Aaron Belchamber

"Fine English" is actually a screenplay, but it could easily become a book. I wrote 90% of it back in 2007. We went to our best friends' house to a party and met some of their relatives from New Hampshire who moved to Florida. The housing crisis was just bubbling up through the system, putting pressure on companies, governments, communities and families. Symptoms of extreme stress and financial difficulties were everywhere and, unfortunately for them, the affect on this couple manifested very clearly the perfect storm of the "domino effect" consequences that were looming. They bought a house in Florida when things looked great only to see its value plummet. The job market was contracting just when his company laid him off after 15 years of outstanding service with no warning. The mortgage crisis ruined so many lives and it was very sad how so many good people were discarded by American owned companies, its banks, and its government. Thrown under the bus.

In this couple's case, like millions of others, they actually did ship his entire department's work overseas to India. He was good-humored about it, but I know the helplessness small business owners and employees felt -- my ad agency was seeing clients go out of business, some were billion dollar community developers here in Florida. The well went dry seemingly overnight.

I thought what would happen if the little guys could turn the tables on these big international conglomerates and take charge? Not in a destructive way, like unionize and make the country a communist utopia approach, but if the little guys gave the big companies a taste of their own medicine by beating them at their own game through constructive and creative capitalism? It's possible and Fine English is a comedy of how a group of employees who lose their jobs to outsourcing could do it.

There's a challenge with any writing project, the thrill of the unknown, it's a thrilling escape into one's imagination. A writer may have written a complete outline of a story and then sit down to write to only get completely lost and immersed into this world and when you're there, it takes you to unexpected places and unforeseeable plot twists. New ideas spark a different route, just like life, you have an outline, but you're not sure until you're on the journey and there's a certain inner peace you experience being so close to the potential of your imagination.

It's a thrilling feeling when you feel like you have a good enough idea that's worth sharing that others might read. I say "might" because that's also part of the unknown! The most important part of being a writer is that you have to be content to write for yourself, for your own enjoyment of the journey and the experience to meet a challenge you alone have set for yourself. Hopefully, others may read and appreciate your work, enough so they'd be willing to pay for it. But that cannot be the means you measure your success, remember that many artists, including writers, died before their work was "discovered" and appreciated. Van Gogh's story comes to mind.