Initially, when you start writing, or at least when I started writing, you think the reward is, wow! It�??ll be so great to see my words on screen, to see my name on screen…

I think what happens over time when, because you�??re a writer �?? especially once I became a screenwriter �?? you�??re very powerless as a screenwriter.

And what happens �?? and it�??s a subtle change, but I think it�??s the one that most mature writers go through �?? is the gratification becomes personal… the process of writing becomes its own reward… you tell the story the way you want to tell the story, and then hope for the best…

The frustration, I think, boils down to the fact that I believe screenwriters are the most crucial aspect of a movie, and they�??re the ones with the least power and the least control.

Continued in article Therapist to the Hollywood Stars.

Eric Maisel - Author, Creativity Coach and Co-Founder of TeleSummits.com
John Dillon & Vivian Nesbitt - hosts and moderators

September 4th through September 7th, 2008. 24 great sessions. 6 one-hour sessions over four days, conveniently scheduled to suit your needs whether you live on the East Coast, the West Coast, or anywhere in between. (And if you live elsewhere in the world: all sessions are recorded!)

Presentations:

* The Odyssey of the First Novel
* The Odyssey of the Memoir
* Writing and Selling the Romance Novel
* Writing and Selling the Contemporary Novel
* Writing and Selling the Mystery Series
* Writing and Selling the Children�??s Book
* Writing and Selling the Nonfiction Book
* Writing and Selling the Interview Book
* Writing and Selling the Self-Help Book
* Writing and Selling the Illustrated Book
* Writing and Selling the Travel Memoir
* Writing and Selling the Nature Book
* Writing for the Niche Market
* How to Turn Your Expertise into a Bestselling Book
* The Fundamentals of Screenwriting
* The Art of the Spiritual Book
* The Nonfiction Collaboration
* Literary Agent Basics
* Finding the Right Literary Agent
* What Editors Want
* How to Handle Rejection
* Book Publicity Basics
* Branding, Positioning, and Self-Promoting
* Internet Strategies for Writers

Entertainment has come to mean junk. But its definition also should include everything pleasurable that arises from an encounter with literature.

Entertainment has a bad name. Serious people learn to mistrust and even to revile it. The word wears spandex, pasties, a leisure suit studded with blinking lights.

It gives off a whiff of Coppertone and dripping Creamsicle, the fake-butter miasma of a movie-house lobby, of karaoke and Jägermeister, Jerry Bruckheimer movies, a “Street Fighter” machine grunting solipsistically in a corner of an ice-rink arcade.

Entertainment trades in cliché and product placement. It engages regions of the brain far from the centers of discernment, critical thinking, ontological speculation.

It skirts the black heart of life and drowns life’s lambency in a halogen glare. Intelligent people must keep a certain distance from its productions. They must handle the things that entertain them with gloves of irony and postmodern tongs.

Entertainment, in short, means junk, and too much junk is bad for you — bad for your heart, your arteries, your mind, your soul.

But maybe these intelligent and serious people, my faithful straw men, are wrong. Maybe the reason for the junkiness of so much of what pretends to entertain us is that we have accepted — indeed, we have helped to articulate — such a narrow, debased concept of entertainment.

The brain is an organ of entertainment, sensitive at any depth and over a wide spectrum. But we have learned to mistrust and despise our human aptitude for being entertained, and in that sense we get the entertainment we deserve.

From longer essay: Let me entertain you, By Michael Chabon, LA Times

Excerpted from his book Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands [image].

From Diablo Cody’s Tips for Blogging Your Way to Hollywood Success, By John Scott Lewinski, Wired magazine site:

“One of my teachers told me that I was lazy,” Cody explained. “He said, ‘I think you’re the best writer I’ve ever taught. But I’ll never hear from you again because you have no ambition.’

“I never intended to get my writing out there. I always thought of published writers as honor roll students — the real overachiever types. I never intended my work as a springboard to anything else. I write because I’m addicted to it. It’s my confessional.”

“There are so many talented people that exist in the marketplace,” Cody said. “So, don’t look for a plan. Put your blog out into the world and hope that your talent will speak for itself.”

~ ~ ~

From The Oprah Winfrey Show:

Diablo says Juno is based somewhat on herself, like the hamburger phone in Juno’s room. When [her mother] Pam first saw the phone, she says it made her cry. “[Diablo] had a hamburger phone at home, and I used to see her on it all the time, and she used to shake it because it wouldn’t work properly,” Pam says.

Oprah says she thinks Juno is the movie to see this year. “How did you get it to be so fresh?” she asks. “I don’t know,” Diablo says. “I guess, you know, when you’re coming from the middle of the country and you’re not part of the industry and you’re just telling your own story, I think it’s easy to be more original.”

