by Tammy Peacy
Mark Derbas, Rod Stare and Sandy Dickson are the core members of a writers’ group that meets once a month at Common Grounds. I recently started attending their meetings and have taken part in a group story project they are working on. At their last meeting I broke out the recorder and plopped it on the table for an impromptu interview. Read on to see how that went.
Tammy: I’m gonna turn this on and we’re gonna start right now.
Rod: I was gonna go get more coffee.
T: That’s fine, go ahead. It’s fine. We can talk while they’re doing their coffee thing, about your screenplays, your new plan.
Mark: Sure. So just start talking?
T: Yeah.
M: Okay. Well, gimme a question, like, something.
T: Well, you’re a screenwriter and you’ve been having some trouble getting someone to pick up your scripts, there was interest, but no one has picked them up, so now what’s the plan?
M: Well, I’d like to do research on the independent market and see what’s out there and try to do something that will actually be made. I think it’ll be easier for a connection to be made, as opposed to going the Hollywood route, or trying to break into that through agents, which I’ve had no luck with. And I haven’t pushed as hard as I could have, but that’s my goal. What I’m going to do is go online and pick up magazines, like
Indie Slate and just go out and try to promote the scripts and send emails and send letters. That’s my goal.
T [after a lengthy pause]: I didn’t bring any questions. I’m the worst interviewer ever, but that’s kind of just what I do. It’s like, “Hi, thanks for coming, I’m terrible.”
Rod [returning with coffee]: That’s an entirely blank page.
T: Seriously. I go to interviews like this, it’s “Hi, how are you? Great. So, hmmm? What do you do?”
R: So you’re like the Milwaukee news people. They ask the dumbest questions.
[laughter]
T: I don’t even ask dumb questions, because I don’t really ask questions. “So, yeah, you guys have this writing group?” That’s not a question. That’s stating a fact. But then you know what happens? People say, “Yeah, I do and here’s how we started…” I don’t have to ask questions.
R: The worst would be like what I’m gonna do and go, “Yep.”
T: Yeah, well when people interview like that, I don’t write it. I’ll just say, yeah, I’ll get to that.
R [still practicing his one word answers]: Yes. Sometimes. No.
T: I have four words. Yes. Sometimes. No. Maybe. So, when when did this writers group start.
R: Wow. 2003?
M: No, 2002.
R: 2002, because it was before Page was born. We put up fliers in bookstores.
M: And China Buffets.
R: And cafes and Mark and I came here the first night and we were fifteen minutes late, because we knew nobody would show up. It was an excuse to get out of the house and hang out together and have coffee and talk about our screenplays. When we got here there was a whole table full of people that were upset because we were late.
M: We wrote the flier up like, “Aspiring Screenwriters,” I think people thought we were going to do a conference or something. We had it all detailed.
T: Well, different writers’ groups function differently. Our writers’ group doesn’t do what you do here and there’s a group in Racine that doesn’t do what any of us do. They all do their own thing.
R: So we had some people stick with it for a while. Sandy being one of them. You weren’t there the first night though were you?
Sandy: No I wasn’t. I only heard about it from somebody I knew.
R: None of the people from the first night are here. Although, everybody from the first night stuck with it for maybe a year.
M: No, just Brian. One guy just quit going and another guy moved. And then Brian stuck with it but he moved.
R: By that time though we had Sandy and Karen. [Pointing the recorder]Does all of this go in there?
T: It does. You should read [the interviews I do]. Basically I’ll just transcribe it. And that’s it, so… say what you want.
R: Can I have like Tourettes’s?
T: Sure. Yeah. It’ll make it more fun. Make it a better read. Hmmm, next question. I had a word. [Scanning her mostly blank page] Purpose. So what’s the purpose of this group?
R: Again to get out of the house.
M: The beginning purpose was, Rodney and I had, we lived in the same apartment complex for a long time, so we were married—
R: To other people.
M: And so when the wives and the kids were asleep, we wrote this script, but we didn’t know anyone who was into writing. So we wondered how do you meet writers? At the time we were both musicians and we didn’t want to perform and we just couldn’t. So we started the group just to meet people.
R: To network, we figured even though it’s Kenosha and a smaller town, there have to be other writers.
R: And there’s gotta be people out there who could share their thoughts and get our thoughts. We wanted to grow and be better writers and do more than just screenwriting. I wanted to do the book thing and I write poetry; I wanted to do different stuff. We can ‘t do that with just the two of us. We can do that by getting other people involved and surrounding ourselves with other talented people who we could them feed off of.
S: Cultivate.
T: How often does this group meet?
R: They meet once a month. I meet every couple of years.
[laughter]
R: It’s been very difficult for me because I work in Chicago now, I don’t get back until six thirty every night and I lead a kids’ group at church and I do all kinds of stuff and it’s just really hard for me to get together.
M: Sandy and I have been consistently coming and we’ve been trying to keep it going. The summer seems to fill up pretty well and then in the winter it slims down.
S: What we did for a long time was someone would pick a topic to write about. We’d come with our different versions and we’d read them.
