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This
week's answer:
Scribe
and Deliver
Julianne, I appreciate your S.O.S.
(Screenwriter Overboard, Somebody!)
Like saws and bees, queries do have a way of creating
that proverbial buzz, that sought after
"thing" that so many in the biz (or maybe it's
the "buz") "harken" for. (And
that's no easy trick to harken, let alone harken for a
buzz). Julianne, I want to thank you because,
according to your question, I believe you have revealed
once and for all the answer to the question that has
daunted us all for so long: "Where does the buzz
actually come from?" Now we know. It
comes from the Hollywood machine! Thank you, thank
you, thank you. The Hollywood machine must somehow
make that buzz.
You say that you have to deliver
now that you've created a buzz. You've all
by your lonesome created the buzz!? That's very,
very impressive. And now that you, yourself, and
you have generated the buzz, somehow you must have also
started that Hollywood machine, which, according to your
question, is terrifying you (which could make a heck of
a good horror screenplay:)
Hollywood
Machine Horror
It
just started with a buzz...
Who says
you have to deliver? Did you get a newspaper
route? Are you going to be your state's first
"milkwoman"? Are you working for U.P.S. or
Federal Express? Ohhhh, a pizza house. That's
where you must write your screenplays, in the backroom with
the blocks of cheese (be careful not to get the dreaded
writer's cheese block) and cans of tomato sauce.
Everybody
gets those "screenwriter's nerves." It's the
ol'...
I told
them the idea. Now they want me to WRITE it!?
Geeeessssshhh!
But here's
the truth, Julianne, and anybody else who may be reading
this... You can deliver. You can do it.
The same part of you that started that "buzz" is
the same part of you that KNOWS you can come through with
the script. Really, much of the journey is proving to
yourself that that is the truth. How many times have I
started a screenplay with the first thought of "I have
no idea how to write a thriller." (which
is kind of odd since I was writing a comedy). But,
sincerely: Each time I've started out looking at the
blank Final Draft page (or my blank mind), not feeling an
iota of confidence in any part of my body, mind, emotions,
or in some faraway place known as "Screenwriter's
Watering Hole," I've truly considered the idea that I
can't do it this time, that I won't be able to write this
next screenplay. But, somehow, by the grace of the GREAT
SCREENWRITER HELPERS IN THE SKY (you
can just hear the soundtrack, can't you?), the ideas come;
the dialogue is there; the story unfolds; the characters
talk to me (and I've been thinking about getting some
therapy for that). What I'm trying to say is to have
faith in your creative process. You'll learn to.
Just like I have. See: I have a deep knowing
that my Muses are always there for me, constantly awing me
with their mysterious and magical way of showing me the way,
helping me write and rewrite and write again. And, I
know, without a doubt, that, even if they were ever to
abandon me...
I can
always deliver pizza.
(Or maybe
be a pizza consultant.)
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