Live To Write Another Day (11 page)

Many years ago, my wife and I were in Paris and visited the Musée d’Orsay, where we were lucky enough to catch an extraordinary Vincent van Gogh exhibit that had a very profound effect on me. It was a modest collection, only about fifteen or twenty paintings located in a very small room, so it wasn’t so much the volume of the work that made such an impression. It was the fact that they were all
self-portraits.

I’m sure that putting the exhibit in a somewhat claustrophobic room was a very intentional decision on the part of the curator. You couldn’t help but feel an unbelievable rush of emotion the moment you walked in there. There he was, arguably one of the greatest artists who ever lived, staring at you from every direction, the sorrow in his eyes, the pain he suffered throughout his life so palpable. And to think that this incredibly gifted man went to his grave without ever having the satisfaction of knowing how immensely valuable his work would soon become. It’s hard to imagine a greater injustice.

I don’t bring this up to be a buzz killer again, but to simply illustrate the point that:

Financial success is one thing and artistic success is entirely another.

Van Gogh was clearly a brilliant painter, but the fact that he never achieved financial success in his lifetime obviously doesn’t diminish his artistic achievements in any way. The two are not joined at the hip. I think the same could be said of writers and writing. We’ve all heard the stories of the great Hollywood scripts that languished for years and years before someone finally championed them and made them into classic films, or the great authors who experienced financial hardship before achieving both critical acclaim
and
financial success. Believe it or not, for every Mario Puzo or J. K. Rowling that’s been lucky enough to break into the public consciousness, there are thousands, if not tens of thousands, of other writers who may not be rich and famous but whose work is truly exceptional, as well as worthy of being enjoyed by far more people than will ever have the pleasure of being exposed to it.

Furthermore, financial success is completely objective. You can touch financial success. You can literally count it and define it in terms of dollars and cents. It’s different for each individual of course, but it’s still the result of a concrete, mathematical formula. For some writers, it may simply mean getting paid any amount of money to write (i.e., financial success = receiving anything greater than zero for writing), while other writers may not consider themselves financially successful unless they make at least six figures a year from writing. Still, any way you slice it, financial success is a clear, tangible thing. Writing success, on the other hand, is entirely subjective. It’s something that no one can touch or count.

So all other things being equal, including talent level, why are some writers more financially successful than others?

This question has a two-part answer. First, achieving financial success isn’t really all that different for writers than it is for any given population of people in any other profession. There are just things some people do well that eventually results in more money in their wallets—the way they present themselves; the way they interact with their colleagues, their clients, and their associates; the way they're able to gather a supporting cast around them. This is all stuff you can learn. Sure, some of it’s instinctual, but for the most part it’s all about being good at the
business
of being a writer.

Second, as any successful businessman will tell you, sometimes you just have to be lucky. This, obviously, is
not
something you can learn. You have to be at the right place at the right time—and in the case of writers, with a well-executed idea.

Which brings us back to writing success.

I always get a kick out of hearing people say that they wrote a feature-length screenplay in six days. I don’t know why it’s always six days and not five or seven, but for some reason it is. When people do this, they want you to think either (A) they’re some kind of genius, or (B) that they were so blessed by this moment of divine inspiration, the thing just came bursting fully grown out of their brain, like Athena from the head of Zeus.

The truth is that no one can write a screenplay in six days, not a good one anyway, and certainly not a great one. The only way to write anything great is to have both the talent to write it and the drive to spend as much time as it takes to make it the very best it can be. In other words, the formula for writing success is:

Writing Success = Writer Gene + Process

Achieving writing success is a marathon, not a sprint. It’s about continuing to hone your process so that each successive piece of work over the course of your writing life grows and improves over the last one. It’s about going deeper into all the aspects of the craft. It’s about developing your command of the language. It’s about being more efficient, learning from your mistakes, and becoming an expert in each and every medium that you choose to write in.

Most importantly, writing success is something that can only be measured by your own internal yardstick. Only you know what you’re capable of. Only you know how far you can push yourself, how many ideas you can come up with, how well you can execute them, and how many times you can rewrite that script over and over and over again. Writing success only happens when you can look yourself in the mirror and honestly say that you’ve done everything in your power to make a story work, that you’ve tuned that radio in and brought that signal through as clearly and completely as you possibly can.

That’s not to say that achieving writing success is totally divorced from getting the positive feedback of others. Let’s be honest, it would be pretty naïve (not to mention, a little delusional) to claim that you’ve written a successful story if you haven’t received at least some modicum of external validation. But I think it’s also fair to say that the feedback you receive is ultimately only one factor among many that determines whether or not you feel you’ve fully realized any given piece of work. The real test is how well you stack up to that internal yardstick, whether or not you’ve reached the highest of bars you’ve set for yourself and satisfied the fairest, wisest, and most discerning of critics—
you
.

When you’ve done that, I believe you’ve achieved success as a writer. And when you can do it consistently, I believe financial success will follow.

