adaptation
an update from the cracks
For the past year or so I’ve been adapting a novel to film. It’s a commission job for a former colleague-turned-friend. The process has been steady and slow, at times intermittent but pleasantly so. It’s been good to work with someone (in this case the author who also happens to be an experienced producer) who is creative and like-minded but also practical and persistent, which many creative types aren’t.
It helps to have a self-appointed project manager involved from the start of something. Someone who can see the end goal and play the tugboat-shepherd, forcing the process along in the inevitable moments when the other person drifts off or gets distracted by life. A person who keeps the conversation alive by sending little emails that say only “?”
It’s hard to say “?” in a way that doesn’t come off as passive-aggressive or irritable. This is the gift of the tugboat-shepherd. They are masters of the gentle prod. The persistent tug-tug-tug-herd-herd-herd.
I used to be better at tug-herding myself but in the past couple of years it’s been a struggle. My family-life situation, while outwardly stable, feels inwardly like dribbling a football across a quicksand minefield — an unwinnable game with ever-changing rules. Each hard-won drib of crucial information about my “case” costs hundreds of pounds to extract. For weeks I hear nothing then suddenly my inbox is flooded with emails from lawyers with the subject heading UPDATE and FOR URGENT REVIEW. Hearings are listed and vacated then listed and vacated again. Words like “ICU” “directions” and “court-mandated” riddle my dreams. I have spent days and days in silent, anguished limbo awaiting instruction, response, unable to speak honestly to my children about a situation that will determine the course of the rest of our lives.
The particularities and uncertainties of our family situation are so acutely grim very few people even bother to ask me about it anymore. Over time, I have learned to keep it mostly to myself. But it’s still there, every day. A cold beating heart, connected only to itself.