REVELATION

Considering the great reason "Why?!" has filled my pillow with the sweat of sleepless nights.

Am I that untalented?  Are my works crummy?  Have I failed to grasp three-act structure, the elements of drama, plot points?  Did I miss the power of a good teaser, the sweep of character arc, the rush of sublime epiphany, the need for that BIG moment?  Do I suck?  Good God, have I been rejected because that's the best I deserve?  Is it me?  

I thought so once, but, like the crazy man on Nightcourt used to say, "I'm feeling much better now."  

I think I know why my career fizzled.  Well, to say it "fizzled" may be too strong a word.  I think to fizzle, there should been something of a fire, or pending explosion.  I had neither.  I had precious few moments believing I might sell a script and that's about it.  Then the moment passed, the phone didn't ring, the deal never materialized, the people who liked my work got tired, fired, or dropped dead, and all was back to normal.   

Which was what I really wanted all along.  You see, my failure had nothing to do with my work, nothing to do with me, nothing to do with the people I've met, the meetings I've had, the hopes I carry still.

It was my goal.  It was my goal which done me in.

There's that old saying (getting older by the minute, in fact): "Careful what you wish for, you just might get it."  Funny, but all the time I was trying to sink California with the weight of my unsold screenplays, it never, ever occurred to me that I was getting everything I really wanted!

There's a school of thought among the self-help crowd that says we create our reality.  Actually, the school lifted the idea from a busload of visiting Buddhists, but that's not important right now.

For me, whenever I thought about screenwriting, I thought how cool it would be to do meetings, how great it would be to have producers, directors, actors, agents reading my scripts, and how much I would enjoy all that.  Well, I GOT all that.  

All the above happened.  My goal had been perfectly fulfilled.  I just never spliced those goals into the OTHER goal of actually selling scripts, working in the business, moving to the next level.  In fact, when I consider it, I've never been too sure that I wanted to really work in this business at all.

I think I just wanted to play at it, and I did.  I wanted the cool stuff, not the work.  Writing your spec script the way you want to is fun.  Writing on assignment is not.  Ha, funny how goals can backfire on you. Here I thought I was building a career in Hollywood as a writer, and all I was doing was building credit card debt.

My advice:

Create GOALS for yourself that you know you really want, and can really live with once you achieve them. 

I knew, somewhere in that part of the psyche that knows what you REALLY want, that I wasn't about to pack up and go to Hollywood.  Hell with that.  Live in some sixty year old over-priced apartment building with bad plumbing?  Pin my future on the whims of some overpaid, underage idiot?  Deal with the tattooed crazies and beach-happy bozos?  Become one of the desperate loser, almost was, "sold-a-script-three-years ago" guys who pitch everybody they meet and plot on how to meet "Steven," because they just know this is perfect for him and a friend of a friend twice removed (probably by the cops), actually knows Steven and can get the script to him when he gets back from Cannes.  Meanwhile I need bus fare and this jacket is two years old and I don't know why my right eye keeps twitching and I haven't had a date since my divorce and...

Me, become one of them?  "No way," my psyche said.  "Forget it."  

So I bounced in for meetings, and bounced right back to my comfortable life where I was nice and safe and my inner self felt that life was good.  The subconscious is a powerful ally, or one mean sucker of an enemy.  In my zeal to be like a Steven Zallian, I always feared becoming more like Stevie Schmuck and left wondering where my next check was coming from and can I get a pitch meeting and who do I have to try to impress so I can survive in this town and what about that bus fare, can you help me out?

So plan your attack with a little more awareness then did I.  And you will, indeed, go and do better than a Guy Called Joe.