The last few months have been prolific ones. Since the beginning of summer, I’ve written a spec teleplay for an hour-long action-drama, developed and written a one-page pitch and an eight-page proposal for a comic book miniseries, written eight episodes of an online webseries (three of which had to be REwritten), and written a comic script. (For which, a substantial rewrite is forthcoming.) Now I’m working on the development stages of a feature-length screenplay…although I’ll return to the webseries and the comic script rewrite before I get too far into the screenplay. It feels really good.
Moreover, and in some ways just as importantly, I am reconnecting with my creative friends. I’m not really talking about collaborators now. While I have collaborators that I treasure, they are almost always artists rather than writers, and them telling me my business is as annoying as I’m sure they find me telling them theirs. (That sounds snottier than it ought to. I think that Matt, my most frequent collaborator would understand what I’m trying to say…and it’s not that I don’t welcome criticism.)
But there are writers in my life again. Two are some of my closest friends, and we’ve danced this particular waltz before, although there is a different quality to it now…a better one. On some level, at least, we’ve recaptured that need to one-up each other, that need to impress one another. It drives us to be better in the healthiest way. I can express a healthy envy when my friend writes something that I wish I had. It pleases him and motivates me to knock the next thing I write out of the fucking park. It’s awesome.
But I have other writing relationships as well. I have friends who are behind me on the path rather than neck and neck, and reading their work thrills me and in helping them to get better, I am learning how to improve my own writing, how to make sure I do intentionally the things that I occasionally do intuitively. I have friends that are farther along the path than I am, that make a living in an industry to which I am still struggling to gain entry.
I have been experimenting with media, with planning, with format, with tone. I have chosen new themes to explore, escaping from the shackles of my childhood to explore the fullness of my life. I hope that I am writing things that will thrill and move, that will inspire and motivate.
I seek to write for an audience of readers, but I am ecstatic to be writing for an audience of my peers.
