12
Be a Ninja!
Screenwriting is a martial art! Think about it. Just like a martial art, screenwriting requires profound dedication, concentration, intense practice, willingness to fight, strength, and courage.
Screenwriting is not for sissies! Production is not for sissies! The entire film business is not for sissies! If you want to continue in that business in any meaningful way, you’ve got to learn some very important survival skills that will get you through the most painful times. Acquiring these skills isn’t easy. It takes a lot of work, soul searching, and introspection to make yourself realize how you can avoid the slings and arrows sure to be hurled at you during intense inner and outer battles.
And yes, there are battles. The inner ones are the most subtle and intense. The biggest one is usually the fight with your own personal writing issues. These can be varied and intense, and they involve those pesky voices we hear in the middle of the night that tell us we are crazy to do what we’re doing, that we are no good at it, that we’ll never succeed, that anything to do with art will get us nowhere financially, that we’ll end up homeless and alone because of our addiction to an inane art form.
We learn to listen to these voices from an early age. Our parents, our teachers, media, and even the world indoctrinate us against having an artistic career. We are told to prepare for the future by studying practical things like math, sciences, car mechanics, woodworking, cooking, and a plethora of things that could help us earn big dollars. We are told that doctors, lawyers, and business professionals are valued in our society above painters, poets, and scribes. And we’ve seen for ourselves how true that is when it comes to money.
Except we often don’t think about what all those pooh-poohers of the arts fail to see—that a world without art would be dismal and unlivable. Artists are valuable in the extreme because they show us who we are and that showing has the power to inform, inspire, and delight. It’s a power not to be taken lightly.
The first battle many of us have to fight is the determination to engage in an artistic pursuit in spite of naysayers and discouragers, and it’s a battle not for the timid. Just as I outlined in Chapter 1, you’ve got to be pretty sure you want to be an artist above anything else. You’ve got to really examine your motives and your inner proclivities through introspection and concentration and then have the determination and courage to act on what you’ve discovered.
Some of what you discover can be your fear. Fear is a scary thing! It can paralyze you in spite of your motivation. So you’ve got to really analyze what you’re afraid of. We’ve already touched on one of the most basic fears: survival. You could be afraid that you’d starve to death and end up homeless. That fear can be easily removed by logic and practicality. Make sure that you acquire some basic job skills—not to fall back on because I don’t believe that you should go into something thinking you might fall back. Develop some skills that you can use to earn a living while you’re doing art.
T.S. Eliot worked in a bank. Quentin Tarantino worked in a video store. Lots of other artists have made their living doing things other than their art while they were perfecting their passion. Doing your art should be your passion. That, and not financial gain, should be your motive. If your motive is financial gain, you’re a manufacturer and not an artist!
The fear that you’re not good enough can be overcome by relentless practice and honing your skills. If you’re busy doing that you won’t have time to be afraid you can’t do something. Erase that fear by doing it.
I remember the first time I got hired to write a project. I knew nothing about the subject matter and felt daunted and cowed. But only for a moment. I had learned through my early work in journalism to put my head down and plunge into a story because doing that I’d learn as I went. Often screenwriting is a learn-as-you-go thing. When you get engaged in the story and the characters, you learn how to negotiate your way through the project. For me, that’s the exciting part.
I tell my students it’s like being in the jungle with only a penknife. You have to slash your way through relentlessly to get to the other side. It’s really the fun part of writing—working out this puzzle that takes on a life of its own. But you have to begin and engage, and that takes simply facing those fears and doing the thing anyway.
Some time ago I wrote a piece for the Writer’s Store Website called “Dare to Dream: Write Anyway.” In that I said:
[S]ometimes—no often—it gets especially hard to write. Sometimes it feels like it’s impossible to put into words the substance of our dreams—when the wolf’s at the door financially and emotionally, when life’s got us down and we are depleted and discouraged. But it’s especially during those times we have to keep the dream alive and write anyway.
And that’s because writing is the thing that makes us feel truly alive—that convinces us that we’re doing something special and contributing to the intangible substance that has the power to elevate humanity. It’s that act and that contribution that most often saves us from the illusion that life always gets the better of us—that we can be whipped, conquered, beaten down. It’s when we think that the bad guys may be winning that we’ve got to gird our loins and dream even harder. It’s during those times when we’ve got to take action and write anyway.
Oh sure there may be those who tell us we’re wasting our time—that getting anything out there is impossible, that we’re insignificant in the face of Nobel laureates, Oscar nominees and people who have been writing since infancy. But those people don’t know that our dreams are exactly like the dreams of prize-winners and big-time “professionals.”
