Discovering Discomforts

Classes started up again and I missed the boat on the Accuplacer, but I will do it next year so I can get it out of the way and graduate. This semester I am taking a Screenwriting class. Screenwriting is a huge leap for me, I am used to writing the lengthy novels filled with action and dialogue. I felt that Screenwriting was all about dialogue, but I was pleasantly surprised when I learned it was more about action.

Roughly speaking 1 page of a script equals 1 minute on screen and a script is usually 100 pages on the short side and 120 on the long side. We haven't gotten to write any screenplays yet, but we did have to jot down an idea and I gravitated towards a tap dance number and water ballet. Not surprisingly I had the most fanciful idea. The teacher spoke about how its difficult to come up with new ideas and I though quietly, "Really I don't have that problem." Is it hard for you to have no ideas? For me new ideas come with the dawn.

This is one thing people don't know about me, but a gift that came with Autism is lucid dreaming. I had it ever since I was a child and never understood what it was until I was diagnosed. Sometimes there are dreams I couldn't care to remember, but then there are those dreams that are so wickedly strange that I have had to keep a dream journal in bed to jot them down. These dreams are rarely about me, in fact I am introduced to new characters, settings, and very rarely a new plot in whole. More often then not the dreams are out of sequence and I have to piece them together in the order I think they would go.

I wish that my memoir would come as easily to me as my dreams do.Writing my memoir is difficult because I remember the emotions like they were yesterday. Its kind of like the tag in your shirt discomfort, I've been bothered by it and itching to write it, but I'm not sure how to go about pulling it off. Writing in the first perspective about my life is one of the hardest things I've had to do. I am used to being the one in the background rarely seen, but I realized that in order for this memoir to be a success I have to put myself out there.

The hard thing for an Aspie is conversing and trying to come off as normal. I quickly learned though (through three summers of social skills classes) that we are all trying to come off as normal. I also realized that when we're comfortable and not being challenged then we aren't moving forward. I am ready to forge ahead writing my memoir because I believe its something everyone should know. There are too many books about the medical side of autism, never the personal side. I want people out there to know what Autism is like while defying the stereotypes. Here's your fact for today, a stereotype as Webster describes it is a relief printing plate cast in a mold made from composed type or an original plate. Our definition of stereotype came from the printer meaning that we all have fixed perceptions about people and who we assume they are. I hope to break the mold. Here's to a new year of discovering discomforts, defying stereotypes, and forging ahead into the uncomfortable unknown because tomorrow is just another blank page and I intend to fill it (what? did you think I was going to start singing Taylor Swift?).

This Underwood Typewriter belonged to my Grandfather
I absolutely love the way it looks in Monochrome.