~ ~ ~

From Diablo Cody’s MySpace blog, January 31, 2008

I get asked a lot why I’ve chosen to be so confessional as a writer. I’ve publicly documented aspects of my life that most people wouldn’t reveal to their shrink, spouse, girlfriend, or partially deaf Dachshund.

The stuff that polite folks confine to the pages of padlocked journals, I’ve treated as a matter of open discussion. … When you possess the courage — or blunt, gourd-smacking stupidity — to be totally candid, you silently amass thousands of allies.

It’s the “me too” effect. As Steven Morrissey (Esq., Demigod) says, there is no such thing in life as normal. And if you walk around pretending to be normal, hiding your scars and incisions and putrescing wounds, you only further the Conspiracy of Normal, which exists to make us all feel like shit.

I ain’t having that. I refuse to act like I have it together, because I don’t.

~~~~~

Also, see short video of conversation between Cody and ‘Juno’ star on The Inner Actor site: Ellen Page: I�??d rather be shot in the foot.

“The business of show business will once again run full steam ahead! The spec script market is anticipating another mid 90’s-style boom, as agents and producers gear up to start taking meetings and television shows scurry to re-staff.

“So what can all this mean for you? Whether you’re a guild member or you’re just starting out as a writer, this is a sizzling new era to take control of your career, and capitalize on the renewed creative energy coursing through Hollywood.”

Continued in article Ways to Get Back on Track Post-Strike.

[Image from The Writer's Mind CD]

She had moved to Portugal to teach English and gave birth to her first daughter Jessica.

She said: �??I�??d had a short and quite catastrophic marriage. I had to get my baby back to Britain and re-build us a life and adrenaline kept me going.

�??It was only when I came to rest it hit me what a complete mess I had made of my life. That hit me quite hard. We were as skint as you can be without being homeless and at that point I was definitely clinically depressed.

“That was characterized by a numbness, a coldness and an inability to believe you will feel happy again. All the color drained out of life.�??

Rowling hit an all-time low when she convinced herself something awful was destined to happen to her two-year-old daughter. She said: �??I loved Jessica very very much and was terrified something was going to happen to her.

�??I�??d gone into that very depressive mind set where everything has gone wrong so this one good thing in my life will now go wrong as well.

�??It was almost a surprise to me every morning that she was still alive. I kept expecting her to die. It was a bad bad time.�??

Film crews took Rowling back to the flat a few miles from Edinburgh where she overcame depression by writing first novel Harry Potter and the Philosopher�??s Stone.

Tears began to flow as she walked into the small lounge room where she first put pen to paper.

She said: �??This is really where I turned my life around completely. My life changed so much in this flat. I feel I really became myself here. Everything was stripped away. I�??d made such a mess of things.

“I just thought I want to write so I wrote the book. What was the worst that could happen? It could get turned down by every publisher in Britain. Big deal.�??

From article: J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and Depression.

Related Talent Development Resources pages:
Depression and Creativity
Depression articles……..
Depression relief products / programs……
Depression books
Depression bookmarks
Nurturing mental health : writing

Director, Producer, Writer Eva Saks [evasaksmovies.com] notes in this clip, “You want to be acknowledged, you want to participate in the reward. It’s kind of unprecedented to even question whether a writer should have the right to participate.”

This video in support of the WGA strike is from a new series hosted on aworkingwriter.com, and on United Hollywood.

Also see related site SpeechlessWithoutWriters.com

When Alan Ball offered you a staff writing job on HBO’s “Six Feet Under,” you were literally getting ready to leave town and give up on your writing career. Why is that?

When I moved out here I decided that I would give it five years because I’m not a kid anymore. When Alan called, I was moving because my five years were up. It was very difficult because I was doing it at a later time in life than most people.

I didn’t have the years to screw around. I was going to go back to Florida, find a place on the beach and figure out another way to make a living… But after the first day [of thinking about it], I was like, “What? Are you crazy? Yeah, I’ll do this!” Then I was clearly onboard.

How do you battle writer’s block, if you get it?

There’s plenty of struggle, no question about that. I had had a block . . . for five years and I wasn’t sure that I would ever be able to write a big piece again. I’ve been working since I was 21, trying to put it all together, and hit just one dead end after the next. You question sometimes, “Is this what I’m supposed to be doing? I’m following my dream and it’s leading me into the gutter!”

How did your writing habits change as you went from writing by yourself to being part of a writing team?

