How to Deal with the Big Quiet

I’m a fairly successful screenwriter. 

That’s a lie. 

I’ve optioned two scripts to independent directors, both of which are currently in preproduction. 

Both of them are women’s stories, varied, and cool, and badass, and awesome. Of course. 

So far this year, I’ve held 5 table reads, written 2 scripts, been invited on 4 podcasts on 2 continents and published 2 blogs with a combined audience of tens of thousands of people. 

Sounds like a lot, right?

No. 

It’s not nearly enough. If I could, I would have all of those in a month, not stretched out over 4, 5 months. I am working tirelessly, pitching, querying, writing, blogging, hoping, praying… the lot. 

But sometimes, it seems like absolutely nothing is happening. Nothing. For weeks on end, I don’t get a reply to a query, I don’t get a “send over the script” email, I don’t get likes on posts, I don’t get applause, I don’t even get fresh new script ideas that I want to write. 

And it feels like all I am doing is screaming into the void, and the void swallows it all and then there is nothing left. 

And that can kill even the most motivated hustler among us. 

All of us who voluntarily go into the movie-making business know that it’s a cut-throat world. That the hustle never ends, that you can never give up the fight and there is still no guarantee for success. There is no guarantee that you will ever get to share your art. We know this. But when times get rough, boy oh boy, the temptation to just quit is very loud. 

So what can we do when it’s been months since the last “big thing” happened in your career? When we trundle through life, the day job is sucking our energy, the creative juices aren’t flowing, and there is nothing but a bleak, grey landscape ahead?

Simple. 

We remember. 

When I have moments (like I am having right now as I write this), where nothing seems to be moving, nothing seems to be happening… I like to take a moment and look back on why I started writing in the first place. 

No matter what motivates us to keep going, it all started with a spark in there somewhere. It’s not what most people want to do with their lives. Most people have other ideas of what a “good job” is. It’s certainly not the crazy hours we spend on set. It’s certainly not the gig-economy we’re stuck in. It’s certainly not the insecurity, and the dependence on benefactors. 

Where did that spark come from? What made you so crazy, that you chose this life voluntarily? 

For me, it was the Lord of the Rings. It was the behind the scenes footage from the DVD box set of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It was the moment when they showed the setpiece of Minas Tirith. 

It was that moment, when the small version of the citadel was transformed into the most epic shot I had ever seen. It was then that I realized that I would for ever long to be a part of this world. The world that could make this magic. 

And so, I wrote. 

The story is quite mundane: I started writing in beautiful little note books, imagining worlds and how they would look, progressed to prose and novels, and then made the jump to screenwriting a few years ago. Because the north star is there, as it always has been. One day, I would stand on a set that I had dreamed up, hearing actors say words that I had put there. And that day moves ever closer. 

We move across mountains and valleys. And down below, it’s hard to see the next peak sometimes. But it’s there. It does exist. And there is a north star guiding us, always. Because we are all just crazy enough to believe that there is.