Taking My Time

I've got three months left of this year and I've been incredibly productive. I feel great about my creative output this year. I've learned things. I've grown as a person. I don't feel this need to bang out three more scripts in the next three months. 

If anything, I want to get a TV staff writing gig that will take me through the rest of the year, maybe into next year, to keep busy and to continue to learn about production. That would be awesome. To have the luxury of not having to create something from the ether for a minute. I'm a creative person who loves to generate ideas. I will never not be that. I'm a creator. But I honestly think this last play took a lot out of me and I feel like I wrote the best thing I've ever written. I don't think it will be the last creative thing I will write. I don't think it's the last play I'll write - I know that because I have another idea for something that I'm in love with. Or I should say I have an idea I'm excited to write. It deals with historical figures and modern times. I'm psyched to watch a bunch of TV and read a bunch of books that get me into that head space.

Last year, I had written one play over eight months and I felt the pressure to write other stuff. I wrote a pilot in a month, then rewrote it in a month and then I rewrote one other thing. In the last three months of last year, I wrote a script a month. I felt an incredible amount of pressure to do that. And I started this play because I didn't want to deal with the expectations that people had about last year's play. I feel differently this year. The past two years were about productivity. And this year was about making money, which I did. I needed to enter the marketplace.

I took a year and a half for myself where I fired my managers and I decided to write for myself. I didn't know who I was as a writer any more. I found swallowed up by the business. I drank the Kool Aid. I chugged the Kool Aid. I became all of the things I didn't think I'd ever be. And I had nothing to show for it. I wrote - and that was great. But I didn't write anything that felt like me. I didn't know who I was as a writer. I don't really think I did know myself as a writer until this year truly. That was the success of this year. I got to know who I am as a writer.  I also became a paid professional writer this year. Both are on opposite ends of the spectrum for me, but I also need to have a symbiotic relationship to those two sides of myself.

Getting back to not knowing myself as a writer, I did that stereotypical thing where I started writing things for other people. I started putting myself in their hands because I wanted to desperately to become a TV writer. For ten years, I did that. I don't look at that as a waste of time, it was a valuable hard learned lesson. It was necessary. But I thought everyone else knew better than I knew for myself. And two years ago, I decided not to do that. I knew these people didn't know who I was as a writer either because I never gave them anything to hold on to. And they were short-sighted. I'm not taking that blame on myself entirely. So I fired them. And I decided that I was going to be by myself for a while. Who does that? Who has the gall to say, "I'm going to write on my own for myself and come back out the other side when I know who I am as a writer"? But I did that. And I wrote about eight scripts that way over those two years. 

But then I knew I had something in the play I wrote last year. I had enough pilots to share. And I got a manager just from that play. But by this point, I had become a different writer. I was writing one hour drama samples. I had written this serious, political play that felt fresh like an Altman film. And I was working on something new. This play I just finished and had a workshop of is the thing I'm the most proud of. And it's not just a narcissistic, self-validating thing. I wrote something good and I paid the cost to write something that personal. But because I did that, I feel transformed as a writer. And now I'm excited to see how that experience touches the next thing I write. And the next thing after that. I'm excited for this pilot because I feel like I'm writing something in the way that I want to without concern for how it's going to be received. It's got a real story and it's got some historical value, but it's also about aspiration and there are just going to be parts of it that won't feel structured in a traditional way. I'm excited about that.

This experience of producing my episodes and working on this play have changed me as a creator. Not everyone gets that experience to reframe themselves creatively. You work hard and you have ambition and then you reach your goal posts and then you're on the hamster wheel. And do you get to get off? Maybe not. My father's illness and death meant that I got off the hamster wheel. And I've been skeptical about the hamster wheel ever since. I remember earlier this year when I decided I needed to start looking for new representation, I was really scared of getting back on the hamster wheel. I was scared of reverting back to the same insecurities and the same need to please. Thankfully, I found out that I had changed and I could go back to work, but not get back on this hamster wheel. 

I was upset a couple of months ago because I had worked on this pitch and I thought it was going somewhere. Then suddenly, it went away. No one talked to me about it. No one said that they weren't interested, but it just went away. Years ago, if that had happened, I would have wondered what I did wrong. I was upset that no one said to me, "We're going in a different direction." But there was that uncomfortable Hollywood silence. Everyone's afraid of offending or burning a bridge that they don't just say what they mean. And if you're on the receiving end, you don't want to confront it because you don't want to burn a bridge either. I initially decided to go be on set because I knew that if I was going to run my own show - which would have been the result of this pitch - then I needed to have production experience. Guess what? I got the production experience anyway and it was enriching. So I don't get this show. Fine. But everything I write from this point forward will be made better technically because of that production experience. And everything I write from this point forward will be better creatively because this new play broke me open.

I go back to the title of this post, "Taking My Time." It doesn't mean I'm being slow or lazy. It means that I'm claiming this time - I'm taking it - and I'm letting the changes that have occurred within me to take hold. I'm letting these changes work their way into my new pilot rewrite and into my new play. I'm making this time count. These experiences will pay in dividends because I took the time to learn what I'm curious about and what will make me better. I was on set, not getting paid. I did my workshop and didn't get paid for it. Like I did last year. And that play did result in me earning money on my first paid TV gig and got me into the WGA. Things pay off. So taking my time - and realizing that it is my time. I choose how to spend the time I'm on this Earth. I can work for someone and work within the system, but I don't have to be beholden to it. No one owns me. 

Again, that doesn't prevent me from being a millionaire showrunner. But I'll be a millionaire showrunner because of my curiosity and my work ethic led me to creating shows that make money. The creation is the reward. The work is the prize. And the more I can reinforce that idea for myself, the further I'll go along that path. I've already proven that someone will hire me. That means more people will hire me. And if I'm putting the investment in making myself better, then that means that the people who will be willing to hire me will be exponential. I don't find validation in that, though. I find validation in the doing of the work. I don't have to chase that opportunity. I can let that opportunity be attracted to my energy.

My intention is to sit chilly.

My intention is to do what's in front of me.

My intention is to see what I want and to do it.

My intention is to create and manifest.

My intention is to make more money this year.

I am grateful for surprises.

I am grateful for naps.

I am grateful for the opportunity to be open to my ideas.

I am grateful for every time I didn't get what I wanted so that I could become clear on what I do want and to only be trained to want that.