I try my best to demotivate as many people as possible in the vain hope that I will reduce the competition. But whenever people come out of my screenwriting workshops they insist on going crazy and heading off to Hollywood to pitch movies. Gary Ow, one of my Singaporean students, ran off to Jay Leno and appeared on his show dressed as Kim Il Sung pitching a zombie movie. And two very giggly sisters – at least they were giggling when I poured some margaritas into them on my last visit to Singapore - hit the Hollywood trail pitching what is such a good script that I would gladly direct it if given the chance.
No matter how bleakly I portray the life of an artist, I keep getting e-mails from students thanking me for either getting them rolling as writers or out onto the streets with camcorders making stuff. The svengali effect that I try so much to undermine by my emphasis on starting small and practicing basic techniques, bubbles through because creativity is always perverse.
Confronting people with ideas of what skills they need and facts about attitudes and personalities within the industry, is more helpful than feeding people false motivations. The effect of pep talks stirring up irrational self-belief is short lived. People need that ahaa moment where they suddenly see what they can possibly do to get them closer to where they would love to be, not a belief that talent will somehow out if they just believe in themselves.
Recently I have been reading The Outliers and another books called Bounce, that explains that a belief in Talent is by far the worst thing anyone can have. Suddenly I realize that what my experience has told me, has now been scientifically tested. What works in the pursuit of expertise is putting in no-less than 10,000 hours of directed challenging practice. That is the number of hours that seems to crop up time and time again in the case of high performing musicians and athletes. The ability to constantly push oneself and fail repeatedly until one gets a technique right seems far more conducive to excellence than anything else.
But it is not simply a matter of effort; it has to be the correct sort of effort. And that is where the trainer is so important. The trainer sets tasks and goals that develop key components of the required skill sets. Which is all very well in sports and even business but the literary arts are more complex and that complexity causes so many people go adrift.
Hard work in the wrong direction is no good. Networking with the wrong project will do you no good. And writing what one is passionate about might make a great script but it does not necessarily have a potential market that warrants the budget needed to make it. In short, to get from here to there, requires one step at a time rather than a blind leap of faith. To get into the position where the great passion project is possible, might mean year and years of writing soap operas or working as a script reader somewhere. Let alone having the skills to write it well.
Knowing where one wants to go might be useful but one needs to know where one is in order to work out the route one has to take. And that route is very individual. Some of us live much further away from our dream than others and as I say, if you practice you will get better and you might get good enough within the time available. That however is a tricky thing to judge because one gets older.
Also consider this: goals will change and the market and industry will change as well. Life has a habit of throwing things at you and making redundant many of the skills one carefully attained. One might have to start all over again! And worse is the situation where one achieves one’s goal only for it to disappoint.
This does mean there are lots of things to consider when choosing one’s path and some paths are more comfortable than others. The only strategy I can think of that makes the effort worthwhile is to do something for the fun of it. That way the journey is what is important. You make a game of it and try to develop the skills that one lacks. And if you cannot develop them fast enough, why not team up with people who do have them? I suspect everything in life is more fun with a group of people who genuinely want to enable each other to achieve dreams and ambitions.