My Benedictian Dream - How inspiration was born from a binge session of Sherlock

     To say my mind was numb, zombified by motherhood would be an understatement. I'm surprised drool didn't trickle down my chin as I sat dutifully next to my husband half-watching "Bones" and playing mindlessly with Hay Day on my smarter than I felt phone night after night once my four year old and seven year old were finally in bed.
     An automaton on autopilot with the basic ability to drive children to basketball, school, playgroup, etc. while making sure they were feed semi-organic fruits and Goldfish crackers, my brain had shriveled like the petrified raisins stuck under my youngest son's car seat.
     Occasionally, I'd pretend to feel creative with a marathon scrapbook sessions with my close mommy friends. But I was a scrapbook poser, only half-heartedly pasting pictures onto 12 x 12 patterned cardstock. I lacked the artistic skill or drive to make art-worthy layouts like my talented friends. My buried talent lay in word images not photos, but I had laid them to rest next to my former tight abs and ability to pee uninterrupted.
     How was I to know that divine inspiration would strike me down one sweltering June night in the form of a cut-glass cheek-boned, deliciously curly-haired British actor who exuded talent out of every pore. I had been bugging my husband repeatedly to watch B.B.C.'s Sherlock on Netflix's for months. We were both serious Sir Arthur Conan Doyle fans, I preferring Jeremy Brett's performance in the 80's, My husband having a fond attachment to Basil Rathbone. Plus, we both enjoyed the new Elementary on C.B.S. So naturally, we felt compelled to check out the much raved about Sherlock. This one simple decision about late night television changed my life.
     For the moment we tuned in to season one on Netflix's, my phone lay forgotten in my lap, my eyes riveted to the screen, my cyber farm animals left to forge for themselves. I had never been so wholly arrested with a performance before I saw Benedict Cumberbatch so thoroughly inhabit Sherlock Holmes. He brings such an intensity and commitment to his acting, I became lost in the show. And let's not forget the brilliant writing of Doyle fan boys, Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffatt or the rest of the stellar cast. Every fiber of my being lit up, like a kid punching every button on the elevator of the Empire States Building.
     Now I know I am not alone. The legion of Cumberbitches and Cumber collective attest to the fact that the man is one of the most brilliant and compelling actor of our time.
     But what I did not see coming was how his intensity and commitment to craft seeped into my subconscious reawakening my dormant literary ambitions. Yet, one early morning in late August, I had a vivid half-waking dream where I found myself telling him the plot to a movie I had written and wanted him to play the male lead. Suddenly, I couldn't move fast enough. I hoped out of bed grabbing paper and pen and writing down every word and image I could remember about my grief-consumed heroine, her daydream addiction, and the similarly lost soul she connects to before succumbing to the dream world.
     His kinetic energy still flowing through my fingers, I took my kids to the park and sat at a cold cement picnic table plotting the story, charting main characters, and writing notes to myself. Consumed by the raging inferno of inspiration, I couldn't stop. I hadn't felt so alive in years, every synapses in my brain was fired up and talking rapidly to the rest of my body. I dug out my old writing books, studied film craft at night, and wrote day after blessed day still finding myself talking to him in my dreams making him say the lines to Lily Collins, the actress I envisioned as my protagonist, Elaine.
     Like a crazy stalker, I studied YouTube clips of his interviews and watched every movie I could find so I could analyze speech patterns; his self-deprecating, witty sense of humor, and impassioned, crusading, charitable spirit into the inspiration for the character of Percy.
     Now the story had four rather different variations before I eventually joined a screenwriting group who questioned my writing and advised me on the right path. But I would never have completed my first feature length script and earned a semi-finalist accolade in the prestigious Shore Scripts Screenwriting competition if I hadn't binged on Sherlock and Benedict that fateful summer night.  The writing game was on.