HARSH WRITING ADVICE:
Thinking of your friends as competition isn’t going to make you a better writer, because no matter what imaginary horse race you invent, you can only write what you write. So write it.

When I finished AFI, I was in a writers group with 6-7 guys. We stayed together almost a decade. They’re all staffed or selling features now. I know them intimately, know their work by heart. They’re good writers but none of us are honestly “better” or “worse.”

We had strengths and weaknesses as writers. The ones who were able to do assistant jobs got staffed first, and I think they’d agree they weren’t consistently the strongest in the group. The best scripts that we workshopped to death didn’t sell. It just doesn’t work like that.

One sold a pilot last year and, when he got notes that he didn’t know how to incorporate, I was his first call. I spent weeks reading every rewrite, giving daily notes. I can’t even get a pitch meeting ! It’s not a competition. If it were, it’d be more fixed than figure skating.

The harshest advice I have is this: Learn your craft. Drill structure and character development into your bones. Do it so many times it becomes muscle memory.

Then accept that everything after that is a lottery you have very little control over.