The trick with a coming-of-age book like Moose is finding a balance between a screenplay aimed at child actors and bringing in a "name" to play the adult version of a character. While I figure out what my exact vision is for the book, I’ve been working with ABC Studios and Brillstein Entertainment Partners (Formerly Brillstein-Grey), writing the pilot for a half-hour comedy series based off my first memoir Straight Up And Dirty, and I’m not going to lie to you: blog writing isn’t book writing, which isn’t TV writing.

At first I thought the only real difference came down to dialogue.  Hey, I’m awesome at dialogue, this’ll be cake. Yeah, burnt, eneven cake where you keep taking bites to figure out which ingredient you forgot. I know from writing books that there needs to be a clear structure: a beginning, middle, and end, an arc toward self-discovery and realizations. Great, so I’ll start with what I want the main character to realize in the end and simply work backwards. Sounds like a plan. Only now, let me break it all apart into a four-act structure, and learn to live without a plan.

Despite the fact that my blog, my two memoirs, and now a TV series based off my life are all about me, the actual writing and process of writing for each medium is different. Very different.

Book writing can be a whole lot of internal conflicts. Take for example, just a quick summary from my first memoir Straight Up And Dirty: My life’s forecast never included becoming a woman with a wasband.  I expected some schooling, a career, and a family, not divorce, especially not before I hit 30.  Before I “settled down,” I played it up, dating with a vengeance.  I was a single woman in a sensational city. And, I didn’t do Cosmos; I liked mine dirty.  Until, I found a clean, genteel, mensch-next-door whose idea of keeping house was sweeping… me off my feet.  Then, suddenly, it all looked different; “single” became tired.  How many cleavage-baring black tops, “How could you think I’d be interested in him?” blind dates, and kisses with frogs can a girl tolerate before she’s ready for a prince?  Marriage fit me like a glove and my husband like a noose.  Mrs. Robinson didn’t just rob the cradle; she stole away with my rattle, bouncer seat, and designer diaper bag.  And, just like that: divorced while you’re firm, fashionable, and, let’s face it, fetching. 

Nothing above is actually salvagable when it comes to script writing. It’s all exposition. TV Writing is all about showing external conflicts, seeing scenes, putting characters in situations that force their internal conflicts up and out of them. The key is giving your characters immediate wants other than internal hopes and struggles, more than deciding between right and wrong. Deciding whether or not to go to wedding with a date, hating her job, not being over an ex, not knowing what to do for a living, not knowing whether or not to change her name, figuring out how to love herself–all internal struggles that might make for an interesting character, but they don’t help when you need to create a story for TV.  Instead, it’s all about creating external conflict. It’s plot based, and it’s an entirely different skill. One I’m learning as I go. And just like anything written well, you can snatch up a stack of pilot scripts and think, well, who can’t do that? That’s so easy. Of course it is, and it isn’t. It just depends on the day.

Stephanie Klein, author of Moose: A Memoir of Fat Camp, spent the past week guest blogging on Jewcy. This is her parting post. Want more? Buy the book!

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“Oh, are we?”

“It’s just my experience, but I always know when a chick’s Jewish in bed. She always swallows.”

“Come on…”

“It’s true. Jewish women hate to clean.”

“…”

You’re either a bath person or a shower person. That, I get. But always swallow, always spit, I’m not buying it. Besides, I’m technically half-Jewish, which acording to his logic means I don’t mind some light housework. The point is, you might do either. I shower out of necessity, even though I might favor a bath. I’m not much of a bath girl, but I love the idea of soaps, of soaking the dead skin off, rolling it from beneath my nails as I scrape it off. Push back cuticles and grate all your calluses off. The big ideas come in the bath. The night after the conversation with my friend, I took a bath. I didn’t light a candle or play music, but liquid soap was invited. I watched the runnels of cloudy water, streams, really. They looked like a village, the kind you see from up above, or in a video game, where you’ll soon need to pick your best players and armor to fight a Cyclopes.  Then the water looked like ocean cream, and the peak of my breast poking out was an iceberg, the great mass of me underneath the water, unforeseeable. It’s nice to sometimes see yourself that way, as a ringer. When I dried off, I dialed my friend. “I didn’t mention that she’s quite stacked.” I expected that he’d say, “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?” Instead he replied, “It’s like I told you, it doesn’t matter how much she’s got going for her. It’s too much to handle a woman with two pussies.” Then I took a shower.

