Ari's Story

I love to read, and write, because I love stories. Everyone has a story to tell. That's what makes this crazy world we live in so interesting. Every Monday, I interview a different person here and share their stories. At first glance, my guests may appear ordinary, but I promise they're not. They're people. And all people are fascinating. We all have a story to tell.

This week, I'm talking to aspiring screenwriter Ari Wanless. I'm thrilled she's here to share her story with us today.

Let's get started, Ari, describe yourself in 50 words or less.

AW: I'm bad at brevity.  It's probably what drove me to writing in the first place.  Extrovertedly introspective would probably describe me accurately, and tell you nothing. I also have a thing about wasted space, and I love the beauty of things fitting perfectly into place. Call me obsessive compulsive, heh.
Me: Despite your struggles with brevity, your last answer was 50 words exactly. What do you love most in the world?

AW: There are so many directions to take this question in that I'm finding it difficult to decide.  Most in the world, I like the sensation that I've done above and beyond the thing I set out to do.  Like somehow I've actually over-achieved, rather than simply achieved.  It's not a feeling I get a lot, because over-achieving has become common and expected to me, so it's a rarity.  Although when I set out to tell a story, and I really, really feel like I told the story, not just for me, but for others to have that, and take my imaginary friends with them for the rest of their life as a small voice in their head, or as a friend, or as an example?  That.  That's the feeling I love the most.  That sensation of well and truly touching someone else's mind with my ideas, it's one of the most intimate, and simultaneously impersonal things in the world.  And it's an amazing sensation, when you get to know that it's happened.
Me: I always think of my characters as imaginary friends too. I love that through writing I too can introduce them to the world. What do you fear most?

AW: Doing damage that's beyond my power to repair.  Yeah, it really does extend to all aspects of life.  Breakups?  Ouch, I'm hurting someone and it's not in my power to make it all better.  Dealing with other people's money?  Oh, you better believe that's scary.  I could lose someone else's money, and not be able to fix it.  The worst part about this fear is it's not unreasonable, it's only the strength of my reaction that's unreasonable.  But the bigger problem is that I want to be a show runner, and being in charge means you're empowered to do a lot of good, but always more harm than good.  So good luck to me.  Yikes!
Me: That does sound overwhelming. Now I want to know your largest unfulfilled dream, and what are you doing to achieve it?

AW: It's a little hard to define it.  If you'd asked me this only a few months ago, I think I wouldn't have been able to answer the question.  Now, it's hard because there are so many different ways for me to interpret the intangible wish I can feel so powerfully.  One way I could say it is that I want to be validated?  I want to feel like I'm actually good at what I want to do?  I should probably specify at this point that this is likely to be one of the longer answers.  I'm the youngest of five children, my next eldest sibling is 5 years my senior.  Among my sisters and brothers is a navy JAG, an Olympic fencer, an interior architect, and a theatre technician.  All of my siblings I look up to immensely, and they do set the bar kinda high.  Part of me wants to stop worrying about whether or not I live up to their expectations of me, and just do what I want, and part of me wants to be able to say "Actually, Ari, you're really a fantastic writer.  Stop doubting that, and do what you love.  That'll soar right over the bar, you know."

I suppose I'm stuck somewhere in remembering them as being so much older than I am, and so much better at everything than I am, that it's hard to believe I'm any good at this thing that I've had as a hobby on and off for most, if not all, of my life.  My biggest unfulfilled goal or dream would be to stop worrying about how it'll look or feel to expose myself as much as it takes to really write; it puts your heart, your soul, and your mind on a page for others to approve of or disapprove of.  And while I don't normally fear disapproval, writing is, well, a delicate thing, isn't it?  I've poured weeks of love into certain scenes, and tons of care and thought and nurturing into the characters I create.  I mean it when I say they're my imaginary friends in some ways.  And while I can handle what a critique group thinks of me and my writing, or what friends and strangers thing, family is another matter, you know?  If I screw everything up and somehow embarrass the crap out of myself, there's no getting around that one, or away from it.  So I guess my biggest unfulfilled dream would be feeling good enough at the skill of writing that I'm not afraid of what my sisters and brothers will thing, moreover, that they'll think well of my pieces.
Me: Validation is a hard dream to strive for, because it's often a moving target. I imagine being the youngest in a successful group of siblings makes it that much more poignant. I hope that you are able to find the acceptance you need no matter what happens with your writing. Finding that place of piece and being happy inside your own life wont be easy though. What is the hardest thing you've ever done?

