So I want to share a real moment I had a little while ago. This'll be a brief thread about despair and resolve. You might find some value in it. You might not. I dunno. I'm putting it down for me.
I spent today breaking story/worldbuilding stuff for a new game. Because that's my job. Then I finished working on book edits. Because that's also my job. I did a bunch of house stuff, and then I finally settled in to rework this pilot script I finished earlier this year.
I've been trying to finish reworking this script for months? Maybe? It keeps getting put off because of all the other stuff on my plate, and I have to prioritize it last because altho there is INTEREST (I hate that concept with existential fury) there is nothing definite yet.
I've been in this nebulous sphere with many a script in the past 12 or 13 years (this is not unique). It has always fizzled out (this is also not unique). But that length of time begins to condition you after a while, especially the longer you stick with it.
So I'm staring at Final Draft, and this script, with over a decade of sense memory and specific memory bubbling up behind my fleshy bits and I'm also very tired and I had a very real moment of, "You know what? Fuck this."
I'm staring at this page I wrote on the screen and I shook my head and I just thought why even bother? Why bother breaking my ass to tweak this? It's not going to go anywhere. It NEVER goes anywhere. How many of these things am I going to write and chase before I accept that?
I told myself that I've got my book contracts and those are real. I've got my video game writing gig. That's real. I've got the podcast and that's real and I've been neglecting it. The $ from all this doesn't suck. Why am I still pushing these scripts no one buys?
And I was LIVING in that moment, man. It was one of those emotional pits where you don't think, you don't fear, you KNOW something you want terribly is absolutely never going to happen and there is fuck all you can do.
I thought about shitcanning the whole thing. Because it would be easy. It wouldn't even take action, just inaction. Just not doing it, and letting my time be filled with the ten million other things I'm doing. I'd never notice the absence of this other thing.
Except I would. I would notice. And that one little nagging thought is what snapped me out of it. I wouldn't notice the absence of it now, but down the road I would. Years later, no matter what else I accomplished, I'd be pissed I let this go now.
And the thing is, it doesn't even matter if I'm right about this script or the next script not working or not selling or not being made. That's not the point. The point is I'd be pissed because *I* gave up. I didn't push it as far as I could.
Not selling your script isn't failing. I can't control what anyone else does or how they respond to my work or me. I can only control what I do. And what I can do is write and push it out there. And if I don't do that, THEN I've failed. That shit is on me.
And then I got pissed. But it was a good kind of pissed. It was a fueling anger. I was pissed I let the past 13 years get to me like that. And I was pissed I let myself forget everything else I've done.
I've got five books under contract with major publishers. I'm writing goddamn XBox games. I've written for TV. It was a shitty non-union show, but goddammit, I had a "written by" credit in 25 episodes of a show on every Apple TV in the country. I am MATT FUCKING WALLACE.
I never should have been able to do ANY of that by the logic I'm applying to writing my own TV show. But I did. And people absolutely helped me, because everybody needs help, but nobody came to me. I made all that happen. I was the wellspring.
The idea I can create my own television series is NOT impossible, it certainly isn't absurd, and it isn't even improbable. And anyone who thinks it is doesn't know me, and doesn't know the drive all of us who do this have. HAVE to have.
I am GOING to create my own TV series. And it may not be this script. It may not be next year. It may be a script I haven't even thought of or based off some book I haven't even written yet. But it WILL happen. Because I'm not going to stop. And in the end, that's what it takes.
Anyway. It wasn't a brief thread after all. Sue me.
I just want to thank everyone who replied to this thread letting me know it helped them or meant something to them and I apologize if I don't respond to all of your tweets directly. I see you all as one mighty Voltron writer/creator battling on into eternity, and I salute you.
