Skirting the borders of madness…
I have been in the entertainment and creative space almost my entire life. I knew that presenting and creating stories was what I wanted to do. I have worked in theatre, and television since my early twenties. My degree was in drama and theatre, (more on that experience in another blog). The challenge that any of us have as creatives is that few of us hold the keys to the car. You may have the best idea for where to go on a journey, and you may have all the skills necessary to get there; but if the person with the keys doesn’t want to give them over to you; then guess what, you are staying right where you are.
I had always had an ambition to write fiction. I told myself that it was something I would do in retirement. Attempting to make a living from writing is a task that skirts the borders of madness. Little did I know that in October 2021 my world would turn completely upside down and surrounded by chaos, taking up the pen (or laptop) didn’t seem quite as insane. My wife is an accomplished actress and I wanted to write for her, and so rather than starting with a novel, I wrote screenplays for Amanda. There is a dearth of scripted content with good roles for middle aged women, and so I thought that I could address that. I have written a comedy drama and a cop drama (again more on these later) and have been lucky enough to get them optioned by a hugely experienced producer. Even in tv you run into the issue of not having the keys to the car. I have overcome the first hurdle of getting the interest of a producer. But the producer then has to sell the product to a network and this is increasingly difficult. We will wait and see what happens.
Traditional publishing is also not an industry without significant hurdles. The route of finding an agent and then having that agent convince a publisher to take on your work is reminiscent of the journey from screenplay to television via producer and tv network. But both of those games are changing. People are creating their own channels and broadcasting their own shows. (Albeit not really scripted but wait a while, its coming). And in publishing the route to success in bringing your work to market without the need for an agent or a publisher is opening up. The gatekeepers grasp on the entry to the world of the author is weakening. There are amazing applications that have been developed to help. In other later blogs I’ll talk about Reedsy, and Vellum and the different tools that I have used to help me create the Persistence Hypothesis.
Take care of yourselves and I’ll see you down the road.