Reflecting on the Grist… the inspiration and the process

I was riding my bicycle from University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa to downtown Honolulu when these lines came to me:  My mother once told me that I was as trustworthy as a viper.  She should know.  It takes one to know one.  I could feel it was the beginning of a story, and I knew if I just held on to those lines, the rest would follow.  When I arrived at work, I began writing it.  It just flowed. 

It is written in first person, through Angel.  It begins and ends in present tense, and uses past tense to tell the reader about the events that lead up to Angel’s escape.   

I workshopped it in ENG 414 and with my writing group with Ian MacMillan.  Later that year, in December 2005, I performed it for a required assignment in my graduate class with Achy Obejas.  It was included in my MA thesis, The Grace of Dark Times.  

A few years later, when I was enrolled in my MFA for Professional Screenwriting program, I adapted it into a full-length screenplay.  It went through many versions, too many to keep track of.  I pulled a couple of scenes and created stand-alone short screenplays to be used by students in the creative media program, a sister program to the screenwriting one.  Different versions of the short pieces were turned into short films over four years.  It was interesting to watch characters I’d imagined come to life on the small screen.

One of the many screenplay versions was included as part of my MFA thesis.