• personal letter (3 pages or less) telling something about yourself and your writing inspirations and aspirations
• a resumé (and given that I've been self-employed and/or SAHD for something like 17 years now, I gave that useless document all the respect and seriousness it deserves, which is to say "just slightly less than none")
• a list of non-journalism writing and/or film credits (I listed some writing stuff, but the bulk of my writing these past 17 years was contract copywriting and way too boring to rate specific itemized mention)
• a list of completed screenplays (which looked more impressive than I expected)
• a short one paragraph or perhaps half-page bio statement
Right now, I have all but that damned bio completed, and that one is driving me nuts. Every time I try to start, I am overwhelmed by the sound of Steve Martin's voice in the opening to THE JERK—"I was born the son of poor black sharecroppers..."—and then I get bored and go eat a handful of CheezIts and stare at the backyard.
I am perfectly fine to talk about myself... but only on my own terms. So long as I am allowed to make light of things and make the tragic seem laughable and the laughable seem tragic and the triumphant seem moronic and vice versa, and so long as I know that the audience is understanding the ridiculous joke of it all, then all is well and I can have fun.
But ask me to stand up straight and seem serious about a subject so totally undeserving of such stick-up-the-butt seriousness—me thinking seriously about me and then seriously reflecting upon that seriousness seriously—and my first and deepest instinct is to drop trou and behave badly.
Time for more CheezIts.
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bored by serious discussion of serious self-reflection B
