Screenwriting Sucks

You can be a busy screenwriter and spend months not actually screenwriting. It’s tempting not to, in fact, because the first universal law of screenwriting that all screenwriters know is this: screenwriting sucks.

Do not believe anyone who tries to tell you otherwise. They are trying to sell you something, or as we call it, pitching.

Most writers are either good pitchers (“good in the room”) or good writers. You can be decent at one and great at the other, but it’s rare to be great at both. My bullshit meter flashes when I hear screenwriters say they don’t think screenwriting is hard or don’t think it sucks or doesn’t feel like torture every second or doesn’t make them question their life paths or doesn’t force them to question their worth as humans on an hour by hour basis.

Internally I think — ok, either this person must be a hack who never forces themself to go to the hard places with their writing where they’re actually confronting themself and their own failures as a human emotionally — or there’s a way in which I always have to make everything hard for myself?

What if I just can’t let things be easy?

My childhood was miserable and hard and I always had to solve huge problems I was totally unequipped to solve — and I somehow always manage to find projects that feel the same.

I’ve been thinking about this meditation lately. You can do it with someone, or imagining another person.

Sit cross-legged, staring into their eyes. Say to them:

I forgive you. Do you forgive me?

Then they say back:

I forgive you. Do you forgive me?

Then you say back:

I forgive you. Do you forgive me?

Then they say back:

I forgive you. Do you forgive me?

Repeat as necessary.