Reality Bites

One Rouge Waver took some exception to what mostly likely felt to him or her like the unicorn-and-waving-fields-of-wheat post the other day. You know, the post about positive thinking. Why, this Waver asked, give people false hope? Hollywood IS a zero-sum game. Only a tiny percentage of aspiring screenwriters will ever make it and by make it I think we collectively mean making a sale. Money. Cath on the barrel head as Daffy Duck would say.

Airy fairy, positive-thinking will not change this fact, the Waver intimated. And you know what, Wavers? He/she is right in pointing this out. The odds of selling a script are abysmal. They just are. But - not impossible. And when I say that I don't believe Hollywood is a zero-sum game what I mean by that is that if someone else makes a sale that does not mean that nobody else will or can. Hollywood needs fresh material shoveled into its maw regularly. The demand for entertainment is never ending.

I am not one of those The Secret adherents who believes that simply by thinking a whole lot about how much you want a red truck, you're gonna suddenly get a red truck. The things I was talking about the other day go much, much deeper than that kind of surface thinking and really, what I meant is that life is what you make it and the cool part is - you get to make it what you want. But in the immortal words of the Rolling Stones - you can't always get what you want. But if you try sometime...yeah yeah we know the rest. You get what you need.

The cold, hard truth is that the odds are terrible that you will actually sell a script. Ever. Also terrible, the odds of publishing a novel. Becoming a famous - or even regularly working - actor. Becoming a famous artist. Or the president of the United States when you're a black man.

My point is the fact that the odds are terrible for anything is no reason not to try. If nobody tried anything difficult, the world would be rife with - with stuff not tried. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Blah, blah, blah.

I find it nothing short of AWFUL to tell a writer working on a novel that the chances of getting that novel published are practically nil. So don't bother, man. It ain't gonna work. That's awful. Don't bother creating/writing/painting/dreaming because you'll never succeed.

Now. That said, screenwriting is particularly awful in terms of odds. You really are better off going to Vegas and feeding quarters into a slot machine for like five years straight. Seriously. Even if you try really hard, take every class, read every book, watch tons of movies, have a modicum of talent, network your ass off, have good connections, have written ten scripts and are super nice - the odds are still terrible. And I just basically described myself, by the way. And I haven't made a sale.

So wow, right? Why bother?

Because it's fun and you can't resist. And you might - you really just MIGHT break in. If everybody quit trying, all scripts in Hollywood, after today's current batch of working writers died out from nerve-related illnesses, would be written by Hal. You know, from 2001. That polite but cunning computer. You know exactly who I mean.

But more important, in my view, than the fact that you might break in is that you also likely will learn a whole lot about yourself and in doing so potentially find that you're not really a screenwriter - you're a novelist. Or short fiction writer. Or kick-ass essay writer. Or poet. Or super good scrapbook maker with clever captions. Writing in all forms is joyful and important. We need the written word.

The thing that gives professionals in Hollywood an eye twitch and a puckered forehead is that there is a huge number of aspiring screenwriters who figure they are immensely talented (read: entitled) and who figure that breaking in on their first script that they wrote high after watching The Matrix - again - is going to be an easy, great, super cool get rich quick scheme.

Nobody who thinks this would ever admit it, even to themselves. Message boards are full to overflowing with untalented "writers" who figure they are just bad ass enough to make it big in Hollywood. Daily, all over the world, some jackass comes up with a movie idea and tries to write a script. But here's the thing - some of those jackasses ARE talented and DO have a good idea and for god's sake if the only new ideas and scripts come from INSIDE Hollywood, Houston, we have an awful, incestuous problem. Oh - we already have that problem.

Remember, the oak tree was once a nut who thought it was an acorn. And nothing comes easy. And you have to do the work. And you might never ever make it anyway. The point of my post the other day was not that if you be happy and think good thoughts, that you can necessarily overturn certain statistical realities but rather that if you have been bitten by the bug and writing is what you want to do - stay grounded in other things but dream big and go for it. Because without people who go for it - you know, proving the earth is not flat, that the sun does not revolve around the earth, that we could actually vaccinate against diseases - then who are we, collectively? Humans are dreamers. And dreams can come true.

