Read on Twitter
Okay I’m going to get a bit cheesy for my final 2020 tweet, but just wanted to say that as bad as this year has been I’m so grateful to have connected with the amazing #writingcommunity on Twitter, thanks in large part to #pipelinewriters. And if I can share 1 thing I’ve learned
this year, it’s don’t let anyone stop you from pursuing a project you’re passionate about. In November I had a manager read a pilot that, for lack of a better way of describing it, is the most me thing I’ve ever written. He wrote back & took considerable care in telling me
how not funny he found the script, & ended his e-mail saying it did not meet “professional standards” (honestly I believe no one should say this unless you submit a script in crayon) & I should not submit it to any other agents or managers. I spent the rest of the night crying,
embarrassed I’d put my whole self in these pages & been smacked down so thoroughly. I was ready to throw the script in the trash, but I’d already submitted it to a few other contests & managers so I prepared myself for more rejections to come. Jump to less than a month later:
the same exact draft of the script that manager hated was named runner-up in @ScriptPipeline’s First Look Project for 1/2-hours. I am still in awe, but I now realize how important it is for writers to believe in their own shit, corny as that sounds. Get notes & rewrite,
of course, but keep being passionate. I am not a successful writer by any means, but I’m ending the year feeling more optimistic about my career than I ever have because I finally said fuck it & wrote something that feels personal & dumb & weird. So yeah, sorry this is long, but
I am going to leave this here in the hope it resonates with some folks out there & so I can point to this in like a week when I feel depressed again & say “look, there’s hope!” Anyway happy 2021 friends, I hope the new year brings you awesome things.
