October 12, 2008

Quitting Time

There comes a point in every challenge when you realize you’re not getting ahead. That all the time, effort, and enthusiasm you mustered for a project just isn’t enough. Why isn’t important, the fact is… it just isn’t.

At which point, you need to make a choice. Do you keep storming the castle? Continue throwing yourself into the breach? Forge on despite all odds with the strength of your convictions?

Or do you give up?

Honestly? If it was up to me…

I think you should quit.

No, keep reading. There’s an important part to this.

If you’ve spent the past decade trying to get any publisher in the world to just look at one of your book manuscripts, and they’re not interested—take a hint. If you’ve spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars on screenwriting classes and contests over the past ten or twelve years, but still don’t even have one toenail in the door—save your money.

You should stop. Cut your losses. Quit. Stop beating your head against the wall, demanding to be recognized, and move on.

In a way, this ties back to something I wrote about a while back. You need to be able to look at your own work honestly and objectively. Knowing when to give up on a project is part of that. After querying 500 or so reps and not getting a single nibble, you need to consider the fact the problem may not lay with them. Your writing may be perfect, it may be gold, it may be what everyone in America is dying for. At the moment, though, for one reason or another, it’s not what those specific people are looking for. And, right or wrong, they are the ones who decide if everyone else gets to see it. As a wise man once said, they are the gatekeepers. They are guarding all the doors and holding all the keys.

Now… here’s that important part.

I’m not saying stop writing altogether. It’s just time to sit back and look at what you’ve done and how you’re doing things. Maybe the problem is characters. Maybe it’s dialogue. Could just be your cover letter. Perhaps even something as basic as an overwhelming number of typos. At the end of the day, you’re doing something that needs to stop happening, because one way or another it’s holding you back.

I’ve met people who wrote one novel way back in college and have spent the past twenty or thirty years sending it to agent after agent, publisher after publisher. They haven’t changed one word since they first set it down on paper. They haven’t done anything else since. They’ve just got that one story going out again and again and again…

Same thing in Hollywood. People write a screenplay over a long weekend, never polish or revise it, but try to use it as a calling card for years. I know of one guy on the contest circuits who’s been pushing the same script for almost a decade. He hasn’t done anything else in the meantime.

Knowing when to quit and move on isn’t a weakness or a flaw. It’s a strength. It’s the only way you can grow and learn new things, because you won’t get any better if you keep poking at the same manuscript again and again for decades. Sometimes you just have to give up on something. If you want to be all new-age about it… you need to learn to let go.

It took me almost eleven years to finish my first solid novel, The Suffering Map. Not an idea, not a work in progress, not something I’ve been poking at. A complete, polished book manuscript, cover-to-cover. Beginning, middle, and end. Yeah, that’s a long time, but close to a decade of that was the film industry convincing me to go work on screenplays instead. If I wanted to make myself feel better, I could probably say it only took about two years of actual work.

Of course, these ongoing rants aren’t about making any of us feel better. Even me…

So, eleven years of work, and then the querying began. Letter after letter, rejection after rejection. Go through it again, create a new draft, and then start the letters again. Some people asked to see it. Some very nice, high-end, holy-crap-I- can’t-believe-he/she-asked-for-this people. Many letters and emails were traded back and forth.

In the end, though, after almost a dozen very major revisions, all of them passed on it. And then I realized, this was done. At that point I’d spent over a dozen years on said novel. Almost my entire life since graduating from college.

Time to work on something else.

I’m not saying I’ll never go back to it. Many writers will tell you if your screenplay or novel gets rejected, put it in the drawer and wait a few years. I’m also not saying it will sell in a heartbeat if I decide to try again in five years. For now, though, I’ve given up on it. I’ve admitted defeat and moved onto (and finished) another novel. And several short stories (many of which have sold). Even a screenplay which did passably well on the contest circuits. Not to mention a paying-the-rent career as an entertainment journalist.