Because those of us who write dream in a glowing commonality. We dream in the arena of knowing that words and images matter. We dream in the knowledge that this creative process is magic and certain; that when done well it works on the writer and the reader in equally powerful proportions. We know what those nay-sayers don’t know—that in the very act of dreaming we confirm our determination to make a supreme effort to do the impossible and create a world.
It’s in the act of attempting the impossible that we may even tell ourselves that we’re wasting our time—that our dreams are implausible or too flawed to come true. During those times, we may be faced with terrifying personal demons—with specters of former failures that rise to haunt and beat us back. Especially during those insecure and anxious times, we have to block our ears to our own terror, we have to turn our backs on the undermining parts of ourselves and write anyway.
Our fears make us doubt our own talent. We may find other writers who write better than we do—who write the way we want to write—who write the way we suspect deep down we can never write. When that happens, we have to be humble enough to learn from those writers. We must also re-evaluate our ideas about the nature of talent. We need to realize that some people are born with talent fully developed and that some people (most people in fact) are born with talent that’s like a seed that must be nurtured and coaxed to reach maturity. We’ve got to respect the level of our talent, rejoice in it and develop it by overcoming our fears of inadequacy and writing anyway.
There may be those who tell us we don’t know enough; that our lack of education precludes our right to write. That’s when we have to educate ourselves, to learn more and to live our unique lives in a thoughtful and reflective way so that we can become wise enough to earn our writing. We have to own what we know and write anyway.
There are those who may tell us we don’t have the skills we need to engage others. That’s when we have to work hard to gain those skills. We’ve got to decipher the mystery of our craft; we’ve got to master vocabulary; we’ve got to refine our tools of structure and nuance and we do that by constant practice and writing anyway.
All this learning is a lot of work and it’s time consuming just like writing is. Where do we find the time to learn what we need to know, to carry on relationships, to run households and, if we aren’t earning our living by writing (and most writers don’t), work full-time jobs and still write? Getting time to write may be even harder than writing but if we are determined to do it, something interesting happens. Time becomes fluid and stretchable. Suddenly there are open moments where there were none before. And if we determine that writing is as integral to us as brushing our teeth, we will get up earlier, go to bed later, rearrange our priorities, juggle the events of our day, carve out space and no matter how busy we are, we’ll write anyway.
There are times when we don’t feel like writing—when we’re emotionally drained, tired, spent. There are times when we feel empty and wordless; when we feel discouraged and angry and when we’re caught in the snare of “what’s the use?” During those times, when we feel especially dry, we’ve got to prime the pump and write anyway. Even if we’re turning out drivel, nonsense and nothing at all, we’ve got to keep our dream alive, sit down and force ourselves to write anyway. In that act of writing, we reaffirm our commitment to ourselves. When we write anyway, we are keeping our promises and even if we think what we’re writing is ultimately garbage, we’re working on realizing our dreams.
That’s true even when we’re stuck. Sometimes we hit a wall in what we’re writing and we can’t see our way around it. That’s when we are tempted to chuck the project, go onto something new. But stuck times are only indicators that we need to work harder to solve problems. That’s when we’ve got to be relentless and even more determined. We’ve got to approach our story from a different direction, experiment more and move beyond the box of our own thinking. Being stuck means that we need to think more creatively. We have to hold on and keep writing in order to find our way around the problem because sometimes the solution can only come if we write through it. Often, in the great jumble of writing that pushes us against a writing wall, a ladder will emerge to get us over. If the ladder doesn’t emerge, in all that writing we might find the seeds of a new story because even when we fail we’re making progress.
That’s especially true when our work has been rejected. When the manuscript in which we’ve taken so much delight and pride has been sent back to us unread and unedited or when it’s been sent back to us rewritten and edited to death. That’s when we have to take a deep breath, move back from our work, re-read ourselves with an objective eye, and rethink our words and write anyway.
We’ve got to resist the temptation to run away, to forget the whole thing; let “them” win and have “their” own way and the thousands of other things we tell ourselves when we’ve been criticized. During those times especially, we’ve got to be like swans—the only beings that can actually separate milk from water while they are drinking. Like swans who drink only the milk and leave the water, we’ve got to learn to take the good from criticism, use it to our advantage and write anyway.
