A Time to Play It Safe and a Time Not To

by Jody Feldman

The route from my elementary school to our new house was simple: follow the sidewalk along the main road, make a left, go downhill ... home! But the new neighbors who’d invited me to walk with them that day – new friends!? They decided to take the shortcut. The shortcut, though, meandered through backyards of unknown people in unknown subdivisions. Even worse, the shortcut dead-ended at a tall fence. I didn’t climb fences. I didn’t climb, period. But there it was. Either find a way to get over OR ...
try to find my way out of the middle of this maze AND
face the embarrassment of running scared.
I climbed the fence.

Just the other week, someone presented me with a similar challenge; she suggested I enter a screenplay competition,  “Just write five pages a day,” she said over the phone. “See what happens.” I stood there like that girl with the fence in front of me.

I don’t write screenplays.
But I do write.
And there was this idea I’d explored, off and on, for six years. I'd just never been able to climb past the first plot point. Would it hurt to play with the story in a different format?

Maybe it would:
1. This detour would not help me make a sudden book deadline.
2. Writing something with little chance of success, both creatively and competition-wise, would hardly be a shortcut to accomplishing any goals.
3. The deadline for the competition was only six weeks away.
Why put myself under that type of time pressure? Why set myself up to fail?

I took a cleansing breath. I sat back down.
I downloaded Fade In, a screenwriting software.

This past Friday, averaging five pages a day, I’d done it! Not only had I made it past that sticky plot point, but I’d typed THE END.

Do I expect to win? Ha! I’m just hoping my readers don’t laugh pathetically at my attempt. If they do? No matter. Climbing over that fence – getting past the plot barrier by way of an uncomfortable method – has not only added a valuable tool to my writing arsenal, it’s taught me there’s a time to play it safe and a time not to.

And it turns out that, sometimes, both options show us the absolute right path.