So You Want To Quit Writing?

Writers are an odd species.

We simultaneously loathe and love what we create. Regardless of our mastery of our craft, we know we will never achieve written perfection. Simply knowing of the existence of a more evocative line, a more graceful segue, a more compelling motivation, a stronger phrase keeps us humble. However, something about creating entire worlds from mere words feeds our creative soul, filling us with a parental pride no non-writer will ever experience.

Only delusional nitwits start writing because they expect to it to make them rich.

Oh, sure, one might harbor the secret desire to write something so amazing, so brilliant that the world beats a path to one's door, flinging fistfuls of money along the way. Love of money, however, makes a poor muse.

"Will this castle do, Mistress?" "GOOD DOG!"

A writer starts writing because he or she MUST. Any other reason ("I'm going to be rich!" "I'm going to be famous!" "I'm going to get a movie deal, and move to Hollywood, where I shall meet Matt Bomer and discover that he is secretly straight, and he shall fall desperately in love with me, and I shall live on the beach in a converted castle with an army of perfectly trained Welsh Corgi minions that do my bidding...") is destined for disappointment.

We writers tend to be a supportive bunch. I have never known a Real Writer to deliberately squash another writer's dreams. (I'm sure it happens -- being a writer doesn't make one a saint any more than having a child makes one responsible -- but I believe such aberrations are rare.) To the contrary, on numerous occasions, I have known writers to generously use their time, expertise, education, and connections to help a fellow writer on the road to publication.

Sadly, too often writers forget the flights of whimsy, inspiration, and creativity that caused them to start writing. They allow the callous remarks of non-writer naysayers (@DowagerAgent anyone?) to affect their optimism, their faith, and their productivity. They lose sight of the fact that one does not write to please the world; one writes to complete one's self.

If you want to marinate in a depressing sea, Google "Why I Quit Writing" or "Why I Stopped Writing" sometime, and follow the tendrils of misery that emanate from that Wood Between the Worlds. Just make sure you hide the razor blades and the Drambuie first. (Strangely, no one seems to notice the irony of writing about why you are no longer writing...)

Lately, I've had several conversations with talented writers who say things like:

"What if the book I've written isn't as good as I think it is?"

"What if I've used up all of my creativity and never get another good idea?"

"What if I've wasted a year and a half of my life?"

"What if it doesn't sell?"

"What if I don't really have what it takes?"

They're all allowing themselves to flirt with the idea of quitting. As if becoming a writer was a conscious, logical decision they made that they can walk away from at any time.

It's not.

Being a writer is more of a calling than a career.

If you're a writer, you know the thrill of creating characters more interesting, more rounded, and more real to you than most people you know.

If you're a writer, you know that a part of you remains behind in your story when you must leave it in order to live your "real life."

If you're a writer, you know that if one is to consider it a waste of time to write, one might as well consider it a waste of air to breathe.

Granted, you might take a break from writing for a while -- especially if you've allowed yourself to fall into the trap of equating success with financial gain or fame.

But, if you're a writer, the Muse will not stand to be ignored for long. The day will come when she will smack you upside the head with an Idea so exciting that it will cause your heart to beat more strongly as the creative juices surge through you again. And you will realize that where there is breath, there is life. Pick up your pen! Run to your keyboard! Quitting is not an option...

The Quotable Austin Film Festival -- Friday

or, Words of Wisdom from the Masters

Marvin Acuna (Rainmaker Films)

On Re-Writing and Motivation…

“Write your masterpiece so you can give some other screenwriter the opportunity to rewrite it.”

“If you sell it, it’s not yours anymore. You have to let it go. Get over the fact that it will be re-written, and start writing something else.”

“The idea of a writer’s Catch-22 (you can’t get optioned without representation, and you can’t get representation without being optioned) is because you are being lazy. You keep thinking that way, and some day you’re going to be 90 years old and on your deathbed, whining that ‘I didn’t get to do what I wanted to do because someone didn’t do it for me.’”

“Imagine a wall that separates you from your dream of a screenwriting career. You can let it keep you out and beat you. Or you can decide to somehow get to the other side. You can chisel it down, dig underneath, climb over, blast through… But do whatever it takes to get to the other side.”

“You can direct your career if you choose to.”

Jeff Graup (Producer / Manager)

(Jeff has been one of the most consistently helpful panelists in the sessions I have attended. His rapid-fire answers to questions are wry, candid, spot-on, and practical. He repeatedly preaches the “Be Nice To People” mantra. I would LOVE to have him as my manager… Note to self: See what you can do…)

On Re-Writing – “I extract movies from my writers painfully, as if the pages are stapled to their bodies.”

Other Words of Wisdom from the How to Sell Your Spec Script panel:

On Readers’ Notes…

“If the reader is not getting the story you are telling, you are not doing your job.”

“Look underneath the note for the underlying problem that needs fixing.”

“Do not defend your writing. Do not argue. Merely take notes and ask “Why?” a reader feels something is unclear. Anything you feel the need to explain or defend, write down. Then put it in the script.”

Herschel Weingrod (Screenwriter / Producer)

On Storytelling…

“To want to be a writer of screenplays is to want to be a co-pilot.”

“Comedy is usually tragedy that happens to other people.”

“People say you should write what you know about. I think you should write what you care about.”

