This week's Answer:
Y
(or X) Write?
Well, Carl, maybe you could write a
deep and artistic script about an assembly line.
Or... how about an assembled and deep script about
an artist? All
jesting aside, I know how that “hey, why is everybody in
God’s acre selling scripts except for me?” feeling
feels. It’s
not one of the pleasant ones, to be sure. I guess it gets down to a question you must ask yourself (and
not forget to answer, too).
And it will help, once you’ve answered the
question, to REMEMBER what your answer was.
That way, you don’t have to keep asking it or
forgetting to ask it or forgetting to keep asking it.
And that question is...
Why
Do I write?
I don’t mean for you to ask ME why
I write (although, you could, but my answer might not help
you as much as your own).
Better to ask yourself why you write.
Are you writing in order to sell slick,
assembly-line scripts on Inktip? (not to say there’s
anything wrong with writing what the majority of viewers
will watch and be paid a pretty penny for it).
Or are you writing more for artistic reasons than
commercial ones? Which
is fine, too. Art
is good. It's very
artful. What you don’t want to do is keep
enlisting in the AVC War (Art vs. Commerce War) (unless you
like fighting and struggling and getting wounded).
Actually, even better than avoiding that war is to
not even see it such, as two opposing forces, but rather
just as one entity, the entity of (and this is deep so
hold onto your hat, or cap, or hair if you’re not
wearing anything on it)...
GETTING
PAID WELL FOR WRITING WORDS ON PAGE AFTER PAGE THAT
SOMEBODY AND PROBABLY MANY SOMEBODY’S
WILL CHANGE OVER AND OVER AGAIN TO THE POINT THAT
IT MAY BE HARD TO RECOGNIZE MOST OF THE WORDS YOU WROTE
WHEN THEY FINALLY GET TO THE SCREEN
Do you see when you look at your conumdrum in this light,
there really is no conumdrum?
In a sense, the problem is how you’re looking at
the entertainment industry.
If you want to join that Inktip assembly line, as
you put it, go right ahead.
And if you would prefer not to, that’s all right,
too. The
point is to know where you stand, to know what you stand
for (and why you stand a lot in the first place when you
could sit or lie down more).
I a
nswered that question a long time ago and now truly
understand my relationship to the industry.
You will, too.
I hope this helped, but now I have to cut this
short.
I need to finish
my third act of Terror On The Freeway.
DcH
related
cartoon
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