THIS MONTH'S SHOWCASE FEATURES:

"THE WRITING LIFE"
MY LIFE AS A 19 YEAR OLD WRITER
Interview with Jess Lipworth

FERTILE MATERIAL SHORT STORY
Only Humanoid by Sharon Forrest

FEATURED CRAFT ARTICLE
Exposing the Personal Essay by Deborah Bouziden

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MY LIFE AS A 19 YEAR OLD WRITER
Based on an interview with Jess Lipworth
Milli Thornton Copyright © 2002

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Jess Lipworth is the son of Robbie Lipworth, owner of The Store Different in Santa Fe where I hold a free writing circle every Thursday evening. That's how I met Jess. I didn't even visualize Robbie with such a grown-up son until Jess turned up at the store one Thursday and asked if he could join us for some writing.

Jess is here visiting his dad from South Africa. Back home, Jess is a 19-year-old college student at City Varsity in Capetown, where his pursuit of education mirrors the creative freedom he enjoys in his personal life. Last year, Jess was enrolled in Television and Multimedia School and this year he will return to City Varsity to take up a three year acting degree.

His love of writing imbues everything that he does, even in other creative arenas. Jess is a songwriter who writes all the lyrics for a (yet unnamed) band where he also plays bass, sings and raps. "The band has been together for one year," Jess said, "but rather than doing gigs, at this point we're concentrating on developing new songs so we can record an album."

Dubbing himself "Asthma Shrapnel," Jess is also working on a solo album of electronic hip-hop. "I do everything myself, from writing the lyrics to constructing the songs to using my computer to record the album. I have a couple of working titles for this album, FUSION CHAPTER and BUTTERFLY STEW, which I got from my dad."

His father, Robbie Lipworth is also a self-recorded songwriter/ musician and an immensely entertaining writer. It's not difficult to spot the influence that Robbie has had on his son creatively, but it's still heartwarming to hear Jess spontaneously name his dad as one of his creative influences.

Jess has written four film scripts. He is self-taught, through voracious reading of other screenplays, and by just doing it. He writes his screenplays in the official format of the movie world. I asked him about the writing process for his 2001 screenplay, THE NEVER ENDING FLESH.

"It took me a week to mentally develop my initial idea into a story. Then it took me two months to write the screenplay of 70 pages. At first, I wrote one page every 2-3 days. I wanted to take the whole process one day at a time. But gradually, the process sped up. During the first month I wrote 30 pages, then I let the whole thing sit and stew for about three weeks. It took me a week to write the final 40 pages."

What was it that induced this creative adrenalin rush?

"I need to know everything that happens before I write the story. Then I write the dialogue and the scenes exactly as I want them to be in the movie. I didn't like the direction it was taking, so I had a break. I need to be clear about my story before I inflict it on others. The break was to make sure I was going in the right direction. During the break, I read more screenplays. I also hung around people who talk like the characters in my film, in order to become more familiar with their speech patterns."

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Jess also plans to go into production with his movie scripts.

"One screenplay of mine, THE GLOWWORM PROPHECY, is full of special effects. It's a fantasy film like THE MATRIX and it needs a major budget, millions of rands. But usually my screenplays are more dialogued-based, which means more still scenes and a smaller budget. I have a new, partly developed script that I'm considering producing with friends. We would need about $100,000 rand for this film." [Note: roughly US $8,500]

"We plan to get together this April to begin production on one of my screenplays. I just haven't decided which one yet. We'll use a camcorder and everyone will pitch in. I have friends from Varsity that are enrolled in the Multimedia course. We'll do everything from acting to makeup to special effects. We will film some of it in Capetown, and the rest in Plettenberg Bay, where our lead actress lives.

"I write character and location based films where reality and fantasy are juxtaposed. My characters are struggling; they're real people. They go through so much to clarify the love in the story. I always put in some fantasy to emphasize that the love has been clarified. The fantasy is not for the purposes of escapism. I just know life has a lot of fantasy that people don't notice or see.

"My films have tragic endings--or rather, what the audience will perceive as a tragic ending--but which is actually the character's salvation. The reader should think the ending is tragic, but it also has a beauty to it."

What is the love that Jess is trying to clarify?

"I love romantic films, but what we mostly see these days is fluff. I began writing lyrics to express what I was going through romantically and emotionally myself. Then I started to write films. I'm trying to make it real. I always add some action, horror or fantasy--but it is most important to find the love, even within the horror. I want to portray real romantic love, not the typical schmaltzy Hollywood-Meg Ryan type of love. The love we, as real people, struggle to find. Not television love."

Jess refers frequently to his 19-year-old girlfriend, Barbara Collins, who is studying photography at City Varsity.

"She inspires me to write about love differently. Her perspectives on film give me ideas. Just talking to her puts me in the mood to go to the computer and write down feelings, which soon leads to dialogue and plots. Barbara's photos inspire me too. She has the ability to portray people's fear of being exposed. She can take a normal person, put her or him in the photo and portray that person as paranoid. She takes realistic photos but she stages them. She'll convince you that a normal person is extremely bent. She also shoots free landscape and then distorts certain aspects to emphasize freedom vs. being trapped. She likes to balance her work."

What other type of writing does Jess do besides screenplays and lyrics?

"For me, short stories came after film. I read more of everything to get ideas. Then I took everything I liked and mixed it up to try to create a technique of writing. But I don't have a fixed technique."

His dad, Robbie, spoke up at this point. "Writing is about the freedom to express yourself. You don't have to follow a technique. Some people have even stifled themselves that way."

But as a 19-year-old writer searching for his voice, how does Jess really feel about that?

"Sometimes I'm uncomfortable that I'm not using the same style or format that I used the last time. But when I look back over my work I can see patterns begin to emerge, such as themes linking some of my stories together.

"Writing is not about a formula or even whether I get published. I will carry on writing regardless of that. It's a habit in my life, but a really good habit."

Where does Jess get this good habit from?

"From my influences. My dad's songwriting. That's beautiful. Other songs are beautiful. My girlfriend's love is beautiful. I just want to reflect that love and beauty, I don't need to top it."

Jess also writes poetry. He explains that the poetry fits in with the lyrics he writes.

"When I was thirteen I was going through the usual hormonal, teenage angst stuff and writing poems about it. I began rapping my poems. At first I rapped alone. Then my black friend, Mohau, moved in for awhile during some family difficulties. We started to have these bedroom gatherings, making really bad rap recordings. We used a karaoke machine, a keyboard and also ashtrays and pens as instruments. My younger brother, Simon, and his black friends, Neo and Gerard, joined in. The black influence was very important for our rap. It became a weekend ritual. We would spend the week gathering inspiration and by the weekend we would have material enough to record one or two songs. We called ourselves THE NINE MILLIMETRE COLLECTIVE. We had a lot of fun."

Robbie remarks that the fun is important because many people get into their twenties and begin to shut down the creative flow. Has Jess thought about how he will avoid going down that path?

"Every year I grow stronger personally, spiritually and creatively. I know I have to just keep doing it, keep practicing my good habit. But you can't force it either. It has to come from desire."

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Milli Thornton, author of FEAR OF WRITING, lived in Australia for 25 years and now resides in Taos, New Mexico with her husband and two cats. Milli runs writing circles based on the Fertile Material exercises in her book. For information on how you can join an existing writing circle or start one of your own, click here.