Welcome back to the blog in which I invite writers to share their deepest fears, then I discuss them right here on Scary Truths Of Writing.
This particular fear - “This writing lark is all just going to take too long, isn’t it?” - was expressed to me by a Twitter user, a while back. And here is my response:
This fear raises key questions.
How much you want to write?
How much do you want to succeed in the writing business?
How big a role do you want writing to play in your life?
What are your expectations in terms of the ladder-climbing you face?
If you see writing as a side-hobby, perhaps one of many - essentially a bit of mucking about - then perhaps a Lord Of The Rings-sized trilogy really will take too long to write in your busy life. Maybe you really won’t have time for it, because you ultimately don’t want to do it enough. You could think about scaling your projects back and aiming to write short stories/films if that floats your boat.
Likewise, if you have the notion that writers can gain fast-track success in the same way that contestants often can in TV reality competitions, then there’s likely disappointment in your near future.
As my old uncle used to say, there’s no sense saying one thing and meaning another: if you want to become a full-time writer, or at least a published/produced writer, you have to accept that it really will take time.
Hopefully it won’t seem like “too long” when compared to your goals and the pleasure of attaining them, but if you’re looking to go the distance then rest assured, you have to think in terms of the long game.
And oh dear God, it really is long.
Unless you stumble onto some freakish magic carpet which whizzes you past the competition, cutting a whole chunk out of the equation, you’ll be working on your writing career for years on end.
I started scriptwriting in 2001 and had written prose fiction before, on and off, with a short horror story published in 1994.
Between 2001 and 2006, I walked the classic path of writing whatever sprung to mind - some of which hit creative brick walls and never recovered.
Along the way, I increasingly learned what worked and what didn’t.
In January 2006, I vowed to make a real go of writing. I spent that whole month working flat-out on a new feature script called Panik. Later that year, I entered that script into the US-based PAGE Awards competition. It placed in the final and attracted the attention of Hollywood indie Polaris Productions, who wanted to option it for a year.
Overawed, I flew to Los Angeles to meet the lovely Polaris people in a Sunset Boulevard restaurant and sign that deal. I spent a little too much money on hiring a Hollywood entertainment lawyer - Christopher Reeve’s former lawyer, no less, to look over the contract. For a while there, it felt like I was on that magic carpet, whooshing along the fast-track to success.
A year later, Polaris optioned Panik for another 12 months.
After that, they regretfully handed back the rights, admitting that they wouldn’t be able to make it. It was disappointing but far from crushing, because by then I’d realised the true scale of the endeavour ahead and contentedly forged on with many other projects.
Sure, Panik could have been produced and spring-boarded me into some indie-scale ‘big time’, but I arguably wasn’t ready for that anyway. I still wasn’t quite experienced enough.
More than anything, that Polaris option gave me encouragement - I knew that a company had spent two whole years intending to make my script. They had paid money in order to keep the rights.
With those positives in mind, I felt like I was a ‘proper’ writer. I could do this.
The option also gave me something to tell producers. Something to put in the bio at the side of my blog. Something to suggest that I was worth taking halfway seriously. This wasn’t a magic carpet, but the start of a long journey which wouldn’t see me having a feature film produced until Stormhouse in 2010. A journey which is very much ongoing today as I try to achieve more.
So, the real point of that Panik anecdote? Hammering home the long game. As much as you might be sorely tempted to, you can’t expect to go crashing straight into these industries like a mad thing. It happens, but it’s rare and you generally need to show constraint, especially when making valuable contacts and relationships with people.
Previously, I’ve got to know professional scriptwriters and showrunners over the course of two to four years, before asking them if they’ll read my work. Even when they’ve agreed, some have taken the best part of a year to come back to me.
Developing and strengthening your craft, with all the dead ends and temporary losses of confidence which that entails, also takes time.
So, all things considered, I’m not about to pretend that you’re wrong when you say that this is going to take too long. But what constitutes “too long” is entirely subjective. The questions here can only really be answered by you.
What do you want?
For how long are you prepared to work, in order to get it.
My own answer has always been “for as long as it takes”.
Cards on the table - ever since I became a father, I’ve found myself second-thinking having career goals that are so damn speculative. When you have two other human beings to consider - twins, in my case! - it can feel indulgent to take risks and be a full-time writer, but people like my Patreon supporters help enormously to keep me on track when times are tough.
But for now, at least, I’m continuing to forge ahead and do my best to get somewhere, and you may want to join me in the mindset of perpetual forward motion.
Sure, we can set goals. We can say we want to have achieved X by this time next year. But if that doesn’t happen, we must find a way to keep on rolling like a tank. If at first you don’t succeed, write, write again.
We have to be unstoppable, with our eyes fixed less on our watches and more on the horizon.
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