But - and here's my big caveat - how do you know? How do you know whether 18 classes later, a groaning shelf of how-to screenwriting books, hours online and six scripts later - it's time to throw in the towel?

Here's my measure: if you've had some validation from a competition placement or a professional who's read your script and been honestly impressed and encouraging, you shouldn't throw in the towel. If you enjoy the process - don't throw in the towel. If you love writing, movies, literature and creating - don't throw in the towel. If you get ideas and are always staring into the middle distance imagining great characters and great scenes - don't throw in the towel. If there's anything about the five-year-slot-machine metaphor that scares you - throw in the towel. Do it now. Spare yourself the heartbreak and the disappointment. But we who won't quite trying - we know that little thrill of pulling the lever - again.

How do you know if a professional has been HONEST in his or her encouragement of your writing? Well, it's a leap of faith for you, the client, and a head in the noose for the consultant. If I am dishonest and tell you that your script and your writing is better than it honestly is, I am being, in my view, unethical. I don't want to give you false hope and a distorted sense of yourself and your script. But there are writers who take a negative review extraordinarily personally and will then release a hail of threats and insults upon me. It happens. So there are consultants who take the safe middle road and are somewhere between soothingly lying and tentatively honest.

Let me make a comparison - I like to do needlepoint. I find it calming and weirdly satisfying. But I don't really like needlepoint pillows and knick-knacks. So I do my needlepoint projects and put the finished products in a drawer. I don't want to look at them later, really, I just like the process. There is a fair number of writers like that. Not hungry like the wolf, but hobbyists. They enjoy the process but really have no intention of being a real, working Hollywood writer. And there are those who really, seriously are trying to break in. A good consultant knows the difference and encourages both - but in different ways. I am way, way harder on a script when I perceive the writer to be gifted and serious about this. So if you're reading this and I've been hard on you, it's actually quite a compliment.

I had a client once, Richard, who was in his 80s. And he really wasn't bad, either. Richard, I said one day, I gotta tell ya, I'm really not sure if your chances of breaking in are that good. He laughed. I'm 80 years old, he said. I'm doing this because it keeps me active and on the ball. I'm having fun. And he really was.

If trying feels bad - and here, I am sounding like The Secret - then throw in the towel. If you are discouraged, bitter, resentful, pissed off and alienated because you have not made that million dollar spec sale - definitely throw it in. The adventure is in the process. Thinking about terrible odds sucks joy out of the process. But at the same time, I very much agree with the Waver who inspired this post - it would be irresponsible for me to intimate that Hollywood is a touchy-feely, unicorn place where everybody who is nice and tries hard will be rewarded with a sale. That definitely is not so.

But - and now I quote Sheryl Crow - all I wanna do is have some fun - no, that's not right, dammit...Reaching for dreams and expressing yourself on the page is its own reward. Writers who know that will never be disappointed they never made a sale and they will never take a huge blow to the ego if they die without having left a celluloid or digital legacy behind them. Because overt success was never the point. Thomas Edison once said: I never did a day's work in my life. It was all fun.

The joy is in the process. And here I do unapologetically go back to my unicorn belief system - when the rewards for doing anything as well as you can are internal for you, you are a thousand and ten times more likely to see external rewards as well. If you're all about external rewards, just watch them recede from your grasp as fast as you pedal toward them.

The cool thing about life is that what you want and what you get almost never look the same. I never dreamt I would own a business or write a blog like this. But here I am. And I'm having a blast. Have I given up on screenwriting? No. But I am working on a YA novel, another piece of short fiction and a short script. I love to write. Who knows what the future holds for me. It's a mystery that keeps unfolding, much to my delight.

That is all. Now get back to work, irrational dream-chasers. I count myself among you.

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