Practise what you preach

I gave a lesson yesterday. It’s one I’ve given multiple times, I have the info, the stats, the data down to a t, I don’t need to prepare for it anymore. 

It is a very general overview of what the first steps are when you’ve written a screenplay and would like to get started in the industry. It’s very straightforward. It’s about an hour and a half, with time at the end for questions or discussion. 

I use examples from my own career, and examples from different aspects of the industry. And in all honesty: I make it seem quite easy. It is easy. All it takes is hard work, determination, a willingness and ability to put yourself out there, and an urge to get to the next step in your career. 

I spoke about how the writing is first, it must always come first. First we write, and we write so, so, so very much. We must be confident in our craft, we must have a back catalogue of valuable materials, we must know what we’re doing - only then will we be hired reliably and often enough. 

But then I walked home, enjoying an early summer’s evening in Dublin. I contemplated. I wondered. 

I like my career. I like the way it’s going. It has ups and downs, and sometimes it throws me violently to the ground, grinds me to a pulp and spits me out - but then it lifts up again. I am not starving, but I’m no millionaire either. I get hired regularly, though the value of the gigs is not always enough to make a living. It’s an artist’s life, very much so. 

Why? 

I have been in the industry for about 4 years now, and quit my corporate job almost 3 years ago. It’s been a rollercoaster since, with projects being cancelled, other projects never quite making it over the finish line, collaborations disintegrating… in short: the film business. 

But I’m not quite there yet, I feel. I’m not quite in the place I’d like to be, in the place where I saw myself being at 32 years old, the place I imagined I would be. 

A lot of that has to do with my personal life, of course. After the pandemic, my life shifted dramatically and a devastating loss in my private life threw me off my game for a while - but still. I thought I’d be further along. I thought I would have made it by now. More so than I already have. 

I have to often remind myself of my successes: I’ve worked with an Oscar winner, I’ve dined with Hollywood Executives, I’ve been hired internationally on a continuous basis, I’ve had books published and I run a film festival. It’s not that I’m not successful. I am. By any and all standards. 

So what is holding me back? 

As I walked through Camden Street yesterday, the sun glinting in my eye, the people of Dublin out in full force, drinking and laughing and being Dubliners, I realised that I was comfortable where I was. I love my job. I love doing what I do. And recently, I had lost some of the urgency because I was so happy with where I was. I was beginning to become complacent. 

Not an hour earlier, I had preached loudly and passionately to the students in front of me that we must always keep pushing, that we must never stop writing and never stop promoting, and never stop collaborating - we must work at it every. single. day. 

But was I doing that? No. 

Was I writing as much now as I had done when I started out? No. 

Was I promoting myself as much as I had done in the beginning of my career? No. 

I was relying on the seeds I had already planted, and I was woefully neglectful of planting and seeding the next batch. The harvest was drying up, because I was only watering the plants that were already bearing fruit - not ploughing new fields, cultivating new land. 

It’s not that I am being lazy. My days are quite full. But there is more I could be doing. I should still be doing all the things I told my students to do. 

So here is an attempt at that. An attempt to right this wrong, and re-up my game. I must practise what I preach and take my own advice. And pretend that I have not made it yet, at all.