If I’d stayed focused on that novel no one wanted to see, though, I wouldn’t’ve done any of it. I’d still be back there at square one. And my list of published credits wouldn’t be the size it is now.

So the next time the thought of quitting crosses your mind because you’re frustrated with your screenplay or novel or the ongoing search for an agent… actually stop and think about it. Perhaps it’s time, as the networks like to say, to put that bit of work on indefinite hold. Maybe even a few bits of work.

Then look in a new direction, start writing again, and do something different.


This time, let’s talk about her. The hot chick.

Much as I’d like, this does not mean a whole post devoted to Famke Janssen, Hayden Panettiere, Angelina Jolie, Anne Hathaway, or Allison Mack. Alas, not even some of the hot chicks I’ve actually met and hung out with, like Eliza Dushku, Catherine Bell, or Reiko Aylesworth (who is one vicious pool shark). However, if any of these names conjure appealing images and thoughts, feel free to hang onto them for the upcoming extended analogy. Or pick someone you may remember from high school or college.

(Heterosexual female readers—my apologies. This analogy is also going to be a bit one sided, and may even seem a bit shallow at points…)

I think most of us at one point or another have known one of those incredibly sexy and alluring women and had hopes and dreams (or lurid fantasies) about ending up with her, yes? After all, how could she fail to see all my interesting qualities? My intelligence, sense of humor, self-assured nature, and casual disregard for fashion trends. I mean if Famke / Allison/ Eliza/ Reiko just got to know me, it would all work out.

Right?

Well, probably not. Let’s be honest, a woman like that tends to have her pick of mates, so odd are they’re going to lean towards someone… well, a bit more physically attractive. Not always, but that’s the way to hedge your bets. Likewise, they probably want someone with similar fashion and music tastes. Heaven forbid, there are even those females who are a bit shallow and are going to be looking for someone with money to spend on them.

Now… does this mean all and every lust-able woman is out of reach? Not at all. Everyone’s unique, we all have our funny quirks, and there’s a chance that Hayden has been secretly hoping to meet someone just like you. More hopefully, just like me.

If not, though, it might mean you need to make a few changes in your life. That is, if you’re serious about this connection with Anne. Exercise a lot more. Shower a lot more, too. Get a haircut. Stop buying clothes at Wal-Mart. Listen to something that isn’t ’80’s retro soundtracks. Possibly even get a job you hate that brings in more money.

Then you also have to deal with the fact that, well, lots of people are paying attention to a woman that hot. If you’re at a bar, a party, a club—you don’t think you’re going to be the only person who notices Eliza over there, do you? She’s going to be mobbed by people. Dozens, maybe more. Yes, half of them are way out of her league and don’t have a prayer of connecting with her, but they’re still there, in the way between you and her. And by the time you reach her, you’re going to have to try twice as hard to impress her (without looking like you’re trying hard) because she’s so tired of dealing with all these other folks.

And even after all this—after you get your act together, make changes to yourself and your life, and fight your way through the crowd– Angelina might decide to stay with Brad. Maybe not. You never know with these things. But there’s a decent chance she might.

So… ready for the analogy?

Writing professionally is like going after the hot chick. In this case, Famke is the agent or publisher you hope to win over, and you are your writing. Yes, there’s a good chance that there is an agent or publisher out there that will take your work just as it is with no changes whatsoever… but it’s probably not Famke. Or Catherine. Or Reiko. Or…

If you really want to land that dream agent or get that publisher to notice you, odds are you’re going to have to work at it. You need to be willing to make changes—maybe even ones you don’t like—to make your manuscript into something they want to read instead of just something you felt like writing. You need to stand out amidst hundreds, perhaps thousands, of other writers. Yes, half of them probably have no business being there, but the agent or publisher still has to work through all their stuff to get to yours, and will probably be feeling pretty tired and negative by the time they get there.

Despite everything you’ve seen in the movies, nobody ever gets the hot chick without some effort.