When I started writing this survival guide, I have to admit, I hadn’t really given much thought to how much my experience at The American Film Institute has shaped my thinking as a writer, and I certainly didn’t think I would be talking about it as much as I have. But as I reflect on it now, I realize it really did have a tremendous impact. The reason for that is simple. From the very first moment I stepped onto that campus, I felt I had finally found “my people.” I had finally become part of a community where everyone was passionate about telling stories, and where the words that made up those stories mattered. For the first time in my life, I had finally gotten into a room with a bunch of other writers.

Looking back on those days it seems as if my classmates and I were living in a timeless bubble. The long afternoons we spent sitting at that little sushi joint on the corner of Franklin and Vermont, arguing endlessly about theme and structure and characters. The hours and hours we spent watching films. The countless seminars we were so privileged to attend with the world’s greatest filmmakers. It was total and complete immersion into
writer land
, an unforgettable journey, free of all the other encumbrances of life.

While that experience could obviously never be duplicated, it did convince me of one very important thing:

To whatever extent it’s possible, you should make every effort to surround yourself with a community of writers, throughout every stage of your career.

Why is this such a big deal? Why do writers need other writers? Because when you spend the majority of your time living in the vast reaches of that infinite universe we call the human mind, every once in a while you just need someone to talk to. You know, an
actual
person
who can
actually
sit down across from you and look you in the eye, as opposed to yet another figment of your imagination. But not just anybody will fit that bill. You need someone who truly knows what you’re going through day in and day out, someone who understands the solitude firsthand, who shares your passion, and who, like you, just may be crazy enough to spend their entire life pursuing it. These kinds of conversations between writers, whether they happen in passing or over a two-hour lunch, are so powerful and so vital to our collective psyche. It’s that unspoken solidarity, that exchange of energy and encouragement, that so often provides just the spark we need to press on.

On a more practical level, bonding with your writer brethren also allows you to share strategies and learn about the different techniques they may use. As your process continues to evolve, you will inevitably find yourself experimenting with these various approaches you hear about. They may not always work for you, but at the very least they will inform you creatively and contribute to your overall knowledge of the craft.

Here’s an interesting example. I have a friend who likes to experiment with the validity of his story concepts by writing test scenes. In other words, when he stumbles onto an idea he thinks is good, he immediately dives in and writes the one scene that is clearest in his mind, just to see if it pops on the page as much as it did in his head. Usually it’s a scene near the end of the story, a big climactic moment that he’s envisioning. His thinking is that if he can make the test scene work (even if he completely rewrites it later), then he’ll have an aiming point that will give him the drive and momentum needed to start writing the story from the beginning.

I found this fascinating, because while this approach is absolutely 180 degrees from my process, it’s also very similar to how I often write extensive notes about scenes that occur later in my story while I’m outlining. The difference is that I still start at the highest level of the concept and work my way down to the details. In his case, he’s actually writing an entire fleshed-out scene before he’s even done a stitch of research or made a single note about his idea.

The thing that has always struck me about this particular writer friend of mine is the ease with which he blindly follows his instincts. The openness that he allows himself in his process, the fearless, optimistic way that he experiments with ideas is just tremendous. And while the form it takes for him—actually writing the scene with no context—is not something that would work for me, the concept behind it, the exploratory element, is certainly a very important aspect of my process as well.

Besides all the shop talk, there are so many other ways that simply connecting with other writers can pay valuable dividends. It exposes you to resources, like interesting classes, books, and seminars to help educate yourself. It helps you find great environments to work in. For example, I heard about The Writers Junction, the place where I go to write almost every day now, through a writer friend of mine.

Your extended writer community is also how you will find good note givers (writers and non-writers alike), producers and directors to collaborate with, and agents and managers who could potentially represent you. You might even find a great writing partner to work with if you’re engaged with a community of writers.

By far the greatest benefit to cultivating this community around you is that it allows you to talk about your stories on a level only other writers can appreciate, and in a way that reveals who you truly are. When you share your ideas with other writers you are saying to them: “Check this out. This is what turns me on as an artist!” And the mere act of doing so proves your worth. It’s how you plant your flag as someone who belongs in this community and inspires others to do the same. That kind of energy and vitality is contagious and can easily spread like wildfire—which is exactly what we all need in order to become better storytellers.

One of the best ways to cultivate a writer community around you is to form or join a writing group. What you do with this group is get together on a regular basis to give each other notes and help improve each other’s work. In other words, you basically create your own writing class, except that there is no teacher and no institution behind it. Typically groups like this consist of about five to ten writers, all of whom must be serious enough about their careers to commit not just to the meetings, but to all the reading each member must do in order for the group to be valuable. As I explained in Chapter 7, giving good notes takes a considerable amount of work, and if you’re going to have any hope of doing it well, you have to be willing to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty right alongside the fellow writer(s) you’re trying to help.

It’s also important for all the writers in the group to be somewhat compatible in terms of talent level, craft, and professional experience. This is easier said than done, particularly when it comes to getting the right mix of personalities. If you’re lucky enough to assemble a committed bunch of people and create a productive, healthy dynamic, it can be a truly wonderful and empowering experience. The secret to creating that special chemistry is to find quality writers who are also willing to become quality note givers, and who understand that by investing their time and energy in others, they’re also investing in themselves.

(To learn more about the online community for writers I’m currently developing please visit
www.thewritergene.com
.)