AW: I really hate that this is the question I've drawn such a blank on, especially after spending so much time on the previous one.  But honestly, I don't know that I've done a lot that's hard.  I do difficult things relatively often, I guess, but nothing that was hard for me to make myself do.  That last sentence has to be wrong, but really, I can't come up with a counter example.  But here's what's muddying the issue; I suffer from anticipation.  The fear of being about to do something is palpable and dreadful.  The actually doing of a thing is totally fine!  Anticipating coming to the critique meeting?  Even though I didn't have anything I was planning to read?  Oh, man, you wouldn't know it from when I was there, but I was a wreck.  Nervous something dreadful, almost didn't go, butterflies all around, I was convinced I was going to get lost, going to show up somehow so early it would embarrass me, or so late I would be in everyone's way or a nuisance, or somehow I would get there, it would be awful, but it would be somehow impossible to leave gracefully...  And then I was there, and I was fine; I gave feedback, I insinuated myself into the group, and I had a really good time, and came back.  So I wouldn't call going to the critique group hard, just like I wouldn't call a lot of the things I do "hard," but talking myself into it, and making sure I stayed talked into it?  That was hard, and there are lots of examples like that, I'm sure, but the only reason I remember this one is because it's recent.
Me: Having met you in person a few times, I never would have guessed you have any insecurity or anxiety at all. You present yourself as very self confident.May that means you could have a future in acting in addition to screenwriting. Now that we've gotten to know each other, tell me a story. It can be long or short. From your childhood or last week. Funny, sad, or somewhere in between. Just make sure it's yours. What's your story?

AW: Let's go with the first time I knew what my writing style was, since I seem to be on a role about writing, I'll keep it on-topic, I guess.

I was reading the Deed of Paksenarrion at the time.  A childhood favourite of mine, and although I can't say it's particularly splendid for well-written, it's still a find read.  I'm going to spoil the plot line here, though, so if you care, you were warned.  Essentially, the books read like this:
Paks leaves her father's farm to join the army, turns into a pretty good soldier, ends up finding religion, starts down the part to becoming a paladin, evil things happen to her and take away her courage, then she has to go and rediscover herself.  She spends some time with some elves, and while she's with them learns how to detect evil, call light from her hands, and a couple of other paladin tricks.  She ends up going on an adventure to put the long lost king on the throne of this elven kingdom, he offers to marry her, she's all "Nah, I'm a paladin, I'mma keep doing cool paladin things.  Bye!"
Well, I was maybe 12 or so, and I remember thinking, wait, the guy who turns out to be the king later is the Duke through most of this story.  The Duke is Paks' boss, and kinda fills the father-figure role for her character.  Also, though, they've talked about how much Paks looks like the Duke's dead wife, and how she's just as old as the Duke's dead daughter would have been, and such...  Also, the Duke, who was half elven, thought he was human, because elves can look pretty darned human sometimes.  And furthermore, I thought to myself, detecting evil, and all of these paladin tricks that Paks learned, are also elven tricks.  Even the paladin-like draw she felt to put the king on the throne could be her being drawn to her homeland, like elves talk about.
So there it was, I had decided that there was so much foreshadowing that Paks HAD to be the Duke's daughter.  And that got me thinking, "Did the author chicken out about the incest of it?"  It made all the characters more rich if this was the case; the Duke, more tortured, but also restored in that this daughter was alive.  Paks, who had been finding herself over the course of the previous book, would have to discover that she found the wrong self and she wasn't who or what she thought she was.  The characters who had supported the Duke's marriage proposal would all feel at least a little awkward about that choice.  Generally, it was an interesting thing to add to the book, that bloody well fit there, now didn't it!  But I could see why the author didn't want to put incest in their book.  Still it was the moment I made a writing promise to myself:
"I will never let the subject matter of a story that wants to be told scare me off of it.  If the characters would do this, no matter how screwed up the thing is, then that's how screwed up these characters are."
As you can imagine, this makes my writing style somewhat dark and dreary, but it also does one unexpected thing.  It makes the characters...  Sweet.  Loving to one another.  When I write characters that care about each other, they really care, because I never told them to, and I never said they had to for the story to work, the story works because they are unfettered.  But that could launch into a whole other set of stories, so I'll call this story finished for now.
Me: Thank you so much for sharing your story, Ari.

So what's your story? If you're interested in participating in a future installment of What's Your Story, please leave your contact information in the comments of this post or email me directly at katherine.elliott.scott(at)gmail.