My artist journey
From Hollywood to independent author and everything in between.
Since my tweens, I wanted to be an artist. I made my first films at 11 years old. I wanted to be a novelist at age 12. By my teens, I wanted to work in Hollywood.
Heading into college, I learned Hollywood was a nasty place. I made a fateful choice to follow my father’s vision for my life and earned a bachelor’s in computer and information sciences. I wanted to go to Los Angeles to study film and television, but my either/or thinking kept me from seeing the opportunity. If I had earned a dual degree in computer science and film and television, I could have built a career in Hollywood.
My teens did not prepare me for life as an emerging adult. I was a train wreck of a human being in my twenties. Long periods of floundering interspersed with a few ill-conceived attempts to break into Hollywood. Each time, like Prometheus, I burned up as I flew into the sun.
At age 30, I experienced a profound divine awakening that upended my world for years (more about that in future articles). I never found an economically viable path to “live in the emerging fifth dimensional reality.” The experience brought my wife into my life.
I quit my job to become a screenwriter. Ended up broke, credit cards maxed, with a broken-down car I had no money to fix, not enough money for food, and was on the verge of homelessness. I had no health insurance. And then my back went out and I could not walk for three weeks. I decided I’d never let that happen again. Joined an internet start-up and rode the dot boom into six-figure earnings. The discretionary income gave me opportunities to learn screenwriting from Hollywood professionals, to meet working filmmakers, and funded a mini-retirement to write screenplays.
For the first time in my life, I put butt in seat and wrote for 4+ hours every day. I found that writing well is really hard! Began learning the business and networking. I met some Hollywood people possessed by dark entities. The rest could work 18+ hours a day for months on end and go without sleep for days when necessary to close a deal or meet a production schedule. That wasn’t me. I found independent filmmakers loved what they did and lived a more balanced life. So I added indie filmmaking as a goal.
I moved to the Pacific Northwest instead of Los Angeles, to jump on the regional digital media and indie filmmaking trends. We nearly went broke again. I learned technical communication to earn a living as a writer while I pursued my creative interests. An article I wrote landed me the job I have now.
Income stress removed, I continued writing screenplays and learning from filmmakers. I found opportunities to shop my first feature film script around. I met classy, genuine agents and manager-producers. They all said they could not sell my script because it didn’t fit the Hollywood formula. I met a writer-producer who opened the door to Hollywood television. He said I had the writing ability. But again with the 18+ hour days and living in Los Angeles. A staff writer’s starting pay was less than my day job paid, and I would devote all my time to writing someone else’s stories in the ways they wanted them to be told. After years of learning about Hollywood, I finally understood how the business worked for writers. It wasn’t for me. The dream died. Soul-crushing grief haunted my life for months.
I got over it. Determined to find my way as a writer, I learned transmedia and indie filmmaking, produced my work, and gained a local reputation as a transmedia expert. Local film festival awards and global streaming distribution of my acting work led to a featured role in an indie horror film. A Hollywood studio picked up the film. They included my work in the social media marketing campaign and my image appeared on a bootleg DVD cover. You know you’ve made it as an artist when someone steals your work!
My financial reward for these achievements? Less than $0; these successes cost me over ten thousand dollars and thousands of hours of time. I enjoyed working with aspiring filmmakers driven by passion. The few who succeeded were independently wealthy, financed by a spouse, or had the 18+ hours a day work gene. The rest were broke or doing it as a side hustle like me. I tired of bankrolling projects and the filmmaking process became painful.
I loved writing and acting. Acting coaches told me I had the potential to make it in Hollywood. So I explored that as a career path. Acting and writing looked like equally demanding journeys. Since I wasn’t willing to give up my day job, I knew I had to choose one. I chose to write.
