nun when I won third place in the Missouri College Theater Fest for my musical, "Seeker."  I went on to get my MFA in Dramatic Writing from Brandeis University.

Since then, my passion has shifted to screenwriting. My professional career hasn't exactly taken off partially because I choose only to work on love projects instead of big budget, high concept scripts. But my screenplay, "Walking with Grace" was workshopped at the Frederick Douglas Creative Writing workshop in NY and received a staged reading by Damesrocket theater company in Tucson. I shopped it around Hollywood a bit, got nice comments from some producers, but they said that no one would ever buy a script about old people. (Of course, a few years later, "The Notebook" came out followed by "Away with Her" and "Savages." Oh, well.) At least I had the satisfaction of seeing it performed before it went into the shoe-box under my bed. 

I finally decided that if I wanted to see my work on the big screen, I would have to do it myself. Encouraged by my husband, I produced my short comedy called, "The Bath-a-holic" about a family conducting an intervention on their mother who is addicted to baths and showers. Despite some embarrassing technical problems (in a couple of shots there is too much light reflected on the mother's wet face) it was well received at the premiere and the screening at the Arizona International Film Festival. People laughed in all the right places! 

Meanwhile, I continued to write my love projects. I spent about a year helping my mom by critiquing several drafts of her children's chapter book based on her true story of being reunited with her mother, called, "Model T Biscuits." This story was so full of love that it inspired me to work with my mother on a short script adaptation that eventually won first place in two screenplay competitions. At the time, we were so excited that we started scouting locations in the little Arizona town of Wilcox. I even directed a scene from it at the Pasternak Directing workshop. (A workshop I organized as president of the Tucson filmmakers group AIVF.) Then I pitched the script to some production companies but the consensus was that they could do nothing with a short script. Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out how to expand it without losing the endearing simplicity of the story. So I set it aside. Perhaps I was too close to it,  but I couldn't figure it out for years. Lately, I've been getting the itch to produce this cherished family story.