Stephanie Klein, author of Moose: A Memoir of Fat Camp, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and she’ll be here all week. Stay tuned.

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The truth is, I think the older we get the less tolerance we have for BS. That ability not to care, to be confident no matter what anyone else thinks, that’s self-esteem. I recognize that my time here is limited. I played by my parents’ rules as a child (and adult), made nice in the political work arena, sent my share of thank you notes for things one would be thankful to be rid of (hello, reindeer sweater), and I got to a point where I realized I could continue to live their lives or I could stop worrying so much what others thought or expected and finally start to live my own. I think that’s what confidence is, the ability to appreciate and trust yourself. And that takes practice. So it makes sense that being prepared, as much as we’re able to be, breeds confidence. I’m often asked, “How do you find the courage to publish such personal stories about your life? In print, on the web. Forever!” This of course ties into confidence, but I also believe by putting myself out there and sharing my deepest thoughts and insecurities, I’m able to feel more connected with the world, and I know in doing so, it helps others feel less alone. Just the same, sometimes there are things I’m still trying to work out in my life, so I turn to my bedside handwritten journal and write it all out, knowing it’s just for me. I let it sit. Sometimes I return to the diary and decide that in publishing it, it might help someone else feel better about their own life. When I write in my journal, I’m completely free to write what I want, what I really need to say, keeping that panicked exacting editor voice of mine at bay. I write as if no one will ever read what I have to say because the moment I worry about the responses of others–what my mother will think, my boss, or spouse—is the moment I stop being honest. When we begin to edit and play it safe we stop being authentic.

Stephanie Klein, author of Moose: A Memoir of Fat Camp, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and she’ll be here all week. Stay tuned.

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Japs don’t need to have money to be japs; because no amount of money can buy her security… not even Daddy’s.  She’s insecure and cries into her gold-trimmed pink "princess" pillow.  You see her insecurity flecked in her green panicked eyes as she avoids eye contact and checks you out. I’ve pinned it down. Japs have middle child syndrome, worried the truly good moments are happening to someone else. They’re fair-weather; just look at her clothes. She always has to have the latest thing; worried she’s not on top of things. And when she’s with you, she always finds a reason to flip open her phone. She needs messages and group photos of her friends on a corkboard to feel important. I’ve never met a secure Jap. And that’s what I can’t stand. None of them are comfortable in their own perfumed skin, so they grab after men who will shower them with attention. And they stay because, to them, there’s nothing worse than alone, not even a bad haircut or cellulite. I used to be a jap… wearing Big John jeans,  pointy Justin’s lizard cowboy boots, and an Il Bisonte handbag with the strap too long.  I walked to the side and nearly gave myself whiplash with all the ‘tude shaking.  Then the bell rang, and I returned to class for fourth period.  I was 12, not 21. The really disarming bit is I have a website strewn with photos of my friends, flecked with posts about make-up, cufflinks, and everything-I-wants.  It’s making me nervous now.  We always hate in others much of what we detest of ourselves.  I’m chewing my fingers now.  I mean, why else would I respond so vehemently when faced with a hand on hip jap?  It’s because I hate how jappy I can be.  It takes one to know one; it’s what I hate about myself sometimes. I too get insecure and think the new it bag will be a nice band-aid to an almost nice life. I can be materialistic; I like nice things.  But I’d never govern my life with materialism behind the wheel.  I’ve learned living life on cruise control isn’t living at all.  And I always look ’em in the eye. Besides, a jap would never bite her nails.  And, I dig the curl in the middle of my forehead even if I do get it blown out from time to time.

Stephanie Klein, author of Moose: A Memoir of Fat Camp, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and she’ll be here all week. Stay tuned.

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We name our babies after dead people. We snag the first initial of a departed relative and name our daughter after a man who accused us of replacing his GE lightbulbs with Kmart brand. 

