I Quit!!
No need to hit me over the head with a ton of bricks. I see the writing on the wall. My chickens have come home to roost. This dog don’t hunt.
I get it!
After sending out HUNDREDS of queries to production companies, agents, and managers. After fewer than a dozen responses – mostly in the vein: need to have representation, my friend. After emailing and/or snail-mailing scripts into the black abyss…
I get it!
I suck as a screenwriter! I am not worthy! I am…. a wannabe!
I get it!
So….
I quit!
No more writing specs. No more reading screenwriting books. No more treatments – synopses (synopsii?). No more outlines. Log lines. Premise lines. Standing in lines.
I quit!
I wish you all luck, success, sales, even an Oscar®. Go for it. Best of regards. Good wishes.
I’ve had it! No more. I’m done writing…
… until I can learn to write better. So here’s my plan:
No more new specs. I will sit down and re-examine HOW I write, including structure, story, scene construction, and dialogue. I know my weaknesses. Poor characters. Same-sounding dialogue. Bland descriptions. Ok, Ok. I hear ya. Writing can’t be taught.
Ain’t buying it.
I can see how far I have come as a writer in the last five years. I know how far I have to go. My stint in this self-imposed re-education camp will be around three months, but when I’m done, after I improve, and I can improve — no, make that I will improve — you will never, ever hear me say again…
I quit!
Defy Gravity – Keep Writing!
Funny.
I understand the importance of persevering.
My friend — err, he’s not really my friend — Eli Roth wrote a little indy film called Cabin Fever that (after 10 years of having written it with my other kinda friend, Randy Pearlstein) he was finally able to direct himself… 10 years after graduating film at NYU.
He’s doing okay for himself now.
Nothing you write is ever wasted. That was always my motto during the years before I had my first novel accepted. I wrote five complete novels before getting one published. Each time I got rejected I told myself the above words - the effort isn’t wasted. Each new thing is better written than the last.
The other thing I learned came from the observation that I was exactly the same writer the day before I got a letter signing me up as I was the day after. The only difference was the way other people thought of me.
Hang on in there.
Rod
If you have it in your blood, you can never quit, Mike. No matter how you try, you just keep going back. I decided that I would write to please myself. That’s it. If, in the course of sharing the work with a potential market, someone else is also pleased, that’s great. But the measure of my success is whether or not the work brings me pleasure. That’s the benchmark. Inasmuch as I’ve reached that goal, I have succeeded.
And as Ron said, nothing is ever wasted.
I really loved your last caption, by the way, especially how you juxtaposed nature with human nature — an unexpected observation.
That, my friend, is the work of a good writer.
Thanks everyone for stopping by and leaving behind kind words.
As for quitting? NEVER!
As Pamela wrote ‘If you have it in your blood, you can never quit…’ I totally agree. I will never actually quit — but I am taking time off to re-evaluate HOW I write. My goal is to be the oldest first-time screenwriter in the history of H’wood
Thanks again,
Defy Gravity — Keep Writing!