Elizabeth Ditty is a mother, a Kansas City native, and a lover of Paris. I first met Elizabeth on Twitter, and then later had the opportunity to be an audience member in The Thing’s zoom table read of her script The Family Jewels. Elizabeth has been an Austin Film Festival semifinalist and three-time second rounder, and she was on the coveted 2020 Bitch List. Her work can be found in Memoir Mixtapes, L’Éphémère Review, and Moonchild Magazine, among others! Elizabeth was the very first person I asked to be a part of this blog and she was so kind in answering all my questions. She is incredibly genuine and I always feel such a gentle vibe when I speak to her. 10/10 would trust her with my life.
Tell me about yourself! Where are you from? Has your place of origin impacted your writing in any way? I’m from Kansas City, born, raised and still here! I do enjoy the city, but I’ve also gotten to do some traveling and see a few parts of the world outside of Kansas City. If anything, I’d say Paris is a bigger part of my origin story. I’d never been away from my family for any real length of time, but when I was in high school I had the opportunity to do a two-week trip to France. I actually spent my 17th birthday in Paris, and the trip and the city both have a lot of meaning for me. I’ve been back twice since, both during sort of landmark phases of my life. I’ve also been to London twice and absolutely love it. I’d love to explore more of the world, but if I had to choose one place to visit for the rest of my life, it would definitely be Paris. You can read more about Elizabeth’s love affair with Paris here.
I see from your website that you don't just write screenplays, but are well versed (pun intended??) in poetry and prose, and have been featured in various literary magazines. Do you have a favorite form of writing? Which form do you find yourself writing most often? I spend most of my time screenwriting, but there is something really enticing about writing something that stands on its own as a finished product! For me, it’s all about what form suits the story best, and sometimes that takes a while to settle on. For instance, I have a limited series pilot, Hellcats of the Caribbean, that started as a feature, took a detour into a novel, and finally found its place in the limited series format. I think each form of writing informs the others. When I’m struggling with screenwriting, sometimes it helps to turn to poetry or prose to get some different gears turning. That usually helps shake the rust off the other areas of my brain. A lot of my prose and poetry is related to either my travels or motherhood, so it’s always a bit more soul-bearing than my screenplays. My soul is in those too, but it’s better-hidden! When did you start writing? Any memories of the first draft you ever started? I’ve been writing since I was a child, with fond memories of “winning” a Young Authors award in first grade for an acrostic poem about a brontosaurus. I studied journalism in college, but I took a different path career-wise after graduation. But a couple of years later, I discovered National Novel Writing Month, a.k.a. NaNoWriMo. It was the gateway to discovering that it was justifiable to prioritize my writing. They also had a sister event called ScriptFrenzy, which is where I really discovered and fell in love with screenwriting. My first script was an awful, cliché, melodramatic soap opera of a feature, and I loved every single minute of writing it. I am also incredibly thankful there are no longer any electronic copies of that script in existence! Do you have any writing rituals? Things you do before, after, or during your process? Honestly, I wish I had more time to be precious about my writing time and circumstances. And I’m not being facetious about that either! I used to have some little totems and processes, and I do think having that sort of ritual can be really helpful in getting into a flow state faster and more often. But life sort of started ramping up when I had kids, and it hasn’t stopped yet! I have a full-time job, do some occasional freelance (though have been lucky to be able to scale back this year), and my kids are ages 5 and 7. So I really just have to get the work done however and whenever I can. Pre-pandemic, the one real ritual I had was escaping one weekend morning most weeks to a nearby coffee shop, and sometimes on a weeknight if I had a deadline I was trying to meet. Now, it’s weeknights after the kids are in bed, with longer stretches on the weekends. So it’s not a pretty process, but I’m still getting stuff done, and that’s what matters. And here we are at the main question! What are you working on? It’s been kind of a weird fall, to be honest! I was working on a horror feature that dealt with unresolved grief, but I kind of hit a brick wall on it, I think in large part because I’m still pretty deep into the grief process myself after unexpectedly losing my father on New Year’s Day. Once I realized that, I set that script aside for later phase of life. I’m a big believer in Nora Ephron’s mantra: “It’s all copy.” And I think writing can be great therapy when you’re ready for it. But for me, I think I was still a little too raw yet to put those emotions to good use. So a couple of weeks ago I switched to a fluffy romantic comedy I first drafted (very roughly) last November. It’s been really great counterprogramming to, you know, everything else going on in the world right now! What has inspired this piece? Any life experiences you are writing about? Any current events in the media/news that has impacted this story? I’ve always loved romantic comedies, but I’ve never written one that was a true, non-hybrid romantic comedy. I’ve done a romantic dramedy, and I’ve done a gothic romance, but never just a straight-up romantic comedy. This may sound a little strange, but this is probably my least personal script, and it’s so much fun to write because it sort of feels low stakes. I’ve spent a lot of this year on scripts that are really personal in different ways. And this one, for now at least, is just pure fun. I haven’t been able to write any new contemporary pieces this year because it’s hard to imagine what life will look like when we adjust to whatever our new normal will be. So I’ve been spending a lot of time in the 1890s and the 1920s. But the contemporary pieces I do have, as long as they were written pre-COVID, I’ve been able to slip back into. Brains are weird! Do you have any tips on how to overcome writer's block? Or how to beat the pesky procrastination? If I’m struggling to put words on the page, for whatever reason, I usually make a deal with myself to just work on something writing-related. That may be written pitches or pitch decks. It may be editing an older script. It may be query research. It may be jotting down a poem or short story or churning out a draft of a short script. Or it may be working on my actual current WIP. But I figure, as long as I’m pushing the ball forward in some way, I’m doing all right. And honestly, some nights, it’s fine to just zone out and watch a show or a movie or read a book! It’s OK to do things that aren’t writing too. I’ve been studying piano for the past few months, and it’s been a really nice way to relieve stress. There’s no goal there besides my own improvement. I’m never going to give recitals or anything. It’s just nice to be able to create something relatively pretty with my hands with no expectations whatsoever outside of its ephemeral existence for as long as the notes hang in the air. Those days when the words just aren’t there, I try to eliminate any feelings of guilt. Frustration is fair. Guilt is pointless. If you show up and the well is empty, then it’s important to go do something else to refill that well. What words of wisdom would you give to new writers or to someone who wants to start writing? Have fun! People always talk about “fuck it” scripts, and the truth is, I think most of my scripts really are “fuck-it” scripts. I wrote them because they captivated me, and I felt I had no real choice in the matter. The odds are long, especially for screenwriting, but the truth is the odds just don’t matter so you have to really love and enjoy the story you’re writing. Liz Gilbert speaks about this much more eloquently than I can in her book, Big Magic, which I highly recommend. The audiobook version is especially soothing to listen to. The other half of it is this: Find a community. Twitter is a great place to do that, in my opinion. If you’re looking, @TheWRACGroup is a great place to start. Check the #wrac20 and soon #wrac21 hashtags. Also check out @MarketMyScript for different prompts every day of the week. Just jump into the conversation, be nice, and have fun! I’ve met so many wonderful people over the years, a fair number of which I’ve had the great pleasure of meeting in person too. When the writing does get frustrating, it’s helpful to remember there are others who firstly will sympathize with you and secondly can help you break out of your ruts. You all can learn and grow together as writers, and there’s nothing better than getting to cheer your friends’ successes when you’ve seen all the hard work they’ve put in. And that’s a wrap! Elizabeth can be found on her website, her twitter, and her instagram. I so enjoyed getting a peek into her experience and I can’t wait to see what she churns out next!
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