I Wear My Heart On My Sleeve
And for the first time in my life, I’m not ashamed to admit it. I feel things really strongly and, sometimes, I get scared to express that in my writing. Is it too much? Am I going to be judged for my emotions splattered out all over my script pages? Will I ever be good enough?
And maybe, as a result of all of this self jibber jabber, I never gave my scripts everything that they deserved. Which is, of course, the truest expression of my hopes and dreams. Or maybe they lacked the one thing that all works of art need to be considered important. Maybe I didn’t give my full heart to my work. I wish I was pulling pathos from my soul without any judgment of how it would be received when I started my writing career. But, hey, it’s never too late. What’s that idiom again? It ain’t over until the fat lady sings? And I’m currently down seven pounds, so…
I’m not sure I ever really believed in my talent. This was definitely true in my 20s when I felt like I was pandering to all entities Hollywood because I wanted to justify my decision to go to film school instead of the safer route as in becoming a lawyer. I needed to work to survive the self doubt and the phone and gas bills, so I was willing to write anything that would make that possible. My feelings didn’t seem significant enough when I was attempting to monetize my talent in the early days, so I didn’t write the personal stories I was encouraged to pen when I was at UCLA Film. I didn’t think anybody would care. Write something commercial, I whispered to myself. Just keep your head down and come up with something a studio or producer are going to go nuts for and you too can be up to your eyeballs in the debt of the California dream with a massive mortgage and ego to boot. And that happened for me. A little bit. A couple of times. But, it wasn’t sustainable because just as I didn’t know how to commit to the personal story, I didn’t know how to defend and shepherd the projects that I wrote to see them through to production. I would minimize my career by wondering how anybody could pay up to six figures for 100 sheets of three hole punched paper that reflected some of my musings.
In my late 20s, I got a job working for the most successful screenwriter in the history of the craft (per script sales) as part of his team. I breathed a collective sigh of relief that I was going to be gainfully employed with an amazing dental plan by making contributions to scripts he was writing. I was a little unnerved that his quote at the beginning of my employment was 2 million dollars per script and he was averaging 6 to 7 a year. What could I possibly bring to the table when this guy already had an Oscar and could even count cards the way Dustin Hoffman could in Rain Man, which incidentally, both my boss and Hoffman were awarded the coveted golden statuettes for that movie. My boss was seasoned, a genius, and, for most of the first year of my employment, I sat in stone and bewildered silence that he even cared enough about my opinion to compensate me for it. He was also supportive, letting me leave work meetings for pitch meetings my agent and manager set up. Most of those meetings were successful in the sense that I got many, many invitations to dinners and birthday parties. A creative executive at Warner Brothers (who coincidentally worked for Baltimore Spring Creek, Barry Levinson’s company, he of Rain Man fame, thought he wanted to marry me for a minute and used developing my script as an opportunity for us to get closer. But, I wasn’t closing too many deals meaning the endless pitch meetings couldn’t really be perceived as successful. And I was self protective of my insecure heart and my feelings, thereby blocking my ability to write from either of them.
My 30s were tumultuous as I dropped out of the business mid decade because I couldn’t concentrate on making things up when my reality was agonizing. My beloved mother slash momager died a quick and excruciating cancer death, taking away my optimism and my belief in a happily ever after ending. I couldn’t find my creativity or my sanity, for years so I stopped writing. Until I had to again when my savings started to dwindle and I realized how expensive it was to both maintain a mortgage and pay a heating bill when blessed with high ceilings. I sold a pitch, a script, and a television pilot to round out that decade.
The last ten years, my writing has been sporadic and some of it mildly inspired. And I feel like I have been unfair to both myself and my craft, because I never really believed in myself. And as I sit here today, I wonder what’s the point of having a heart that both beats and feels if you can’t share and identify emotions through words? Even if other people don’t like it, it doesn’t matter. I have to respect every word I feel, type, say, agonize over, or regret. And, so I recommit, in this moment, to my writing as the instrument for which I express what’s in my heart. Without fear or judgment. There’s enough judgment on NextDoor and Instagram.
Truth be told, I wear my heart on my sleeve. Anybody who is looking closely enough can see that. What’s the harm in backing it up with words that might resonate not only with an audience, but for me as well…Fade in…
In the words of great thinkers, poets, and Selena Gomez, the heart wants what it wants and mine wants to make a movie that’s both real and reel…I gotta trust my heart completely if I’m ever going to do that…