SISTER STORIES: It's Your Turn

By Kymn Goldstein and Stefanie Hornby

We were sisters stuck in a creative rut. Together we embarked upon a journey. Void of a destination or roadmap. We let our imaginations guide us. We finished one story, then a second. A few tricks and gimmicks gave way to a vast resource of creativity. We laughed, we cried, and most importantly, we wrote. Then, in the midst of it all, real lif

• Language: English
• Publisher: 21 Story Street
• Release date: Nov 24, 2020
• ISBN: 9780578776613

Kymn Goldstein

Stefanie Hornby, a Bay Area based actor, performed on SF stages and in award-winning indie films for years before becoming a mother. She wrote and performed two solo shows, and co-wrote three plays. She served as a Teaching Artist with Bay Area Children's Theatre. Kymn Goldstein most recently served as Chief Operating Officer for a large entertainment and brand marketing agency. She is a strategist and creative collaborator, as well as an author, playwright and composer.

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FOR DELILAH

&

Clementine

FOREWARD

I wish I was writing this under different circumstances. But, as happens in life, as in writing, the story does not always end where we think it will.

We wrote these stories without purpose. Sheer determination to activate our creativity. Get our imaginative juices flowing. One story we adapted into a short play. Another we submitted to a short story contest. Then we wrote a full-length play. When we began to write, we didn’t know these stories would be a catalyst to create more. The other unknown was that our five years of writing together would be all there would be.

When people say, I’m sorry you lost your sister or sorry to hear she passed, I simply say thank you instead of I didn’t lose her. She died. Stefanie, who loved to banter about word choices, would have supported my thinking. She would have also thought there were many more stories to write about all of this.

My dear friend Scotty said, Words have the power to create eternity. This is the first of what I hope will be many attempts to immortalize Stefanie through her own words. As she was preparing to leave this planet, one of the things she said - seemingly to nobody in particular - was Write it! Write it!.

So from Stefanie to all of us, WRITE IT!

Kymn and Stefanie 2015

INTRODUCTION

A Note from Kymn

Envy is as good of a place as any to start. Sunday night 2015, FUN HOME wins Best Musical of the Year at the Tony’s and I'm envious. The kind of envy only a writer who isn’t writing feels. I don't suffer from writer’s block or lack of inspiration. I suffer from not putting pen to paper. Plenty of good ideas never finished. I'm consistent at least in that way.

Around this time, my sister Stefanie sent me a text. She was busy raising two girls, Clementine and Delilah, and was herself in a creative wasteland. We would have been satisfied simply commiserating, but Ginny, my brilliant and too-often-ignored spouse, hatched a plan. I’m going to give you two a writing assignment.

We embarked on a journey together. Both starting a story, writing half, then sending it to the other to finish. Instead of hard work, it felt fun. Opening each other’s word document to discover what the other person had written was like receiving a gift. A prize. As we went on, the stories got finished. Then we took one and adapted it into a short play. Then we wrote a longer play together. At the same time, real life happened – exciting, mundane, hard, shocking. Through it all we kept writing.

I learned a lot about writing – and life – through this process. The things that seem insurmountable in one moment, aren’t really that important in the bigger scheme of things. I also learned that it doesn’t really matter what you write, or what happens with it.

Happiness happens in the act of writing. Sharing it with someone, is an act of love.

A Note from Stefanie

On my end, I had been a very (though not well-compensated) busy local  actress in the San Francisco/Bay Area prior to the birth of my first daughter in 2010. It was creatively rewarding, and I loved it. I did theater and indie films… until my daughter and her sister, three years later, took up most of my spare time. (And they didn’t even want me to do voices when I read their story books, something I felt kinda bad about, until I heard Robin Williams say the same thing about his daughter. (And he could do characters!)

I then started to do paid acting gigs — mostly corporate video shoots, which were less of a time-suck and satisfied me to a degree, but lacked the creative fulfillment of my previous acting work. I had written a couple of one-woman shows, and a few sketches, so when Kymn suggested working on a play together, I jumped at the idea.

I think around the same time, my twin sis, Stacy, came up with another writing project for us, which Kymn and I both adored and followed up on. Unfortunately, my twin didn’t have the time to squeeze in a regular writing assignment, as it were, so Kymn and I took Ginny’s advice and started doing our own, with her idea for prompts. We continued working on the play we began, but these assignments were a more relaxed, low-pressure way to work out, create, without too much focus on the outcome.

It ended up being very fulfilling and exhilarating to finish, then be allowed to read the other’s story. It was important to have someone to whom to be accountable, as well. (That Ginny’s a taskmaster!) Because, frankly, Facebook and web news sites were too easy to devote time to. With nothing to show for that lost time, either. I go back and read our finished assignments, our stories, and I think, Wow. I don’t even remember writing that. Where did that come from? And it’s fascinating to see another mind take a completely different route with your story or idea for a story.

This has been a very liberating, productive and eye-opening experience. I encourage others to explore and play in a similar way, results be damned.

STORY KEY

The stories presented here are in their original, unedited form.

♡ Stefanie

♡♡ Kymn

IN A PICKLE

♡

You must really like pickles, she said, the first time I showed her my house.

As with my life, I'd let her into my closet too early. I was already feeling pangs of regret. And panic.

No. Not at all. Actually, I can't stand them. Except when they come in little wooden bowls at Canter's Deli as a harbinger of great things to come.

She'd been referring to my collection of pickle jars. I had ushered her into my bedroom, pushed aside my wrinkled pile of dry clean-only clothes (which were really my wear-one-too-many-times-and-then-never-again clothes) and shown her my secret.

Twenty-nine Vlasic pickle jars filled to the brim with coins. I held the thirtieth in my hand. It was two-thirds full. I explained that once it reached capacity, I was leaving my husband Todd.

First, I explained the significance of the vessels to my new friend:

My grandmother used to mix frozen orange juice concentrate with water and store the concoction -- hell, let's call it 'orange juice’ -- in pickle jars. I don't know why she did that. Then she’d pour it into a cheap, tan, plastic pitcher she kept in her kitchen to serve it from. I can 'pitcher the pitcher' -- tee hee.

My new friend laughed.

"I think it drove my grandfather crazy. 'Libby, I don't want to drink pickle-flavored OJ. You want a glass pitcher? I'll buy you a glass pitcher.' But he accepted it, as she did many of his foibles. They lasted together 52 years, and frankly, I cannot imagine. So, I'm using pickle jars so that I can be very