Parlez-vous français? Or Pittsburghese?
What do Sting and the Police have in common with me? Everything now.
The Fall & the Frenzy
The fall is my favorite time of year—and also when the worst memories live.
October 30th was my wedding anniversary. November 3rd, my husband’s birthday. November 21st, his death day. The best and worst days of my life, packed into three short weeks. And for some reason, in 2023, I thought this was the perfect time to sit down and write my memoir.
I had stumbled across NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), a challenge where you write 50,000 words in 30 days. Most people use it to crank out a novel. Me? I decided to take on my entire life story.
I wrote and wrote—pouring everything onto the page. No filters. No glossing over. Just the raw, messy, chaotic truth. And somewhere in the middle of all that, I realized: this isn’t just a memoir, this is also a screenplay.
So yes, November became the month I wrote both: a 98,456-word memoir ✨and a 109-page screenplay. And no, it was not a dry December either.
I’ve heard people say everyone should write a memoir at least once, even if no one ever reads it. I get that now. There’s something almost shocking about seeing your whole life laid out on paper, like evidence. My story was messy, magical and chaotic, but it was also alive.
That script—the one that grew out of my memoir writing frenzy—is the same script I later submitted to a contest. A contest I entered at the last minute, because someone tagged me on Instagram. I thought, why not? I didn’t expect anything. But that’s the script that eventually landed me in a castle in France in 2024.
And in some strange, poetic way, the navigational paintings I started after my husband’s death—the ones that got me into Skopelos—and the script I hammered out during NaNoWriMo were ✨two sides of the same compass. Both pointing me back toward myself.
A Trip & A Script
That script was raw, messy, alive. On a whim, I entered it into a contest. The prize? A scholarship to workshop your script in a castle owned by Miles Copeland (yes, the manager of The Police).
Somehow, I won.
So in August 2024, I boarded a last-minute (to me), one-way flight to France.
I would spend a few days in Paris, then hop on a train heading toward southwestern France’s Dordogne region. My destination: a medieval fortress tucked into 270 acres of forest and fields, with roots stretching back to Roman times—possibly once a guard post on an ancient road.