A name for a baby can mean many things. You can go through all the trouble to pick the “right” name, the perfect meaning to reflect her demeanor, nothing that will commit him to a lifetime of being called upon last (Oh, but I love the name Zachary!). You can ensure the name you select doesn’t rhyme with any offensive adjectives or nouns like “knucklehead” or “diarrhea,” but the bottom line is, if kids don’t like you, they’ll find a way, without rhyme or reason, to let you know it. Not much rhymes with Stephanie, unless you find “bo-befanie” vulgar, yet as safe as my name is, kids still slapped me but good with the merciless moniker “Moose.”    When it came to choosing names for our unborn twins, of whom we refused to find out the sex(es), my husband and I set out to agree upon three sets of names (if it was two girls, two boys, or one of each).  We couldn’t very well name two girls “Gabby” and “Abby,” but if I birthed a boy and a girl, either name was fair game. It was all about the combination, and as with most couples we know, we couldn’t agree on a single name, not even their intended surname. “We’re not giving them first, middle, and two last names, with or without a hyphen. It’s ridiculous,” my husband said.

“What if we blended our two last names?”

“Are you high?”

“Well, why do you assume just because convention says so, that I have to give up my last name?” I didn’t think of it at the time, but that question ought to have been phrased differently. It wasn’t about relinquishing my name, but rather fighting for our children to retain a concrete connection to their ancestors, right there on a dotted line, even if it was a blend.

“What, you want to chop them off right here?” My husband found the notion of our children taking my name—in any manner—emasculating, despite my argument that many a machismo Latino retained his mother’s last name without ever passing it on.

“Yeah, that’s because the mothers weren’t sure who the father really was.”

“Hey, smartass, biblical times aside, they still do it today, even with Judge Judy paternity tests.” But as soon as I said it, I realized that “they still do it” translated to “follow tradition,” an argument I was trying to foil. I tried to bargain, insisting that if I gave up my last name, in turn, I’d get to choose their first names. But each time I’d offer a suggestion, my husband insisted I was picking stripper names.

“Emmanuelle? You’re kidding right?”

“How about Savannah,” I swooned, “and we’ll call her Savvy, for short.”

“That’s not just a porn name, it’s a city—a city, I might add, that refers to the civil war as ‘The War Of Northern Aggression.’”

“Yeah, but it’s pretty,” and really, who can argue with that?

“Okay, I have an idea. Why don’t we name it Smithers?”

“Which one?”

“Both of them.”

“Like ‘Thing 1’ and ‘Thing 2’ only with a Simpson’s flair. I dig ya.”

“Mmmm. Hmmm.”

“…”

“Mmmm. Hmmm.” My husband continued to refer to our unborn twins as “Smithers,” insisting because the name ended in an “s” it was automatically plural. Eventually, I maintained that the best way to come upon names we both liked was to paw our way through a Pottery Barn catalogue.

“They’re onto something here,” I said as I surveyed the names of their ottomans and bureaus.  “How about Wynn, Stratton, or Pearce?”

“Pearce?! As a general rule, I think we should avoid all names that double as verbs.”

“What about Campton?”

“No way is a kid named Campton not getting his ass handed to him on the playground.”

“Oooh, ooooh, here’s one. Ready? How about…”

“It’s not gonna improve with time, honey.”

“Porter.”

He ruminated then replied with an unwavering “Yes.”

“Really?!” I squealed.

“Sure, I can picture it now, our little Porter climbing onto my lap. ‘Poppa, where did I get my name?’ I can’t wait to tell him he was named after a lateral file cabinet.”

“How about Mercer or Cole?”

“Let me guess, console tables?”

“No!”

“Sleeper sofas?”

“Please, I’m not perverse!”

“Earthenware, then? A high-quality outdoor collection?”

“No.”

“Ah, I’ve got it. A set of stylish sconces.”

“How do you even know what a sconce is?”

“You going to tell me? What?… What was that?… A little louder. I can’t quite hear you.”

“Bathroom fixtures, all right?!”

“Bathroom fixtures, I might have known.”

“Well, they do have solid brass knobs, and what boy could want for more than that?”

“It would’ve been a stronger sell if you told me they were glasses blown by hand.”

“Ugh, you’re such a sectional.”

“Wanna go mess around?”

“Sure, then I officially won’t know who the father is, and they’ll have to take my last name.”

Stephanie Klein, author of Moose: A Memoir of Fat Camp, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and she’ll be here all week. Stay tuned.

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