I’ve been revisiting a script I wrote twenty-five years ago. Not polishing it so much as listening to it, the way you listen to an old record and hear more than the music. You remember a time, a place, who you were with. The script is Postcard From Italy . It was sparked by my travels there. Lazy afternoons. Surprising rain showers. Water taxis. Train platforms. Espresso taken standing up like a local. That particular European suspension of time where nobody seems in a hurry

A question that I’d parked in the back of my mind finally demanded my attention: why is the only script I’ve written that strictly follows a prescribed structure the only one that’s gone nowhere in screenwriting contests? Not even a quarterfinalist nod. It’s a serial killer script called Misidentity . And it does exactly what serial killer scripts are meant to do. The structure is solid. The escalation works. Information lands where it’s supposed to. The story moves forward w

I learned a new word recently. Cryptomnesia. It’s a documented neurological phenomenon where a forgotten memory resurfaces and is experienced as a brand-new idea. Not plagiarism. Not déjà vu. A genuine belief that something has just been invented—when it’s actually been quietly waiting in the back rooms of the mind. Writers live inside this state more than most people. But here’s the part that caught my attention. Neurologists studying memory recall have found that people who