New York Film Academy writing instructor Crickett Rumley just released young adult novel Never Sit Down in a Hoopskirt and Other Things I Learned in Southern Belle Hell. Crickett has a long writing career that includes working for writer-director John Sayles and actress Julia Roberts, adapting Susan Taylor Chehaks Smithereens for Killer Films and Julia Alvarezs The Suitor for Gigantic Pictures and PBS. She has also worked for the Telluride film Festival, lectured at the Greenwich Classic Film Series, served on the Nantucket Film Festival Programming Committee, and was the Director of Development for Scriptstar Pictures in Warrenton, VA. Rumley, who will be signing copies of her book at Stories Book Store in Los Angeles tonight, discusses the decision to write a novel after such a successful career in screenplays:

Crickett, thanks for sitting down with the blog. What inspired you to write a novel for the first time?

After knocking around Hollywood as a screenwriter, I became interested in writing something more personal. I am originally from eastern North Carolina, and I realized I wanted to explore the conflicts between the established traditions I grew up with and the iPhone/eBook/Twitter world we live in today.  Writing a novel, in my opinion, offered me more of an opportunity to explore what was important to me than the collaboration-heavy screenplay format possibly could.

I reached back to my high school days in sultry, exotic Mobile, Alabama, and started thinking about its Azalea Trail Maids.  This is a real organization of fifty high school senior girls who wear elaborate pastel-colored Scarlett O’Hara dresses and represent the city at events such as presidential inaugurations, the Rose Bowl Parade, the Disney World Easter Parade.  I had always been puzzled by them when I was in high school, especially after my best friend tried out for them and didn’t make it.  As an adult, questions ran rampant through my mind:  who wanted to be an Azalea Trail Maid and why?  What was it like to wear one of those giant, fluffy, lung-compressing dresses?  How could girls afford them?  And were the Maids smart or just Southern belle beauty queen airheads?  ANSWER:  I interviewed several of these young ladies, and they are smart, gregarious, and full of knowledge about their local culture and history! So, while my novel is entirely a work of fiction and takes place in a fictitious town, Movile and the Azalea Trail Maids were the starting point. 

How did writing a novel compare to the process of writing a screenplay?

The demands for each medium are incredibly different. I think the best way to describe it is to conjure up the term “motion picture.”  When you are telling a story for film or television, you have to design “motion” or actions for the characters in order to create the “picture” the audience is looking at.  When writing prose, an author does not necessarily have to do that – huge sections of novels can explore a character’s internal monologue or abstract thoughts or concepts without much reference to the visual at all.  Certainly, some of my favorite novelists have a strong visual style, but the medium does not require it.  With film and TV, the writer is always having to answer the question, “what are we looking at?”  Even if it’s a dialogue-driven scene.

Were there still moments when you experienced writers block?

I had writer’s block ALL THE TIME, I just refused to let it stop me in my tracks. The thing is, after more than fifteen years of training myself to dramatize for the screen, I found there was a very steep learning curve in learning how to write prose.  Figuring out where the story was going was a constant challenge.  I decided that the only way around this was to detour – whenever I got blocked, I would jump to another chapter or part of the story.  I literally would write what I knew happened next.  When I finished the first rough draft, I had 400 pages of story and LOTS of holes. But I had the raw material and that got me started on the real work of revising, which happens to be my favorite part of the writing process. 

What comes next?

I can’t wait to write another book! Yes, I have a couple of ideas, but they are still in the “thinking” stages.  Right now I am really focused on spreading the word about Never Sit Down in a Hoopskirt.  I have several readings and signings coming up:  Wednesday, July 6, at Stories Book Store in Los Angeles, Friday, July 15, at Bienville Books in Mobile, Alabama, and Wednesday, July 20, at Page and Palette in Fairhope, Alabama.  Folks can check my website, for details.

And as for your interests in filmmaking?

One of the best things about writing this book is that it actually brought me back to filmmaking– there is a big trend in making trailers for books and circulating them on the internet.  So some of my co-workers at the New York Film Academy at Universal Studios and I made a short film called Never Sit Down in a Hoopskirt.  It’s like a Charlie Chaplin silent comedy, only it’s a cute girl falling all over the place in a hoopskirt.  Come on over to and check it out!  Many thanks to Jerry and Jean Sherlock and all the folks at NYFA at Universal Studios for their support!