And when the feedback is good—when people sing our praises, tell us we’re excellent, brilliant, wonderful and inspired. When we’re lauded, applauded, rewarded and extolled, we’ve also got to stand back and recognize how much of this milk is water. We’ve got to remember during those times that nothing is ever perfect, that even the greatest writers still have lots to learn. Lots of good writers have been ruined just as much by effulgent praise as they have by cruel criticism. We’ve got to remember to take praise just as lightly as we take condemnation. We’ve got to be realistic about our own skills and abilities. We’ve got to go back to our work, no matter how successful we’ve become and write anyway.
We’ve got to be willing to work hard and never become complacent. We can’t ever let down our guard. Sometimes this can be very painful—especially when we have to abandon our work. That can happen a lot. It happens when we discover that someone else has already written exactly what we’re been planning to write; that someone “famous” is writing what we’re currently writing; that the same story we’ve just worked on for years, has just been published by someone else. During those times, we’ve got to be strong enough to walk away from what we thought was our own original idea—sometimes after years of work. We’ve got to be strong enough to weather that heartbreak, move on, start a new project and write anyway.
During those times we’ve got to recognize that even though our stories may not be unique, the way we tell them can be. We’ve got to believe in our own uniqueness and find a way of expressing it uniquely and because that’s not easy to do, we’ve got to recognize that we may fail sometimes. We have to therefore change the way we look at failure. Like Edison, we’ve got to consider that it might be a positive stepping-stone to great success and we’ve got to keep going in spite of it, pick ourselves up and write anyway.
When we do dare to express our own uniqueness, there may be those who disagree with us—sometimes violently so. There may be those who disparage us for our points of view and for our opinions. We may make people angry or sad. We may alienate friends and make enemies. But if we are sure of what we want to say and we hold to our own integrity and truth, then we have to keep on saying it and write anyway.
All of this takes great courage, stamina and willpower. But courage, stamina and willpower are all part of writing—tools just as integral as words or ideas. Courage, stamina and willpower give us the ability to realize our dreams even when we think we no longer dream them. These qualities are the subtle engines of our dream power put into motion by the impetus of our subconscious mind. We’ve got to recognize that they are integral parts of the writing life and we’ve got to use them every moment of every day and especially while we are dreaming and writing anyway. It’s only by daring to dream, our relentless pursuit of those dreams, our determination to realize our dreams—it’s only by never giving up and writing anyway that we become the kind of writers (and people) we want to be.
(Beker, 2016)
Swami Sri Yukteswar says “look fear in the face and it will cease to trouble you!” (Autobiography of a Yogi 1981, p. 104). That means you’ve got to analyze why you are afraid and through logic and understanding annihilate that fear and how you react to it.
The most daunting fear for any of us is usually the fear of rejection. No one likes to be rejected. It’s hideously painful. It’s a universal thing and cuts us all to the quick. It can create anxiety, depression, and despair, and it can affect our self-esteem and stop us from embarking on or continuing in our career if we let it. Rejection in love is one of the prevailing themes in music, literature, and all great art. Humans are continually trying to learn how to cope with rejection in both personal and professional arenas.
Years ago, I gave a workshop on coping with rejection at the Writer’s Guild of America West. There was standing room only, and most of the people there were very successful. They’d sold scripts that actually got made and had loads of credits. Even so, they were still struggling with ways in which rejection affected them and their work. Here’s what I told them and what I tell all my students: TOUGHEN UP!
We’ve got to learn to be less sensitive and to take things less personally. We have to stop confusing our work with our selves. Admittedly, that’s hard to do because our work, if it’s good and meaningful, comes out of our core values, the things that we hold most dear. It involves how we see life, and what we want to say about it. But we have to understand that what we say shouldn’t be confused with rejection of the way in which we say it.
For example, let’s say your story centers on two guys who hang out on the Santa Monica Pier when they hear desperate and articulate cries for help. The cries are coming from a duck caught up in a beach barbeque. The ruthless grill-meisters are too drunk to realize the duck can talk. The guys rescue the talking duck and take him to their apartment where they spend months getting to know him, growing to love him, and teaching him poker.
Eager to show off their protégée they decide to drive to Vegas. Halfway there, their fiendish GPS goes berserk and advises them to take a right turn into the desert. Worshipers of the technological gods, they follow directions and eventually realize they are lost and out of gas. The temperatures are brutal. They begin to broil. Hours go by. They are starving and thirsty. Desperate and addled, the two guys kill and eat the duck! A clear case of duckaside!