“Six Feet Under” changed me a great deal, and it was a wonderful training ground that really toughened me up. I’d been sensitive for quite some time and when you have to put your stuff on the table and let everybody go at it, it either makes you stronger or kills you. I really enjoyed it because I got so much out of getting other people’s opinions. I think I’m a braver writer now. Less wimpy.

[From The real woman behind 'Lars', by Jeff Goldsmith, Los Angeles Times, Dec 12, 2007; photo by Robert Durell.]

In another interview, Oliver explained part of her inspiration for the story: “It was a �??what if?�?? thing. Like, �??What if we didn�??t treat our mentally ill people like animals? What if we brought kindness and compassion to the table?�??�?? [From Guy and Doll, and the Woman Behind Them, by Margy Rochlin, The New York Times, October 7, 2007.]

The photo (by George Kraychyk, NYTimes) shows Ryan Gosling as Lars, far right, cutting food for his doll companion Bianca, at a meal with Paul Schneider and Emily Mortimer.
~ ~ ~

Sensitivity and identity questions are relevant for many writers and other artists, and a number of mental health issues addressed on the site may be of interest in terms of self-exploration, and story material.

Here are some related Talent Development Resources pages:
Mental health
Intensity / sensitivity
Highly Sensitive
Being Creative and Self-critical
Identity

On his site, Philip Pullman addresses a number of questions about his life and work as a writer:

Were you encouraged to be creative?

No, I was ignored. When anyone took any notice it was to point out what a twit I was, and laugh at me.

This was the best possible preparation for the life of a novelist. If you have grown-ups fussing over you and encouraging you and taking an interest, you begin to think you’re important, and furthermore that you need and deserve their attention.

After a while you become incapable of working without someone else motivating you. You’re much better off supplying your own energy, and writing in spite of the fact that no-one’s interested, and even learning to put up with other people’s contempt and ridicule. What do they know, anyway?

What inspires you?

Three things. (1) Money. I do this for a living. If I don’t write well, I won’t earn enough money to pay the bills. (2) The desire to make some sort of mark on the world - to make my name known. To leave something behind that will last a little longer than I do.

(3) The sheer pleasure of craftsmanship: the endlessly absorbing delight of making things - in my case, stories - and of gradually learning more about how they work, and how to make them better.

Who do you write for - children or adults?

Myself. No-one else. If the story I write turns out to be the sort of thing that children enjoy reading, then well and good. But I don’t write for children: I write books that children read. Some clever adults read them too.

How long does it take me to write a book?

It depends on how long the book is. THE FIREWORK-MAKER’S DAUGHTER took me six weeks, THE AMBER SPYGLASS three years.

What advice would I give to anyone who wants to write?

Don’t listen to any advice, that’s what I’d say. Write only what you want to write. Please yourself. YOU are the genius, they’re not. Especially don’t listen to people (such as publishers) who think that you need to write what readers say they want.

Readers don’t always know what they want. I don’t know what I want to read until I go into a bookshop and look around at the books other people have written, and the books I enjoy reading most are books I would never in a million years have thought of myself.

So the only thing you need to do is forget about pleasing other people, and aim to please yourself alone. That way, you’ll have a chance of writing something that other people WILL want to read, because it’ll take them by surprise.

It’s also much more fun writing to please yourself.

Quotes from philip-pullman.com

Book cover image: The Golden Compass

“The people who love their craft and see themselves as artists, and carry that identity through and study each day… are the people who thrive. … Successful people are able to sustain their identity as separate from their profession and what’s happening to them. That’s particularly important in the arts, where what happens to you bears only faint correlation to your talent.” Robert Maurer, PhD [From one of the pages on identity.]

That perspective seems appropriate at any time, but perhaps especially with a Writers Guild strike on, and writers suffering a lack of respect for their talents.

In his recent LA Times The Big Picture column Come on, writers, script your futures, Patrick Goldstein writes, “As the writers strike enters its third week, I think the future belongs to a tantalizing new hyphenate: the writer-entrepreneur.”

He notes that Tony Gilroy, the writer-director of “Michael Clayton,” had a script “that was dead in the water until a total outsider.. said if Gilroy could get a star and stick to a budget, he’d bankroll the film.

Gilroy didn’t see himself as an entrepreneur. He just had a script that was burning a hole in his pocket. ‘I’d say the experience was more about my wising up than becoming a visionary,’ he explained the other day. ‘But the moment I started chasing private-equity money, it didn’t take me long before I’d realized that I’d short-circuited the formula for getting a greenlight. I didn’t need studio approval. All I needed was one guy who believed in the movie.’”

[Photo: Tony Gilroy (left) with George Clooney]

Also see the site The Inner Entrepreneur.