A Midsummer Writer’s Dream: Dance Your Way to a Book and Film Deal

Temperatures are breaking 100 degrees! Your friends are heading to the beach. But it’s even hotter there! Plus you are a writer, locked into a love/hate relationship with your laptop, and the sand at the beach would crust over your keyboard, seep into your motherboard, frying and fusing together your BFA’s guts. You would never allow that!

 

So what’s a writer to do in midsummer? Should we go in search of Puck and a magical potion? Not a bad idea if you can find a forest near you. But I have a more practical recommendation:

 

JOIN A DANCE SUMMER CAMP!

 

Yes! A camp that includes high school and college kids. See how the other half lives, I mean, those under 30. And the more gender, racial and ethnically diverse the group of would-be dancers, the better for you as a writer! Keep reading and I’ll tell you how this came about and why I think this is a good way to add a new spin, or should we say pirouette, to your writing.

 

A couple of months ago a new dance school, AVANT PERFORMING ARTS STUDIO, opened near where I live in Puerto Rico. After some hesitation, curiosity led me to peek in through their doors. Some told me it was too late for me to retake ballet, advice which just sparked me on. I did fall down during my first class, my legs confused on how to even attempt a jeté. But I got up. Then slowly, through the aches, I started to find balance. When the school announced a summer boot camp, again I was like: “That’s not for me, I’ve never even attended a summer camp, as a kid I spent all my free summertime reading, quietly, mostly stationary as a good future writer ought to do.”

 

But I showed up the first morning, just to try, and by the end of the day I was hooked. So I signed myself up for a two-week summer camp with classes in ballet, jazz, modern, and urbano plus sessions of cardio-workouts. Three classes a day! Go in at 10 AM and get out at 3 PM.

 

But how about my writing? I made a plan: Brainstorming while preparing a healthy breakfast, writing for a couple of hours, then bootcamp. And after 3 PM, walk my dog, early dinner, and then editing and more writing til late at night. Even if these are the endless days of summer, structure keeps a writer focused and moving forward. And so far it’s working for me. I get up by 7 AM, make a breakfast that includes fruits and protein, get to writing for two hours. After a day of dancing, I have a dinner including veggies and salad and get back on the laptop, now comfortably propped up on cushions on my sofa.

 

I feel I’ve earned my writing time so I don’t waste a moment and my writing projects are steadily growing. Definitely the hours you put in at a dance studio are fun but also make you appreciate even more the time you have for writing. And I think having those hours in a dance studio will help the writer in you in a couple other ways…

 

Dance studios tend to have high ceilings and stay cooler than outside, so that’s already a plus in the summer heat. And you know what else is great about dance studios? They have wood floors and this integrates into the space the vitality of trees and their role as connectors. Think about this! The roots of trees actively, even thoughtfully, search the soil for nutrients and water, their trunks and lower branches inhabit our planet’s surface and give us the gift of beauty and nourishment as flowers and fruits, and their upper branches quietly but insistently reach for the sun and wider cosmos. So I say, and I’m sure Puck would agree, when you are in a dance studio, go barefoot and savor the wooden floor. You’ll see that when your instructor ask you to jeté across the room, you will fly higher with renewed energies. And this energy will transfer to your writing!

 

On a more practical side, if you join a dance summer camp you will have a chance to hangout with the younger generations. Use this opportunity to mingle and really listen to them, and find out more about their likes and dislikes, concerns and opinions. The conversations you have with them might become the basis of your very own book series, like Harry Potter, Hunger Games or Twilight. And eventually your books might be optioned for a film or TV show.

 

According to a PEW SURVEY,  Americans younger than 30 read more than their older counterparts and check out more books out of libraries. So the YA market—print, film, and TV— is very much alive. In fact, Valerie Peterson in Young Adult and New Adult Book Markets  states that: “sales numbers for YA far exceeds the percentage growth in the adult e-book sales, which indicates a dramatic overall increase.” And Ashley Strickland points out in A Brief History of Young Adult Literature: “young adult fiction is enjoying a sustained boom.”  Moreover, Strickland notes: “A real opportunity for growth lies in diversity” and that even though YA literature now has some gay, lesbian, and transgender characters, “there is a multicultural hole, especially for Hispanic teens.”

 

So your midsummer dance camp will get you in shape for a well-deserved beach break later in the season. And when you do settle down to write, keep in mind the growing demand for gender and ethnically diverse audiences and make your writer’s dream a reality.

 

Excuse me now, I’ve got to run to try on a tutu!

BTW: Check out this amazing video on the art of the tutu by The Australian Ballet.