By Carleen Brice

If you want it to happen, baby, hold fast and believe…

–Jill Scott, Try

It is 2002, 2003, 2004 or 2005 and I am listening to Jill Scott’s song, Try, a lot. I’m writing my first novel while holding down a job, and editing an anthology about black women and midlife.

My novel-in-progress doesn’t even have a title. I know the story—it’s about how a formerly alcoholic woman and her adult daughter face their past. But I don’t know how to write a novel. I’m taking classes and workshops and reading a lot of other novels and books about writing. But it takes writing a draft a year for four years before I teach myself how to write a novel, how to tell a story. At least this story.

Writing a novel isn’t digging ditches or picking cotton, but it’s hard. And it tests your spirit all day almost every day. Will I get an agent? Will I get a publisher? And if I do, will people like what I write? Hell, will anyone else ever read it or will it turn out that I’ve only been talking to myself?

I listen to Jill Scott’s inspiring song, Try, to keep my spirits up while on my “writing walks,” or en route to a job I wish I didn’t have to go to because I’d rather be communing with this mother and daughter coming to life in my book than doing just about anything else in the world.

Flash forward to 2009. I’m waiting in a Vancouver, British Columbia, hotel room to go to dinner with my husband. That novel I struggled over became Orange Mint and Honey, published in 2008 by One World/Ballantine. And tomorrow—just a year later—I am going to meet singer-actress Jill Scott, who is starring in Sins of the Mother, the Lifetime TV movie version of Orange Mint and Honey.

While I wait for my husband, I turn on my iPod, select Jill Scott, and press shuffle. Try comes on, and I begin to sob. Time loops in on itself. I remember all those days I cried, fretted, worried and prayed over my first novel . I remember Jill’s mama’s advice to her in the words of the song buoying me too, encouraging me to keep trying. And now Jill is playing the role of Nona, the mother, in my story. It is too much coincidence for my little brain and heart to process, so I sob, and laugh and sob some more in my hotel in Vancouver, feeling like I’m in the past and present at the same time.

I see myself writing about a newly sober mother and her angry, fragile daughter. And that self, who was writing this story without any guarantee of publication, can see me now. We are together and it feels as if we’ve been that way all along. I, in the fancy hotel in Vancouver where the cast, director and producer are also staying, stretch back my hand. I, back in my home office in Denver, reach forward and hold fast and believe. Both selves listen to Jill sing.

On the Set

L to R: Actress Nicole Beharie ("Shay"), Author Carleen Brice, and Actress Jill Scott ("Nona") on the set of the Lifetime Movie Network Original Movie Sins of the Mother. The film premieres Sunday, February 21, 2010, at 8pm ET/5pm PT, on Lifetime Movie Network. Photo Credit: Katie Yu/Lifetime Movie Network.

Nona and Shay, the mother and daughter in my story, have their big cathartic moment in a church, which is being filmed in a real church near Vancouver. My husband and I, who are appearing in the scene as extras arrive, along with producer Damon Lee (Obsessed) and director Paul Kaufman (Little Girl Lost: The Vera Delimar Story), on set for the crew call at 10:15 a.m.

“Crew call” is one of the new movie terms I will learn and wedge into as many conservations as I can for the rest of my life. It’s the time the crew has to show up to get the set ready for the day’s shoot. It’s freezing in the church. I take a scarf out of my tote bag and wrap it around my neck, not knowing that in an hour or so when they turn the lights on, the room will turn into an oven.

Very soon, lead actresses Jill Scott and Nicole Beharie (American Violet), who is playing Shay, the daughter, come in and Damon introduces us. I tell Jill the story of my two selves, past and present, listening to her song. “The universe is something,” she says.

My husband and I are given “call sheets” (directions for the part of the script that will be shot that day) and watch Jill, Nicole and the actress who plays the pastor rehearse. The script is almost word-for-word as it is in the book (minus the F-bomb, which one of the characters shouts out in the book, but the Lifetime Network doesn’t allow). Except for one thing: Screenwriter, Elizabeth Hunter (The Fighting Temptations), has changed the last name of the characters from Dixon (after my Aunt Anita) to Hunter (I assume after her own family). A small change, but I cop a little bit of an attitude. This is the kind of thing people have been asking me about for a year: “How are you going to feel if they change your book?”

