July 9, 2004
11:25am Friday

DO YOU LIKE PROSPERITY MORE THAN YOU LIKE POVERTY

I woke up this morning thinking about writing and how I'm not sure if I ever really believed that I'd make it as a screenwriter. And then I was thinking about my top-10 show TV writer friend and how in 2000 we were both kind of in the same spot, writing like crazy, reading each others' scripts and giving each other notes, struggling. And now his career is made, man. He's got an agent at UTA, and if he stays with the show for another year he'll be able to write his own ticket, as close to a guaranteed money/glory writing career as it gets. And how now I transcribe other people's words, their movies, for money. The difference I think is that he knew he would write and get paid for it, that even when he was repeatedly rejected he knew he had something to offer and that he'd become a professional writer. But what my rejections told me was that I wasn't good enough, that if the people in power thought my work wasn't good enough to buy then it wasn't, that something was missing and maybe I wasn't cut out for it.

Like I said in an earlier entry, I've got at least two scripts left in me for sure, and tons more if I could make a go of it. But my inner belief meter that should be saying, "I have something to offer" and "I can see myself taking meetings and going to premieres and living the life" is switched off. I don't know if it was ever on, and I don't know if I can turn it on. This is how people get weeded out of the game, what's happening to me right now. What's been happening for the last year.

Maybe I could hire Billy Blanks to help me Visualize, viz-viz-visualize. I'll go say hi to him at his studio in Sherman Oaks.

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Today I'll finish shooting the PSA, my actor neighbor will do the voiceover, and Gray will run it all through his AfterEffects genius machine to make it exciting and pretty. And then it'll air on cable access (it ain't no top 10 show, but it's TV) and then maybe stupid people will learn to not leave their dogs in hot cars in the summertime.

Paul says, Yeah, don't leave us in the car, man.