Polar opposite feelings

Last night I sat at my computer after returning home from my television pilot writing class at UCLA thinking, it is possible to experience hope and despair in the same breath. I'm proof of that.

I spent most of yesterday writing. Not just thinking about writing, not just fiddling with an outline or fleshing out ideas but actually writing pages. Writing dialogue. Coming up with character names and places and actions. I wrote over 25 pages yesterday. Yeah it's all first draft but it felt awesome. I felt like a writer and that's the best feeling in the world.

And then I went to class. With only one week left after last night we'd come down to the obligatory 'How to get an agent' lecture. And everyone has their two cents and it's nothing I haven't heard before. It basically boils down to two things: it's who you know and it's where you've worked.

This is great if your brother's an agent at CAA or your father's the head of his own production company. This is great if you came out of a writing program that placed you in an internship that naturally progressed to a production assistant position. This is soul-crushing if you're me.

I don't know many people in the business. And my one and only internship (out of the hundred or so I've applied for) is for a company that experienced a shift in staff after I left. So I sat here last night, listening to the tail end of a screenwriting podcast (my equivalent to watching bad TV before bed) and I heard something that stopped me in my tracks.

"I've literally put myself in the position where I cannot fail."

The screenwriter was talking about how he quit his job to move to Los Angeles (yep, me too). He went on to say how he couldn't get a job and so he just kept writing (I know the feeling). So I got to thinking. Yeah, that's me.

I'm not a twenty-one year old college graduate who's living on my parent's dime (not that my parents aren't awesome and don't help out whenever I ask, and even when I don't) and 'trying out' L.A. for a while. I'm a grown adult who's made a conscious choice to move here, to write, to support myself, and to make a go of it. There is no other option. There's no law degree to fall back on. There's no trust fund that will mature. There. Is. No. Other. Option.

So I crawled into bed and opened the Oprah magazine I've been reading and came upon a story about putting adventure into your life. And I got to thinking about that. A friend from Michigan had just asked me on the phone that afternoon if I truly liked living here. And I answered, I truly do. Because for me, this is my home. No, not home, that will always be Howell. But it's my home for now. And if I don't think of it that way then I will see failure as an option. I can't go home because I'm already there.

So I got out of bed this morning and listened to the end of said podcast, and another for good measure (I listen while I 'teach' so it's not like I'm just laying around in the sun, I wish it were sunny right now). And the second one got me thinking about my script. It got me thinking about the pages I've written and will write today. About how accomplished I will feel after I've finished this draft. What it's like to hold a bound copy of my writing in my hands. It's pretty awesome. And that, my friends, is not failure. It's the polar opposite.