What’s the story about? Guys surviving in the desert? A brutal killing? A poker cartel gone bad? No the story is really about betrayal! That’s obviously a core value that’s important to you. Once you know that, you can easily see how many ways you can demonstrate that value, how many other stories you can come up with based on that. When you do that, if a studio executive doesn’t like ducks, you can still write about betrayal in lots of other ways that might move that executive.
Remember the exercise in Chapter 2? I asked you to come up with images from your own life that related to themes that interested you—you could call those themes your core values. The images were different and could have resulted in different story ideas but the core theme or value remained intact. Once you’ve recognized that, you can create many different stories based on the thing that moves you most at the moment, and you’ll be less attached to the idea you’ve decided to spend your time developing.
That certainly applies to projects in the pitch stage. But what happens if your project has been completed and is rejected? That’s the time you’ve got to learn to separate yourself from the project enough to realize that the rejection is not personal. Don’t confuse your ideas with your self! Your thoughts and ideas come out of you and are transformed into an art form, but they are NOT you and neither is the art form!
We often forget this because we tend to believe everything we think and we tend to believe that our thoughts are who we are, so, when they are proven wrong or are rejected, we find ourselves doubting our self-worth. When our work is rejected or morphed into something we don’t recognize, we believe we are being rejected. But what’s really being rejected is the shadow of our essence—a shadow we’ve cast in the sunshine moment of creating. People may hate that duck, but they don’t hate you!
It’s important also to remember that as creators, we are shape-shifting constantly so the shadows we cast—our ideas—can and do change even though they have the same essence. And our idea supply is infinite. We can never lose anything. How many of us have reworked or resurrected “old” ideas we may have had years ago because their time had finally come?
That doesn’t mean we don’t commit to an idea. We’ve already talked about how important it is to do that. But the moment we recognize that idea is no longer working for us or is unacceptable in a crucial way, we need to be able to reframe it, say it in a different way or to move on altogether. How many of us have moved on from old work that we now recognize wasn’t as good as we first thought? We’ve got to learn fluidity if we’re to survive in this collaborative business where collaboration often means giving up a piece or all of our idea or transforming it into something unrecognizable.
That’s why it’s important to do the interior work of learning who we are apart from our writing. We need to discover our real selves because the real self is the raw material we weave into something else that’s got warp and weft. No sane person blames the sheep if a wool sweater’s ugly!
We gain confidence through self-discovery. When we find out who we really are and what we need to say, no one can take that away from us. Then we can master the trick of being fully engaged in our creative process but at the same time detached from it because we know that we are something greater and more solid. Very Zen.
To do that we’ve sometimes got to jump off our personal cliffs and let go of our old notions of what we need to make us feel successful. If success to us means getting approval from people, if it means never having our work edited, if it means making a quick sale above anything else, then we’ve got to take another look at why that matters so much to us. Doing that will help us relate to the reality of the film business where approval, no editing, and quick sales are as rare as sushi.
William Faulkner was once asked why he wrote for the movies and he said, “I can say exactly what I want to 10,000 people or more or less what I want to 10 million and I chose the larger number!” He was aware that he could still get his essential vision across in another way and doing that was an estimable victory.
And finally, screenwriters have to understand that the world has changed. We can no longer be passive in our careers. We can no longer wait to be discovered. We’ve got to take action and get proactive. We’ve got to consider taking an active part in our own projects by filming them ourselves. That’s easier to do than it has ever been. In the old days it was financially impossible. Technology has helped us by making it possible for every one of us to make a movie by providing affordable platforms and new distribution methods. Take advantage of everything and stop waiting around for someone to give you the keys to your career. Take action! Be bold! Be brave! Be strong! Be a ninja!
To recap:
- Face your fears and analyze them. Use logic and truth to make them disappear.
- Know intimately what your core values are and be able to define them for yourself.
- Make the delivery of those values adaptable and varied.
- Realize that any change to the way you express your core values is superficial and does not need to betray those values.
- Never confuse your real self with your work—they are two separate things. The work is only one version of the infinite possible expressions of your core values.
- Develop a rational, realistic, workable definition of success.
- Take action to get your screenplay made and seen.
- Write anyway.
- Do all these things with courage and grace and you’ll have a fulfilling career no matter what.
References
Beker, Marilyn. Dare to Dream - Write Anyway! www.writersstore.com/dare-to-dream-write-anyway. Accessed 18 November 2016.
Yukteswar, Swami Sri. Autobiography of a Yogi. Los Angeles, Self Realization Fellowship, 1981.