GK: You are in your twenties and you want to be a writer and one day it dawns on you --
SS: I am getting nowhere. I haven't written anything but Facebook updates in the past three years. Three years I've been messing around. Nothing to show for it.
GK: What's wrong? Your friends, your family, your college teachers all told you you were brilliant.
SS:n Brilliant!!! Ha. I am a small dim bulb. All I do is sit around and look at a screen.
GK:n Maybe the problem is that all your life you've been praised for tiny things. Starting in nursery school.
SS (TEACHER): Good job, Megan. You tied your own shoe. Bravo.
GK: Your parents tried to affirm your self-worth by positive reinforcement.
TR:n Hey, you put your dishes in the sink! Way to go! I'm proud of you. Here's five dollars.
GK:n Compare that to the upbringing of older writers such as myself. I've published many books and I grew up with no positive reinforcement at all.
TR (SWEDISH, ANGRY)
GK: I was made to do hard physical labor (FN EXERTION) and nobody praised me for it (TR SWEDISH) my room was cold (SHIVERING) and we ate gruel morning noon and night (TR SWEDISH) and nobody encouraged us. Nobody. (WHIP, DOG SNARL, DOOR SLAM) Maybe you could use a little bit of that. Call up the ELCA.....the Evelyn Lundberg Counselling Agency.
SS: You listen to me, you little snot, and listen up close. You want to be a writer, well so do a hundred thousand other people and they're the ones who're actually writing something. That's what writers do, you know? You have to put your butt in the chair and make words and sentences on the page. It isn't enough to just look cool. And you don't look that cool anyway. So wake up and smell the coffee and get your butt in gear. Maybe you ought to get out of Los Angeles and live in Iowa for awhile. Spend a few months on a farm and get your head screwed on straight. You ever shovel pig poop? It'll teach you to stop looking at your bellybutton and start making something of yourself.
Your problem is you don't know the meaning of the word WORK, you expect everything to be handed to you on a silver plate. Well, the free ride is over, girly girl.n Time to GROW UP.
GK: The ELCA. Not to be confused with UPS, The Unitarian Pastoral Service.
TR (CAPOTE): I think that regardless of what you decide, you're still a very very beautiful person and a part of our universe.
GK: This is the ELCA.
SS: I got one thing to say to you and that's GROW UP.
GK:n The Evelyn Lundberg Counselling Agency....in the Yellow Pages under Discipline.