The realization that one MUST write books can dawn slowly, over the course of a lifetime, or in a Joan-of-Arc-hears-a-voice sudden flash of inspiration. I had my first epiphany during a dismal meeting with T.V. network executives as I burned at the stake of their unrelenting criticism of a script I had written about a subject I knew cold: glamorous black divas. It was 1998 and I was a thirteen year sitcom veteran having worked as a writer on “The Cosby Show, “as Executive Producer/Headwriter of its spinoff, “A Different World,” two other less memorable shows, and served as Consulting Producer on Brooke Shields’ comedic vehicle, “Suddenly Susan.” (Thirteen years may not sound like much, but TV writers’ careers are measured in dog years, we are hideously overworked and grossly overpaid. For that decade plus, I had no life, and was mother to a large brood of handbags) This was the tail end of the last great Golden Age of Network television, a time before niche networks and the proliferation of reality shows featuring disgraced politicians and Republican baby mamas mamboing their way to image rehabilitation and big cash prizes. During a lull between show running jobs, I had agreed to write a pilot, with Whoopi Goldberg as producer, about a Broadway diva who had fallen on hard times. Having grown up around a group I like to call the Original Divas, Diahann Carrol, Eartha Kitt, Lena Horne, my own mother, Broadway legend, Josephine Premice (who would awaken me every morning with a song, a homemade chocolate shake and wearing her false eyelashes,) I knew the breed. I more than knew them, had a Doctorate in Advanced Divology.
. Rather than comment on the story, the executives launched into an attack on the depiction of the “Diva. “ They reeled off a list of actresses they considered divas, all of them white, and though all talented, more “Mae West” raunchy/vulgar than naughty and refined like the performers I’d known all my life. Whoopi objected: “None of the women you’ve mentioned is a woman of color.” “Our Yoga instructor is Indian,” the executives countered brightly without a trace of irony. With all due respect to this no doubt lovely and obviously enterprising woman, I submit that opening a Yoga studio in a strip mall in Santa Monica in the 1990’s doesn’t quite compare to changing the image of African American women from sexless, subservient mammies to sophisticated, empowered glamazons in the era of Jim Crow. Call me crazy. Beyonce, Halle Berry, Viola Davis, Angela Basset and scores of others owe their careers to the strides made by this prior generation of path breakers. But the executives were clearly oblivious to these truths. As they steamrolled over Whoopi’s comment and the original concept of the piece, I felt as if I had landed in the third circle of Dante’s Hell and was being punished for all eternity for a crime I didn’t remember committing. Aside from the fact they had no frame of reference for the world, or the women we were depicting, they weren’t going to bother to do their research. I had had the privilege of working on groundbreaking shows that had systematically dismantled stereotypes, but in this case “the revolution (would) not be televised.” I knew in that moment that to do justice to the Original Divas, I would eventually have to turn to another medium.
I wish I could tell you, dear reader, that I stood up then and there, cast my pencil down before these benighted bores and declared “Enough is enough, I’m done with T.V.” In the first place, the discussion was taking place via phone, in a time before Skype, so the drama of my standing up and tossing said pencil to the ground would have been lost on them. In the second, I’m nothing if not practical and security oriented. It took a couple of more years to loose myself from television’s golden handcuffs. That same year, I sold a show to Showtime with Tim Reid that starred the incredible Pam Grier. For two seasons, we enjoyed much greater creative freedom . But I realized I still had not told my story. It was my husband who asked me one night over dinner: “Other than the money, what keeps you in TV?” I stared at him dumbly and looked down at my designer purse. I had to admit to myself that woman does not live by luxury accessories alone. It was time to take a chance. An article I wrote about growing up bi-racial in the 60’s and 70’s and not ending up in an asylum led me to immortalize my mother in a memoir, “Always Wear Joy,” published two years after her passing and the year my daughter was born.
All I can say, dear reader is, “once you go hardback, you never go back.” The work of writing books is far lonelier. I can no longer bounce ideas ofF an entire staff, but am reduced to talking to myself (hopefully not in public) until my editor weighs in on the first draft. And there is no one to fetch me cappuccinos at will. That said, the freedom to depict the world as I know it, big, messy, multicultural, and not be told that a character is too old (because she’s all of thirty two), too unlikeable, too exotic, too badly behaved, too too much is well worth the “sacrifices.”
My debut novel, “One Flight Up,” the first multicultural chick lit novel, is dedicated to the notion that we don’t pick our friends like Garanimal pajamas, (i.e.they don’t all match. ) Tired of books that end with an “I Do,” I wanted to explore the choices women face between marrying sexy Mario in the Mazerati, who rocks your world but won’t be there to change diapers, and Murray the Mortician who will, but between the sheets may make you feel like you’ re being embalmed. I’m now on book three and counting.
With each tome, I learn, grow, and hopefully improve. My television training served me well. I don’t treat deadlines as mere suggestions and I’m the first to edit myself. I don’t treat any part of my books like the stone tablets of Moses. Writing is re-writing. And so, I suppose I should thank the two executives whose whining incomprehension drove me to seek out new territory. And should book writing not pan out, I can always return to my first job out of high school and before college: peddling designer purses behind the counter at Gucci. Anyone for a calf-skin clutch?
susanfales-hill.com
August 18, 2011
