This Is The Business You’ve Chosen

Most screenwriters are clueless and totally ill equipped to function as businessmen and businesswomen in Hollywood. They have the talent, but not the know-how to make their career happen.

I’m not talking only about young screenwriters fresh out of film school or kids with a dream from small town America. I’ve encountered people in their 30s, 40s, 50s and upwards who’ve been successful in other fields, but when it comes to making something happen with their finished screenplay, their naiveté is disturbing.

I get it. I was like that too.

Hardnosed cops and high-powered attorneys are intimidated by 25-year-old development executives who’ve never had a creative idea of their own in their lives. Type A stockbrokers fall to pieces as their script is turned into mishmash by a producer who should be working the late shift at a 7-Eleven. Psychiatrists, all kinds of doctors, seen-it-all journalists, firefighters, real estate biggies, housewives, bookies and loan sharks behave like 12-year-olds when their phone calls aren’t returned.

People can learn how to write a screenplay, but there are no books or guidelines on how to be a screenwriter with the savvy, shrewdness and savoir-faire to navigate through the rocky road of selling a script and getting it on the screen without losing one’s dignity.

Being a screenwriter is much more difficult than writing a screenplay. I know from personal experience. I’ve written eight, had three optioned, sold one and did an adaptation of a hit play that got made. If someone is doing it right, being a screenwriter is an all-consuming job in and of itself. Just as a screenwriter learns how to write a screenplay by doing it, the same must be said of learning how to be a screenwriter: by doing it. But if someone doesn’t know how, you’ll be at a disadvantage in Hollywood.

This is the business you've chosen.  You know where you've heard that before:

“Moe Greene was a great man...Someone put a bullet through his eye. No one knows who gave the order. When I heard it, I wasn't angry; I knew Moe. I knew he was headstrong, talking loud, saying stupid things. So when he turned up dead, I let it go. And I said to myself, this is the business we've chosen. I didn't ask who gave the order, because it had nothing to do with business."

                                    Hyman Roth to Michael Corleone

In my next Screenwriters Rehab post I’ll report on an amusing, but disturbing cautionary tale of a young screenwriter.

Welcome To Writers Rehab!

There are three stages in the life of a writer: getting a project written, getting a deal and getting it produced or published. Writers don’t have much control over whether their script, screenplay or manuscript becomes a fact, but you can control the first two points.

You can’t get anything written if you’re not writing.

Not being able to write is at its core a mental problem. Unproductivity is it’s own form of addiction. The easiest thing in the world for a writer to do is avoid writing.

 As the saying goes, writers like having written.

 But when you’re so bogged down in your inability to push forward with a project, complete a first draft (let alone revisions and a polish) or even get started on a new idea, you know you’re in trouble.

 Not only do you find yourself unable to write, you don’t want to. You’re immobilized or close to it. The easy way around it is to find ways to avoid returning to the battle zone. And it is a battle zone. Until you finish the first draft your battle with whatever you're writing is a love/hate relationship.

 This is how Writers Rehab can help you. To get you back on track, motivated and ready to approach your writing (and your writing career) with a new resolve and attitude.

What’s the attitude? Being more professional. Work on your novel, screenplay, TV pilot or play as if you’re being paid to do it. As if you’re on a deadline and a check for $200,000 is waiting for you.

Parkinson’s Law: work expands to fill the time. No deadline, self-imposed or otherwise, and it’ll take you two years to finish a script. Throw in a 3-week deadline with the promise of a paycheck and you’ll finish in 21 days. 

I’m not trying to simplify the writing process. Sometimes it’s just not happening. Too bad. You need to make it happen.

In sports it’s said that the difference between an amateur and a professional is that the pro plays when he’s injured.  As a writer, you have to bite the bullet and confront whatever’s preventing you from writing.  There are many reasons.

In subsequent posts I’ll get into these reasons and offer solutions, tips and a few tricks to get you out of the doldrums and back into your screenplay.

Welcome to Writers Rehab.