Women! A great memoir really inspires you, you know?
#youcantkeepagoodwomandown #susanstrasser #susanstrasserblog #amwriting
I continue to read Barbra Streisand’s memoir wherever I can squeeze it in. I’m on chapter 37 and there are 59 total! Plus an Epilogue! IEgads! It’s another race against the public library clock lol
I finished the chapter about making Yentl yesterday- it was her first film that she wrote, directed, and starred in. She always wanted to direct, and was doing it intuitively, or observing directors for the first 20 years of her acting career until Yentl.
Streisand is a loving human being who realized by Yentl’s end that it wasn’t about creative control of the film, but having the right cast and crew in place to portray her vision. She said, “And I discovered the most important thing you can do with power is to share it. The giving of power enhances your own.”
In blazing the path for other female directors, of which there were almost none in 1983, Streisand recognized the weight of responsibility she had. The next chapter is about the awards season following Yentl‘s release, and all the sexism and antisemitism that she faced as a female director in Hollywood.
As a writer, I used to clamor for fame, but I’ll be honest. I haven’t touched my memoir in about in a while. I used to dream about publishing it. Still, I look forward to that sort of publishing dream coming true and maybe some notoriety as I age and return to my manuscript… but not today.
You’re looking at my most current publishing! My beloved blogs.
“0% certainty equals possibility.” -Dan Siegel
I am open to the possibilities of my writing future, but I’m not pressed to know what they are. I know I am writer. I don’t need notoriety. I have been writing regularly in journals, notebooks, any paper I can find, word processors, computers…. since I was a child.
Would I like notoriety? Sure. Someday.
For going on a year now, I write 6-7 mornings a week, 400 words minimum. Then I delete it! It’s so freeing!
My blog is 4 or 5 years old now, and I just do it. Every week.
And every morning, like my friend Melissa, I write. (well she does hers at night, but still)
I started this blog as an introductory companion to my manuscript (or that was the plan), and while that’s on hold, and I live my life, I know that my new plot will have more layers from my middle age.
I’m not sure how it will look, but I know by continuing to draw strength from tales like Streisand’s, anything is possible! And that we writers are not alone. Just write.
susan strasser 