March 19, 2007 / 1 Comment

The Basics

People talk a lot about ways to help move your career forward, especially here in Hollywood. There are hints and tips about networking and getting produced and strategies for finding your agent and finding your audience. Yet somehow, amidst all this, they often overlook one of the most basic, elemental components of our craft.

The writing.

How many times have you turned on the television or dropped your ten bucks at a theatre, and found yourself shaking your head afterwards. “Who in their right mind thought this was a good idea? How does stuff like this get made??”

Well, first thing– someone finished the script for it.

Allow me to fall back on a little publishing fact, which I’m relatively sure applies to the film industry as well. Barely one percent of the people who call themselves “novelists” even finish their first novel. We’re not even talking about sales yet, mind you. This is simply getting a whole novel written down on paper. I was at the San Diego State Writer’s conference a few years ago, and watched as a man walked out in an angry huff when he was told no agent would even talk to him until he had a completed novel.

Y’see, it doesn’t matter how many hints and tips and strategies you follow. If you don’t have a completed, polished script in your hand, you can’t make a sale.

Ahhhh, I see the hands already. You there, in the back? Why, yes, yes he did. Just last summer, Creative Screenwriting magazine wrote about how David Koepp pitched the idea for his story Ghost Town to Dream Works and Universal for a very tidy two million dollars.

So, let’s have another show of hands. How many people reading this are David Koepp?

Ahhh, I see only two hands now. One is a screenwriter in New York with over twenty produced film credits, more than a half dozen of them being major box office blockbusters. The other is the marketing exec from my job, Danny, who suffered a head injury assembling the new office furniture and now has problems telling pictures and mirrors apart.

Want a better example? Something a little closer to our (and yes, I am saying our) level? My friend Eric works on a series for the Hallmark Channel. He and his wife had tried writing an episode for the show, but were told the company had a deal with the existing writing team. However, when time began to run short and the writing team wasn’t coming up with anything, the producers pulled out Eric’s script again. His completed, ready-to-go script. And now my friend and his wife are produced screenwriters, just like that.

You see, for those of us (and, again, I am saying us) without a solid resume to lean on, sales depend on actual writing. To be blunt, no one is going to trust us. I may have the greatest story idea of all time locked up in my head, but until it’s written out it’s no different than the worst, most cliché-ridden idea ever, because I’m the only person who can see it. This is why we have to write. Above all other things, we must get coherent words on paper in an established, industry format.

We must write!

Now, let’s look at the opposing example. My downstairs neighbor (I call her the Vamp, not because of her sexiness, but because she’s very pale, has prominent canine teeth, and is rarely seen during the day) found out I was a writer and showed up at my door one day asking for tips on getting a sale. She wanted to know about agents, advances, selling rights, and so on. I answered all of them, and then told her that the thing she really needed to do was actually write out the youth-oriented fantasy she had in mind (starring a character based on a younger version of herself).

“Oh, well the writing’s the easy part, right?”

“Ummmm… Not really.”

“Well, I know how to write, and I know my story. How hard can it be?”

“Cool. Let me know when you’re done. I’d love to read it.”

I ran into the Vamp in the hall one night a month or two later (coincidentally, right about the time Eric told me Hallmark was re-considering his script) and casually asked how the writing was going. She hadn’t started it yet, but was still sure her clever idea would go over very well and earn her fame and fortune.

It’s been said before that if you write two pages a day, at the end of a year you’ll have a novel. By the same token, if you write two pages a day (giving up a night or three here or there), in just two months you’ll have a very solid first draft of a screenplay.

That’s all. A mere two pages a day. That could be as little as four hundred words. Not even half of this column.

That’s the commitment you need to make to yourself if you want to be writer. Your first goal must be to take that rough idea in your head, that amazing story, and put it down on a page. Type it, scribble it, scrawl it, dictate it, do whatever it takes.

Until you have done this, nothing else matters.

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