Everyone knows you shouldn’t count your eggs before they hatch. It’s such basic advice. So cliché. And unfortunately, so very easy to ignore when you’re the one with the basket of eggs.
I’ve never told this full story here. Really, I’ve only told it a handful of times in person. Mostly because it remains one of the most painful sagas in my writing career.
I hold the undistinguished honor of being a “paid screenwriter” whose movies never got made.
So let’s hit the rewind button to 2018. And learn from my mistakes.
While at my old sales job, I received a life-changing voicemail from the people who ran a large screenplay competition. I knew my script had made it into the finals and that the winner would be announced any day. During my break, I called back to find out that my script was the winner.
“This is one of the best scripts we’ve ever had submitted,” she told me.
After that, I was told to stay tuned for more instructions on when they would fly me out for meetings in the City of Angels. [I still have the voicemail saved.]
At the tail end of February, I was flown out to LA for a week of meetings with industry pros who had been part of the final judging process. I made some good contact, though I’ll honestly admit I didn’t do the follow-up work with these contacts like I should have. [First mistake.]
Partly because on the last full day of my trip [which was also my birthday], I was offered representation by one of the top-tier literary firms in Hollywood. Holy crap. How was this my life?!
I assumed [wrongly] that the rest would be smooth sailing from here on out.
From March to August, I started my working relationship with my agent, sending him finished scripts and doing some revisions. We didn’t email every week [another mistake on my part] because I assumed, “Hey he doesn’t get paid if I don’t, so he MUST be working on deals, right?”
Dear aspiring authors and screenwriters…email your rep at least every other week, even if it’s just to say, “Hey, what do you think about this new idea I had?”
But in September, he called to ask if I wanted to be put up for an indie film looking for a screenwriter. Specifically, a biopic about an Olympian from the 1940s. As both a history and Olympics nerd, I said yes.
I interviewed with the two producers of the indie film, and they read my screenplay that had won the competition. Within two weeks, they offered me the job and I signed my first Hollywood contract. $10,000 hit my bank account a few days later when the contract became official and I felt like “the real deal.”
Back out to LA. I did research at the LA84 Foundation, which had important rare records related to the screenplay I was now developing for the indie producers. But also, my agent landed me a second meeting with Walt Disney Studios to discuss some ideas. They even offered me the chance to write the third film in a franchise…
…which I stupidly turned down on the spot.
And why? Partly imposter syndrome. But my “logical” reason was because I was committed to the other film already and afraid of the time commitment.
Dear aspiring authors and screenwriters…if you’re not sure about a project being offered, always say, “Hey, can I have 24 hours to chat about this with my agent and get back to you?” That’s what I should’ve done and have regretted it every day since.
I kept working with the producers on the script, and it was coming together really well. Pretty soon they were going to look for a director to attach and were already in talks with some actors, including a pretty well-known name for one of the supporting roles.
A lot of silence on the Olympic script. But my agent also helped get my award-winning script in front of a well-known production company who was really interested. So I was still busy working on revisions with them to prep their presentation to NETFLIX. What?!
Netflix was buying spec scripts left and right at the time. And the production company felt really positive about the chances. And the silence that followed in August/September wasn’t a huge deal because my agent said, “When it takes this long to get a decision, sometimes it’s because Netflix is already looking at who they want to attach as a director or actor. Other times, it’s just because they’re wrapping up other project first, but don’t worry too much.”
Now I felt more vindicated in my questionable Disney decision because Wow, look at everything happening!
I’d officially started counting my eggs too early.
On Halloween, I got the bad news. Netflix had passed. My agent was pretty surprised by the decision, but told me we’d just keep looking for another route. But I was more crushed than I let on to him. I’d worked on this script for nearly nine years and thought it was finally going to become real…
Then in November, I got hit with the second bit of bad news. There was an option in my indie film contract for them to hire me for an additional rewrite. Instead, they chose to use that option to bring in another writer. But honestly, that wasn’t a huge shock. Very normal to want a fresh set of eyes in the last revision, so it didn’t hurt as much as the Netflix news.
A series of blows hit the indie script, one after the other…
First, one of the producers reached out to me in late 2019 to let me know the other producer had breached contract. Apparently, the life rights the producer had claimed to have were not, well, had. Investors had backed out and she was trying to salvage the film.
But in February 2019, she asked me to remove the title from my IMDB profile because she could no longer claim the project as “in-development” and would have to push pause.
And, well, you know what happened in March 2020. Once COVID hit and Hollywood shut down, the movie was officially dead. The remaining producer had to move on to other projects that were viable, which I don’t blame her for at all.
For the remainder of 2020, I worked on some new spec scripts and my agent kept sending them out. At one point, we almost revived the award-winning script when we got it in front of an A-list actress, but then that fell apart too when she passed.
My scripts kept finding their way in front of people, including Oscar-winning production companies. But always getting a pass. Finally, in September 2021, my agent called to tell me that the agency was trimming down their client list…and I was being dropped.
Coming into 2022, I had a reckoning. At the end of 2018, my dreams of becoming a Hollywood screenwriter had looked primed to come true. At one point in 2019, it looked like I’d have two movies coming out, which would have been a major profile boost.
But three years later, those dreams looked almost as far away as they had looked in 2017 before all this had happened.
Now, that wasn’t entirely true. I still have a manager in Hollywood who still helps me get my scripts out, even though I’m no longer agented. And I’m a much wiser, more patient writer now. I’ve learned the value of asking questions, of NOT counting my eggs before they hatch…
In the meantime, my ghostwriting & editing work had grown substantially. In mid-2022, I became a full-time writer. And I don’t regret my misadventures in screenwriting. In fact, I still do screenwriting. I even went to a one-day conference in LA this year to re-invigorate my passion. And I just had another pitch with a production company this year. They passed, but still, my work is being read and considered, which is more than many aspiring writers can claim.
Still, I’m left in that limbo of being able to say “Yes, I’m a paid screenwriter, but also, I have no credits attached to my name.”
I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if a few parts of this story had been a little different. If I’d said yes to Disney. If I’d been more proactive with my agent. If Netflix hadn’t had a bad quarter that caused them to pass on a bunch of scripts at the same time mine was being pitched…
Regrets are human, and I haven’t figured out a remedy for them yet. The only thing I know to do is keep moving forward. I’m a working writer, which many people can only dream about. And I’m so thankful for the freedom and flexibility that’s given me and my family.
But I hope you, aspiring writer, have learned from my mistakes here. I hope you can avoid the pain I’ve been through while maintaining hope. Because there is always hope, and that’s why I keep writing.
In the meantime, I’ll keep sharing my scars so they can move you forward.
Because that’s the power of storytelling. So keep changing the world—one story at a time.
(BTW, I’ve decided to set a totally unrealistic goal of hitting 1,000 subscribers on YouTube by year’s end, so it would mean a ton if you took 5 seconds to click here and then click subscribe.)
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