Hello, hello everyone. This is Tanya Dalton, owner of Inquell Press, and I'm here to give you

another episode of The Weekender, a mini episode to help you end your week on the right note.

A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon a documentary on Nora Ephron called Everything is Copy.

If you don't know who Nora Ephron is, you've probably seen one or two of her movies.

She received Oscar nominations for Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally, and Sleepless in Seattle,

along with a slew of other movies.

As a woman in a male-dominated movie business, Ms. Ephron was the rare

triple threat as a writer, director, and producer. She was also an amazing writer who had a knack

for telling things like it is, and put a funny spin on it at the same time. Much of Ephron's

writing could be classified as non-fiction fiction. As she put it, why would anyone

write fiction when what actually happens is so amazing? Take notes, her mom, a successful screenwriter

often advised her as a child, everything is copy. And that phrase seemed to have stuck with

Nora throughout her life. Whenever anything would happen to

Nora as a child, a bully at her school, her bike was stolen, a horrible teacher. Her parents would

simply say, it's all copy. And in the documentary, Nora explains in a posthumous voiceover,

I now believe what my mother meant is this. When you slip on a banana peel,

people laugh at you. But when you tell people, you slipped on a banana peel, it's your laugh.

So you become the hero rather than the victim of the joke. In other words, no matter the outcome,

you win because ultimately it's your story.

And that story is something you can learn from and can feel okay sharing because,

well, we all slip on banana peels from time to time, don't we?

It's a very different way of looking at things if you ask me.

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