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Justine and one of her many uncles. He still drives that horse drawn cart around town.

Notes For Editing

Jonathan,

To summarize, redundantly, my general thoughts, expressed in a bossy opinionated way. Take 'em or leave 'em...

Always keep alive a sense of what is HAPPENING IN THE TIME AND SPACE OF THE PIECE. You begin with packing to go on a trip and on a mission. That intention must remain alive. Help us know how things are going. Check in with us. Tell us WHERE we are from time to time, how long into the trip it is, and how the mission is going.

The mission, it seems to me, must have to do with LOVE, CONNECTION, UNDERSTANDING. The purpose of your trip can't be tossed off at the top, e.g. "I wanted to understand her better." The stakes have to be higher, concrete. The way you two pack your bag supports this. You are required to undergo CHANGE, if only in your perceptions, in the course of this trip. Our questions, as we go along, will be -- is he changing? why? would I change if I were him? what will happen if he does or doesn't?

Justine's grandmother Maria and her sister Natalia.

Pick the characters that are important and develop them. Let the others fall away. Always remember the main characters are you and Justine. We always need to be learning something about the two of you -- and YOUR RELATIONSHIP -- in learning about anything else. Otherwise, the information just hangs there and we don't know what to do with it. Am I going to be quizzed on this, we wonder? Or can I relax, because i know I'm being looked after. Keep our eye on the ball.

Keep alive the idea of your American-ness. That's the one thing you have in common with all your listeners. To the degree your perceptions are in some way "American" it will help streamline the cross-cultural story for which you and Justine are our poster children. I am still intrigued by what you said last night about how you never felt more American than when you were in Poland. Develop that maybe.

Think SCENES. Set up places where things HAPPEN, where change takes place, even if only in your mind. Think footnotes. It allows you to dip into the past, while remaining within a scene. Never take us into the past without telling us WHY we're there. It's a short piece, not a novel, and we can't be without bearings for too long. I'm really not trying make you over-linear or obvious, just solid and directed. Tell a good story. The way you would around the table. Every part has a purpose toward a goal.

Think CHARACTER. I need to build a GROWING sense of who Justine is, and who you are in relation to her. What must I know and when must I know it?

Re-examine your sequence. Pull all the information out on index cards, look at what each scene or moment in terms of how it functions as a story element or character growth and ponder whether it should be moved. Remember, we always need reasons to CARE about each step along the way. That's your job.

Be able to graph the curve of 1) your change, 2) Justine's change or reaction to you, 3) your change together. This is what you've made us care about in your opening. Keep us posted. it can be very subtle. It can be in the way you eat, or the way she touches you differently, or in how loud you sing. My sense is that there is a move from outsider to insider, from discomfort to comfort, a move toward "adoption" of a context and family and new hybrid identity. It's a love story, dude. But it can't be over-romantic. It needs to have awareness of itself.

Cut all details you can't defend in terms of the forward motion and layering of the story. Give us less rather than more. Do we need *both* quotes from Kundera or would one do, with a quick modifier? Remember, it takes time to absorb information as a listener in real time, and if you jam too much into our brains, some of it just won't fit. Breathe.

The cottage in Woods Hole, MA where Transom kept their Artist in Residence under lock and key.

Build toward the ending with the ring. Drop clues. Give us questions, your questions, make us accomplices in your decisions/transformations. The main question I have on the ending is it feels just to pat to stop right there. I'd love an ellipsis and it occurred to me, and maybe you or Viki suggested it earlier, leave that stuff about the SIZE of the ring as the last thing... a tail out. Go out on that, on the continued negotiating, pondering, FITTING. I like that. It's still romantic, but less naive.

all for now...

-Jay

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The National Endowment for the Arts

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