When I hear it took someone five years to write a screenplay, I think to myself, “That’s it?” After all, I’m going on eleven years! How immature their script must be.
I wrote the first screenplay draft of Monday’s Child in November of 2000 in about two weeks. The story came quickly to me, first as a mind map of characters in relation to one another, and then as a complex, holistic story of a community affected by legislation attempting to overturn Roe v. Wade. After eleven years, it is the same story about complicated pregnancies, but the story has evolved with the times to touch a deeper level of realism than what was once only a dystopian “what if” story.
From the moment I started, the characters spoke to me loudly and passionately. I stayed up day after day, night after night writing the first draft as if to capture the moment before the vision disappeared. The characters seemed so excited to be alive, desperately clinging to my creative spirit as if I were the key to their freedom from their parallel universe into ours. My characters and I – we have a relationship, and they are as real as any I have in the tangible world. I absolutely love each and every one of them.
In the eleven years I have been writing Monday’s Child, I have grown in my own perspective on reproductive health. There is so much more information on the web today than there was when I started, and the politics are growing progressively more extreme. I feel like I’ve gone to medical and law school just through my research. I’ve become more compassionate for women who have had complicated pregnancies and I’m so grateful for all the stories people share online. It’s almost as if a new kind of research was born from the web – research based on personal experience. It is incredible to read seemingly infinite stories by women who have beaten the odds and had babies even at great risk – as well as women who’ve died trying. Their stories tell more about our health than any medical journal or research study ever could.
Throughout the writing process, I have delved more intricately into the lives of certain characters and had to cut some of my favorites. I’ve analyzed the story endlessly and written it over and over again in sometimes extremely unorthodox ways. I’ve written each character’s complete story separately as if to create individual threads of storylines that could be shot as individual short films. I’ve strung them all together to create a whopping 250+ page script. Probably the most "Jodi Leib" thing I’ve done is write the entire screenplay backwards. I figured if I started writing the ending first while I was of fresh mind, it wouldn’t be boring. I did this at a time when every time I got to the final scenes I just wanted to rush through them so I could be finished, but that wasn’t doing the work justice enough.
Another novel technique I used along the way is to abandon writing altogether. Instead of being a “writer” and typing each scene as it came to me from my brain through my fingertips, I dictated the entire story into the computer, talking every line out loud as a “storyteller,” literally. I believe telling the story aloud gave the screenplay a new layer of human dimension that it didn’t have when it was just written out. It also made for a great start to a chapter book.
I am truly glad it has taken me so long to write this screenplay. Every day I evolve as a woman, I evolve as a writer. And every day I stay committed to giving these characters their voice, I stay passionately committed to America’s right to choose.
As I finish the final draft of the screenplay before going into the casting stage, I look to you, the audience, for support. When I started writing Monday’s Child audiences were only needed to show up at the theater to buy tickets. Today, your participation is an integral part of the filmmaking process before and after making the movie. I cannot make this film successful without you.
You choose what films you want made every time you “like” something on Facebook, tweet about it, give a donation, forward an email, tell your friends about it or wear a t-shirt, wristband, or tote bag, drink from a branded (and sustainable) water bottle -- (Monday's Child has these things, too!)
With every tax-deductible donation you make to Monday’s Child, you are producing the film – please help Monday’s Child become a reality – a film for the people by the people.
If you donate today at http://www.mondayschild.info/, you'll receive a free gift when you do.
"Monday's Child" is a feature film about a reproductive health provider and the challenges she faces in providing quality care to a community of women facing complicated pregnancies. This fictional story explores many aspects of reproductive health including the medical, legal, and personal conflicts that affect women as they strive to make healthy choices for themselves and their families. "Monday's Child" is the heroic journey of a physician's courage to risk it all to help women in need.
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About Jodi: Films here.
Contact Jodi here: jodi@mondayschild.info
Pictured above: Monday's Child logo
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