Fix You

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• August 17, 2026

It is said that you ought to not try to fix people. That people can only be helped if they helped themselves. But a wise man once told me that men needed to be changed to be better people, usually by the help of a woman. You may  be stronger than you are smart, handsome, and somewhat of a hopeless romantic, but you’re just not likable enough, or even believable enough. And it is my problem because you are my creation.

Am I so akin to Doctor Frankenstein that after I’ve created a character, my interest fades and I’m so quickly onto new characters and stories? Knowing that writing starts as an act of love and morphs into a labor of editing and editing and editing. Did it used to be easier for me to do re-writes because I used to be more creative, or did years of rejection wear me down like a vehicle who’s owner refuses to change the breaks?

A wise woman, also an artist, once told me some years ago to after your dreams as diligent and disciplined as possible while you’re young because passions fade too and someday you’ll pine for peace far more than any glory. You have no peace. I’ve designed you this way. A lost action hero, teetering on the side of villainous. Everyone wants to be the enlightened person, calmly listening to the wind on top of the hill, but no one wants to read stories about them. It’s a terrible bore to be balanced.

If all of art is a self portrait, then are you like me, in a perpetual cycle of self doubt and self assured? I think not. I think like real men, you lack some doubt that you desperately need. It’s your lack of doubt that gets you into trouble. That makes you somewhat un-relateable. I must fix that. I must fix YOU and therefore the script will be fixed.

What’s the point, I often wonder. Writing and re-writing and eventually pitching to no avail makes me feel like Sisyphus, pushing this boulder up a never ending hill. Each time I think I’m close, the clouds clear and there’s so much further to go. Make no mistake, I never thought any of this would be easy. When I was younger, I was enamored with the challenge more.

I lay awake at night thinking of you. I think about a lot of things. Both real and fiction. Perhaps it has always been me who needs to be fixed.