I’ve always said, “The book is mine. The movie is theirs.” I have to remind myself of this the first few times I hear Reverend McGuire (named after my friend Trina!) call for Sister Hunter to come forward instead of Sister Dixon. The book is mine. The movie is theirs.

After rehearsals, the cast goes back for hair and make-up and I’m escorted to the church’s cafeteria, which is serving as the hair and make-up room for the background performers or extras. Everybody is pleased with how many black people the casting people have been able to find in Vancouver. One man says, “Look at all these beautiful black faces! Who knew we were all in Vancouver?”

I get my make-up done, but since my hair is locked, we leave it as is. The long day filming begins. We extras sit in the pews. I’m placed behind Jill, Nicole and the little girl who plays Sunny. Many of the extras are shifted around; seemingly what they’re wearing will look better elsewhere. A woman in a bright blue dress and hat is placed next to me.

The first A.D. (assistant director) briefs the extras through what we’re supposed to do. She gives us our cues for standing and speaking, or pretending to speak, actually. When we’re shocked at the argument Shay begins, we are to mime our reactions. For hours, the woman to my right, the man to my left, and I will mouth gibberish and make “ooh-child-no-she-didn’t eyes” at each other. It’s the silliest, most fun thing I’ve done in a long time. We extras get close as the day goes by.

Damon, the producer, comes over and tells everyone sitting near me that I am the author of the novel the movie is based on. They all ooh and ah and congratulate me. God’s blessings are offered to me as if we are really at church. Hours of singing “This Little Light of Mine” and “Down by the Riverside” over and over again, fanning ourselves with paper church fans (props supplied by the crew) under the heat of the lights has gotten us in the spirit. I bet that if the crew let us have anything in our mouths (everyone is made to spit out gum at the beginning of shooting), one of these ladies would pass me a peppermint or butterscotch, just like my grandmother used to do.

Jill and Nicole are troupers. They repeat the tense scene over and over, each time trying something a little different. Shouts, tears, laughs, or whispers give the lines new meaning. I can see that acting, while not digging ditches or picking cotton, is hard work, too. These ladies are calling up painful feelings and memories in themselves. Watching them and hearing the dialogue over and over I get emotional. I tell Jill, “Y’all are making me cry.” She says, “You wrote it.”

Which is, of course, part of why I’m crying. I’m overwhelmed with the idea that this is really happening. Something I imagined years ago has given work to everybody in that room. Again, I have the sensation of being back in time at my desk writing while also being here now watching what I was writing then come alive.

I’m also flashing on my own life. Though my mother wasn’t an alcoholic and we never had a showdown in a church, these characters are my mother and me talking about our stuff. And not just us. Pretty soon everybody seems shaken up. Each person in the room has had a moment when they wished for someone’s forgiveness, or when they denied offering forgiveness to someone else.

That’s the power of story. The reason people have been telling stories since the beginning of time and the reason we will go on telling stories even as the media changes from paper to digital readers for books and from DVDs to whatever is coming next for movies. It’s clear that the screenwriter and everyone on the set have the same goal as I did when I was writing the book: they want to tell a fantastic story. I see that Jill, Nicole and Monaeya Silveira (who plays Sunny, Nona’s youngest daughter) are wonderful in their parts. I begin to lose the characters as I’ve imagined them.

The day passes. We extras continue to mime-talk and mime-react as Jill and Nicole, in character, bring the story to life. (Jill and Nicole are a team, helping each other stretch, and they are full of pleases and thank-you’s to the crew). Around 7 p.m., I am done. The angles they’re shooting—still the same scene—will not show the pew where I was, so I can leave.

My husband suggests I watch the director’s monitors for a bit. Damon the producer, gives me his headset. I sit in one of the directors chairs crowded around two TV screens, one for camera A and one for camera B, along with the director, cinematographer, producers, make-up and hair people. We watch Jill as Nona walk toward the cameras and out of the church.

Over the course of the day, I have learned that there are other minor ways the script is different from the book (no spoilers). But after a full day in that church, watching the dedication of the cast and crew, I change my mind. The movie feels like it’s just as much mine as the book

Sins of the Mother will air on Sunday, February 21, at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT, on the Lifetime Network

Carleen Brice is the author of the novels Orange Mint and Honey, and Children of the Waters, as well as Lead Me Home: An African American’s Guide Through the Grief Journey and Walk Tall: Affirmations for People of Color. She also edited the anthology, Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number: Black Women Explore Midlife.