I got surprised the other night. Do you remember that gem of a movie from the 80s, Dirty Dancing? I watch it every few years, and strangely, never tire of it. My surprise the other night was Netflix scrolling the remake. I clicked OK, expecting to be entertained.

Oh, my, right from the beginning I questioned myself. Is it my age, not getting today’s idea of attractive? Do muscles replace fluid? Is it the new trend of dance? What is it about this fav scene I don’t like? That scene where the main character, Baby, enters the off-limit hall of dancers that’s so pivotal to the story. The scene that launches it.

In the original she’s overwhelmed with the sight. The hall packed with writhing bodies. The sensuality. The remake lost it completely. This wasn’t about bad. We’ve all seen cheesy or bad movies, and yet, walked away saying ‘it was so bad, and I liked it.’

I started watching the visual story as a writer. The dialogue, how it considered the viewer. What we call trusting the reader. How the characters were drawn. The backstory and context.

We’re not shocked and surprised along with the character as we are in the original, where we zero in close on details we humans notice when first seeing something so new. Realizing this is ‘dirty,’ and yet, not feeling it that way. In fact, it’s what I remember most.

Here the frame of the camera is close, our entire view the dancers. Men and voluptuous women focused on the other, hips moving in syncopated rhythm. We’re overwhelmed with it as she was. The camera pulls back only when Johnny, the lead dancer, enters. He’s isolated in our attention as he becomes isolated in her attention.

Then, when he gives her a lesson, ‘move your hips this way,’ we go with him. There are no thrusts, bumps, or grinds in a way that we feel her violated.

The remake felt exactly opposite for me. We enter a sparsely occupied room. The camera angle wide. No sensual mass. Couples here and there, hips humping and thrusting in isolated joining. The women thin, unlike any person I know. The one image I’m left with from that scene is a near-stick of a woman in the background, viewed from the back, her legs spread wide enough for standing sex. I’m no prude, and the visual story was not sensual here. It looked and felt dirty. A different set-up for what would follow.

I still expected better, tho. I quickly noticed the cultural context was diluted. The story takes place in a Jewish family summer camp in the Catskills. Something very common at the time, and perhaps still. As one blogger wrote after an evening with Eleanor Bergstein, the writer and co-producer of the original movie, “The film is hugely Jewish, capturing a 1960s Jewish family and their open-minded but still guarded sensibilities.” Except for the Kellermans, I didn’t get that impression.

Class and gender issues were diluted, too. Johnny’s given the added weight of serving time in prison as a device why he’s ousted. He’s given the story of leaving home at 16 instead of the female lead dancer, Penny, weakening her character as a strong woman. Even weakening the social context of how dangerous abortion was at that time. Her botched abortion was not her weakness, but all too common.

In a time when exclusion, race, and conflicts between religions are issues, isn’t it important to retain the context? All those things are in the story on purpose.

There was little trust in the viewer getting the points made. Evidenced by Penny declaring ‘it’s all about the hips,’ when that one short lesson by Johnny in the beginning of the original set that up. Evidenced by the mini-speech & threat (“you have no integrity; go apologize or I’ll call all the medical schools so you’ll never get in.”), which stole the impact of the look of disgust and the money gift snatched back from the waiter’s hands.

What I know. . .a picture says a thousand words. A picture also tells a thousand stories. Historical and cultural contexts shouldn’t be lost in today’s world, nor do they need to be unfathomable to today’s viewers.

We’re all storytellers. We can tell stories so the unfathomable is seen, and understood.

At the end of the remake, I waited for that famous line ‘Nobody puts Baby in the corner.’ Such a corny line, and I love it.

Look at the story you’re telling when you write.

• What are you holding back or diluting.
• How does the reader see thru your character’s eyes.
• How might you make the unfathomable seen and understood.
• What do you want your reader, viewer, or listener to remember.

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I didn’t get as much snow as Weather.com forecast. But it’s the mountains, and 4 miles away can have 4 times what I have. In fact, my bet is the 3 vacant seats in front of me last night at the Japanese taiko drum performance were probably the result of weather.

I thought about the many flowering trees as I looked out the window. How the blossoms were at their peak, and are most likely done for. That happens in the mountains, too, even when it’s not 15* ‘unseasonably’ warm with trees blooming a month early. Like the year the apple trees were hit and my heirloom roses died in Western North Carolina. WNC is one of the largest apple producers in the country (did you know that?), so it was a big deal.

Here’s what I also thought this morning. . .how perfect the pollen is tamped down. So many of us suffering with allergies. That I don’t have to water trees, which costs me a lot of money. That we get a bit of spring as we used to know it in Santa Fe, and I can wear sweaters a bit longer, something I missed in Florida. That the roads are passable. And I can see the snow-sky lift off the horizon, know the white will soon disappear and the sky will be crystal blue. Perfection in the imperfect.

I’m booking author talks around Santa Fe and Albuquerque, getting the word out about The Writer’s Block Myth. This week I spoke at a Southwest Writers meeting. Someone asked why writers get critiqued & consider it form, while other artists don’t. But they do, I said. In college classes it’s part of the process. When you work with a mentor, you’re critiqued. I could’ve said more. Could’ve gotten to the heart of his question…was it perception, or something else he was really asking. Because getting to heart of what’s there is what I do. And I didn’t.

I’m still thinking about that missed moment for me, for him, for the group. l learned from that mistake. As writers and creatives, we dance with creativity. Our goal always to expand the dance floor. And mistakes can do that.

Because mistakes take us beyond the boundaries and limits of ourself and what we set for ourselves. Opens us to other perspectives. It happens every time we show up imperfect. I learned this at Stony Brook Southampton Writer’s Conference one summer.

NYTimes bestseller Meg Wolitzer was teaching the class. I submitted a first draft of a scene I really liked for critique. It was a pivotal scene. Revealed layers of the characters, their changed relationships, and emphasized how the setting affected them. I wanted to know something very specific – did I pull off the transitions between four characters’ POV in a single scene. But after reading the work my classmates turned in for critique, I was mortified. It was clear they’d submitted edited, finished work. I cried all night.

Something totally unexpected happened the day of my critique. Not only did I get my question answered, I learned about the strength and weaknesses in my writing from a wise teacher. And readers saw things in the work I did not, such as a device that placed them in the time period of the work: a choke on a truck. Something I did unconsciously that could be used consciously. My craft improved. There was a wealth of information in that submission I cried over all night.

I’m lucky. I had practice before I got to Stony Brook. I grew into my Writer-Self in a group where we wrote from prompts and read our raw work. But I can tell you every instance where I stretched my boundaries on this journey, and they all started with a decision to trust the process and test my imperfection. It’s still scary, and I’m still doing it.

Show up imperfectly with your work. Be open to hear what works, what doesn’t work, what readers see and hear, and learn how you engaged them. Go for the perfection in the imperfection. Like that world gently covered with snow out my window.

Another small journey. Getting to Wise.
A Writer’s Life.

Tell me. . .when were you brave with your imperfect work?
I’ll tell you a secret. . .I’m already composing the second edition of The Writer’s Block Myth.

Here’s me at Santacafe, one of my fav restaurants, celebrating my first author talk. The entire interior is white, except for the floor & these iconic NM antlers. Just had to get a pic.
Celebrate the triumphs. Even the imperfect ones.

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