What??? 200?!

Once I realized what this week was, I thought I’d take a break from talking about summer films. Because this is the 200^th blog post I’ve written on writing and movies and so forth.

Why? Why keep talking about this subject?

I guess it’s because I wished when I was starting my life out—going to college, etc.—that I’d thought about a writing career. I didn’t. I just didn’t imagine anything so amazing like writing was open to someone like me from a small town in Iowa. Why was that? Well, writing was so amazing to me. I was an avid reader—just devoured books. And I went to the movies every Saturday… I revered stories so that I think I felt you had to be someone really important to write one. And I was hardly important. If it hadn’t been for scholarships, I never would have made it out of my hometown to go to college, let alone have any aspirations to do anything really exciting like write.

And I didn’t for a long time. But when I decided to give it a shot—that meant moving to L.A. for me—I felt like I just had to try. I didn’t want to be on the porch of the old folk’s home at 95 wondering if I could have done it.

So I guess that’s my message—it’s OK to try. But to really try, you need to be well versed in what you’re trying to achieve. Anyone can head for L.A. and say they want to write, but if they don’t know anything about writing, if they haven’t tried to write, and tried again and again and again, they probably won’t make it.

Part of ‘trying’ means educating yourself. So you write a script. Then another. Then another. My friend Michael Arndt [Little Miss Sunshine, Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens] and I spoke at a writer’s conference where he told the story of how he got started… about how he wrote screenplay after screenplay while holding down a ‘job-job’ to pay the rent. When he finally broke through, after close to a decade, with Little Miss Sunshine it was about his 9^th script. And after Sunshine’s success, his agents said, “Give all the others to us—we can sell them all.” And Michael turned them down—said he wasn’t a good enough writer then.

Very smart. He realized the learning curve involved in writing. Sure, you occasionally hear the Cinderella story about someone selling their first screenplay out of college, but that’s so rare. Most people break through after writing a LOT of spec scripts.

So that’s why I’m doing this blog—I want to see you writing… EVERYTHING. Try a comedy, try a teen film, try a horror film, try a period drama… wherever your passion lays, that’s where you should work. I tried TV, film… just everything. And after 3 ½ years, I made my first sale.

As it’s summer, we’ve been looking at great summer films so that you can think about a summer film you might like to write. Next week, we’ll continue with an important summer film from 1989… stay tuned… and keep writing!!

Copyright © Diane Lake

23Aug20

Email Diane a question to Diane@DianeLake.com