R: One time we saw that someone had arranged rocks out back that said, “Help.” So we all wrote the story behind that. One of our assignments was “Somebody yelled, ‘Stop.’” And then we wrote about that.
M: Just to get the brain working.
T: I just had another question, but I put my paper away, so, hmmm… Oh, I know. Are you open to new members? I know right now we’re in the middle of a project, so would you be open to people popping in? And if so, how can they contact you?
R[to Mark and Sandy]: Well, correct me if you feel differently, but I think it’s always good to have new people pop in and if somebody comes in and is very serious about it I think that’s great. I hate to use the word selective, but if somebody comes in and they’re not into it, we may not be open to that. We want somebody who’s going to bring something to the table. We’re all in the same mind when it comes to writing and where we want to go.
T: Who should they contact?
M: I’ve kind of done all of the administrative stuff. I’ve always considered the three of us to be the core and everyone else is just visiting.
R: The ones that come every once in a while are like the writers’ group family.
M: We’ve always had a revolving door where people come and go.
T: Well, that’s gonna happen.
M: People are busy. Like when I hear about your group I’m like wow. I can’t believe you can get that many people in the same room once a month.
T: We probably have like twenty writers who are a part of the group, because to be a part of the group you just have to show up, but each meeting has eight people or so. If we have a speaker there will be more. Last month we had a speaker, Carrie Lofty, and there were seventeen people there. Two or three of those weren’t members.
R: That’s the vision that I sort of started out with. We even had an agreement with Common Grounds that they would shut down the café just for us if we had enough people.
M: That never quite happened.
R: Yeah, they only need to shut down a table for us. We always tried to—[notices Tammy checking the recorder] Is it okay?
T: It’s good. One of the last interviews I did the recorder died. And I wasn’t taking notes, because I hate taking notes and there were five of us and we were just talking and talking and it was awesome. I was thinking, “This is gonna be the best interview ever!” I was actually asking questions. And then I looked at the machine and gasp! The tape had barely moved. The batteries died early on. And I almost cried and I don’t want to talk about it, so go ahead.
R: At one time we envisioned having different tables for different genres, you know, having a poetry table and a screenwriting table, a horror table and stuff like that.
M: We used to even, and I really thought this would work, I was very ignorant to this whole concept, we put a big sign that said, “Writers’ Group- Come and Join Us.”
T: For just random writers?
R: Like, “Oh, I happen to be here and I’m getting coffee and I happen to be a writer.”
M: It did happen, there were a few people who were listening and said, “Are you a writers’ group?” and they would join us?
T: Really? No one ever joins our group. I think it’s because we’re so loud and obnoxious.
R: I’m gonna come to your group one of these days.
T: You should it’s fun. The third Thursday.
S: Is it always the third Thursday?
T: It is always the third Thursday.
M: That’s cool.
T: Right now it’s just that we’re in between homes, because at Mo’s the photography group meets the same night, and the photography group has to come through our group to get to their room in the back. And when they get phone calls they step out of their group into ours to take the calls. It’s hard for us to have people walking in and out of our group because we’re reading. Plus, some of the material it’s not really general public kind of writing.
R: I’m definitely coming to your group then. [laughs] The other downfall we’ve had in the past is that if we had to switch to a Tuesday then we’d switch to a Tuesday, if it’s going to be the first Monday it would be the first Monday, and then we would just call each other and if anybody did want to join they’d show up going, “Where is everybody?”
T: I think consistency is key when you’re trying to keep a group together.
M: I think the core is good.
T: Well, because you can communicate amongst one another. I have people email about once a month wanting to join the group and I wouldn’t be able to keep up with everyone changing the dates every month. The only thing right now is the place, last month we met at ArtWorks, this month I don’t know. We need a new home.
M: I gotta get rolling but I want to read a Stallone quote.
T: Is this how you end every meeting, with a quote from Sly?
M: Yes it is. We do. We should. I love this quote.
T: It’s going to be cheesy, I know it.
M: Oh, no. It’s not going to be cheesy. This guy is not cheesy. He–
T: I’m sorry. Hold on a second. Sylvester Stallone. Say his name out loud and then say not cheesy. It doesn’t work.
M: Look at him, he’s in great shape. Okay, here we go. It’s a little bit longer than a quote.
T: What is it like three pages?
M: Here we go.
“I had $106 to my name and no prospects in sight. My car had broke down, I was taking a bus to work. I even had to sell my dog Butkus. I thought, “ I may be totally wrong but I just have to go after this. I have to believe it would happen.” It wasn’t enough that my screenplay actually sold, I told the studio they could have it for free if I could play Rocky Balboa. They balked at first. The price went to nearly $360,000, which was about $359,000 more than I had ever seen. I couldn’t sell. I had been broke so long I had gotten used to it. They finally relented and gave a total unknown a shot. For that miracle I am forever indebted.”
I love that. I read it all the time.
[laugher]
Common Ground Writer’s Group contact info:
Mark Derbas at wtrailer85@yahoo.com
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