During the filmmaker journey, I worked for years at a gaming and media company. A dream come true…a job in the entertainment industry with a beloved global brand! A colleague introduced me to the indie author community. Leading indie authors made six to seven figures a year publishing their own books. The indie filmmakers I knew made little money, and just a handful of them broke into entry-level Hollywood through their indie work. I let go of independent film and embarked on the indie author path.
After picking a multi-millionaire author to model myself after, I wrote my first three books, built a website, and created social media channels. I published the first two books in 2H-2019 and book three as the pandemic began. The books didn’t sell. Since the time I had started, the market had shifted. Writers around the world heard the get-rich-quick stories and raced to publish over one million new indie books each year. This forced new authors to spend money on advertising to have a chance. They competed with established authors who spent $500K a year on ads and published audiobooks read by celebrities. I wasn’t confident enough in my work yet to spend big money on ads, audiobook production, or paid celebrity influencer campaigns.
The pandemic gave me time and isolation to write more. I took a healthy pause from publishing to figure out my purpose as an author (more about that in future articles). I stopped pursuing an external goal and got to know myself as an artist. What genres did I love? Who’s worked influenced me? How did their art shape me as a human? I synthesized ideas and interests from throughout my artist journey with all I had learned as a storyteller. And I stepped into my purpose as an artist.
To support the latest iteration of my journey, I joined a conscious leadership community. It sunk in that the vision for my author business was based on a business model that rarely worked for new authors. I admitted that most “successful” indie authors did not make a living from their writing. They made their living or supplemented their royalty income by selling services to aspiring authors. Only 0.6% of indie authors made a living wage from royalties. Amazon and others had made it so easy to self-publish that indie books flooded the market. Competition drove up the demand for author services and the cost of ad buys, and drove book prices down. All the results of a brilliant, decade-long move by Amazon to fulfill its corporate charter with the Kindle Publishing business… “your margin is my opportunity.” When the race to the bottom began, with authors selling box sets of books for $0.99 and selling courses on how to do it, I said f-this!
My leadership work showed me a potential author career beyond the indie author consensus. I learned about “silent giants” in indie publishing who avoided the group think and quietly made seven and eight figures a year from their books. I wanted to be a silent giant. It also became clear that making a living as a writer was not the most important thing. In every fiber of my being, I felt called to become a great writer. A writer who changed people’s lives, the way great writers changed my life and kept me going during the dark times when I was younger.
I faced an unpleasant truth. I was not a great writer… yet. My purpose revealed my potential. I had to put in the reps and make peace with the long road ahead.
Where am I now? Writing articles for New Destiny or Technocracy? You Decide. Paused my five-year plan to publish a backlog of 19 books unified by a brand strategy. My ten-year vision may change as I publish articles and learn more about the new generation of storytelling platforms. It inspires me to see authors doing what I’m doing now and succeeding, and to see others combining income streams to create a viable business. Through MasterClass and Becoming Superman by the great J. Michael Straczynski, I’ve taken comfort in learning that highly successful writers worked full time for many years, wrote for multiple platforms and channels, and/or persevered through many life challenges while they wrote and honed their craft.
In terms of full-time effort, I’m only two years into this journey. Six years in calendar time. I’ve accomplished A LOT. However, I’m still on the first step. As the writers I admire say, the first and most important step is to get good.
I faced another unpleasant truth. Throughout my corporate career, I strived for financial freedom to write full time. Unfortunately, because my artist journey was top priority, I never got good at investing. I missed opportunities to become wealthy.
Fortunately, there are always new opportunities. I’m on the right path now. Searching for my new home. That place where we can live a simple life close to nature while I build my author empire.
Finish is my theme for 2024. Finish my first 40 articles. Finish tuning my author process, so I have a repeatable approach to publish the books I’ve already written and those I have yet to write. Finish with a dysfunctional relationship with corporate work and enjoy my remaining time. Finish preparing to leave corporate, so that whenever that time comes, I’m ready.
Most important… in a recent morning mediation… a reminder from my spirit brought me to tears. I no longer want to be an artist. I am an artist.