On Pitching, Script Marketing, and the Way the World Works…

“Writing a screenplay is an act of seduction. The script is intended to invite people to want to make the movie.”

“The problem with Hollywood is, nearly everyone knows the alphabet. The executives don’t know the first thing about lighting, or acting, or set design, or sound… Critiquing the words on a page is their way of contributing to a project.”

“If you actually follow (an executive’s) notes in the next draft, they will hate the re-write.”

“It’s a corporate movie business and corporate entertainment. The writer is essentially in ‘New Product Development.’ It is now a part of our job to discuss marketing and demographics, and to sell the execs on this ‘wonderful new product.’”

Boaz Yakin (Screenwriter / Director)

On the Realities of Re-Writing…

“The screenplay isn’t the last thing anyone is going to see. It’s a blueprint for something else – the movie.”

“One of the big struggles of screenwriting is to maintain your enthusiasm for the work because you spend so much time protecting yourself (from the inevitable negativity of the industry). You have to come to some sort of emotional agreement for how you are going to relate to the project.”

“If I want to protect something I wrote, I’d write a novel and never allow anyone to shoot it.”

“There are over 80 million people involved in making a movie. Getting a film made takes a small army. The script has to evolve along the way.”

“Don’t underestimate the importance of actors bringing their conviction and contributing to the tone of the film.”

“I am sick of ‘Good Screenwriting.’ Too many screenplays are overly technically proficient, but they have nothing to say. Don’t be boring. But you gotta be yourself. The stuff that gets my attention is the sruff that lives and breathes.”


Terry Rossio (Academy Award © nominated Screenwriter originally from Kalamazoo, MI)

On Craft…

“Make each word fight for the right to stay on the page. If you’re not doing it word-by-freaking-word, you aren’t working hard enough.”

“Writing a single sentence could take an hour. The writer is the only one willing to spend that kind of time with the words.”

“Something really wonderful happens when a writer is discovering something, when there is momentum or inspiration. You can feel this motion of scene resonating against scene. You know it when you see it or read it. But it’s so elusive that we don’t even talk about it.”

“Jokes age. What was hilarious the first time is no longer funny after the eighth read…”

And my personal favorite words of wisdom from Terry Rossio:

“Take the trouble to be extreme to your characters. Santa Claus. Superman. Mary Poppins. Sherlock Holmes… Your character has to walk into that crowd and BELONG with those characters.”

My thanks to all the panelists who gave of their time and wisdom to us in the audience today... Onward and upward.

Thoughts on How to Keep on Keeping On

"It doesn’t matter how many times you go down. It doesn’t matter how many times you’re in the dirt. If you can pull yourself up one more time than you go down – that’s what it’s all about." -- Dick Beardsley

This past Friday and Saturday I attended a writer's conference in Grand Rapids with a friend of mine who I have mentored through writing her first book manuscript in the past year. It's been a while since I've been to a writer's conference... And it's been even longer since I've sat in the audience instead of standing up front presenting. I really enjoyed it.

I stayed up late on Friday talking with the lovely Janet, a transplant from Nashville to Michigan this January ("Welcome to 20 below!"). Her narrative non-fiction book follows the pregnancy of a 16-year old girl and presents her experience in a series of personal vignettes and diary entries. Janet has been married for 25 years. The book is a version of her story. It is timely, engaging, and -- from what I saw -- well crafted. It is also blunt, honest, and full of hope.

I ate breakfast with a woman whose lyrical, soul-baring book details how she coped with raising her three children when her husband and her best friend, the pastor of a small church, drove away one morning... and committed suicide before the day ended.

I enjoyed a lively discussion about screenwriting and the difficulties of cracking the film industry with Gerald who writes futuristic adventures that ring creepily true when he pitches them -- making you wish you could pick one up from the airport bookstore, because it would certainly make the time in the terminal pass in a flash.

I traded good-natured ribbing with the talented and intellectually interesting Seth (18 going on 30), who tried to appear cool and jaded by the whole bit, but who was just too interested in life to completely pull it off. Seth, who recently lost a finished fantasy manuscript when his computer crashed, now realizes the great value of something called a "backup." But he also realizes that his re-write is better. So who's to say that the crash was a disaster?

I ate lunch with Mary. Her nearly completed a narrative non-fiction book tells of her life-altering involvement in a support group for a young co-worker who discovered that she was in an advanced stage of breast cancer when she was 10 weeks pregnant.

These and others at the conference have been told by people in the industry myriad ways that their projects don't readily conform to what is "salable" or "marketable."

"It's just not right for us."

"Those types of books are dead right now."

"I don't represent that sort of thing... But good luck..."

A person's project can be discounted with breathtaking speed.

And yet, we writers keep on. We persevere. We know there is a market for what we write -- if, for the only reason that we would read it, if we had the opportunity.

My new friend, Dick Beardsley knows something about perseverance. He has tried -- and failed -- at things more times than most people. Interestingly enough, though his successes are what made him a running legend, his failures in life are what continue to make what he has to say relevant.

"There is no formula for success. But there is a formula for failure and that is to try to please everybody." -- Nicholas Ray (Director, "Rebel Without A Cause," among many, many others...)


"Nobody makes a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little." -- Edmund Burke.

So -- to struggling writers, screenwriters, poets -- and marathoners -- everywhere: Keep on keeping on. Here's a massive helping of perseverance, determination, and fortitude to see the thing through. No matter what anyone says.