Totally being unoriginal here, as that's the title of an obscure Granger Smith song that I discovered through Spotify one day a couple years ago. I loved it the second I heard it. It's about people who are just genuinely good getting ahead in life and finding fulfillment.
Whenever I heard it (which was often, because I added it to my favorite playlist), I usually thought of a certain couple I'm friends with who are very good people but have struggled A LOT in their life together. They married young, began having kids young, and were very poor for the first few years of their marriage.
But by the time this song entered my life, this particular couple was doing quite well for themselves. They'd had even more kids, both the guy and girl had super well-paying jobs they loved, and were still genuinely good people.
Yes, Granger Smith, I do love it when the good guys win.
And yet, I would also be hit with a big old wave of, "Where's mine?" every time I heard the song (okay, and lots of other times too). I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a perfect person by any stretch of the imagination. But I do care deeply about striving to be good and virtuous, and when I fail I do my best to begin again.
Despite any of my efforts to be a "good guy" so to speak, here was I floundering around with virtually no career advancement in sight, no hope of personal fulfilment as a screenwriter coming around the bend for me (see my last post for more squalid details about my rejection-filled life), and some fairly bleak financial circumstances of my own thanks to some serious under-employment for both my husband and me throughout the first six years of our marriage.
As probably many screenwriters have had to, I definitely did begin to grow to acceptance that there would always be more rejection, more waiting, more suffering, and probably even more financial insecurity on the path to an actual career writing stories for the screen.
But, as irony and Divine Providence would have it, mere days after I wrote that last post bemoaning my many rejections, I actually gained a real, legitimate screenwriting success.
I'll go ahead and tell the whole detailed story here, because why the hell not?
I make a daily habit of checking several websites that sometimes have legitmate screenwriting leads posted on them -- people looking for scripts or to hire screenwriters, mostly for little or no money but with some occasional legit opprotunities.
Back in April, I found one looking for romance scripts. I recognized the producers as people who'd done some Christians films, so I sent them the most Christian-like of my romance scripts, the adaptation of my novel Sydney and Calvin Have a Baby.
I thought it a long-shot that they'd be at all interested. I didn't think the story jived with the type of thing the seemed to be making. Some weeks went by with no response, and I followed up. They replied that they'd read it but wanted to read it again. More weeks went by. I followed up again. No response.
Then one day, my husband, kids and I were visiting my parents a few cities away for the day. I was helping my toddler pee in the big girl potty when my phone rang. I saw it was a Los Angeles number, but I tempered my hopes and told myself it was probably one of those recorded calls about how I won a cruise getaway. I let it go to voicemail.
After my toddler and I finished things up in the bathroom, I saw I had a voicemail. Not expecting much, I listened. It was those dudes I'd sent the Sydney and Calvin script to. They said they wanted to make it. Not just that they were interested. Not even that they wanted to option it. They wanted to make it.
Now I have a, hmm, shall we say unsual, relationship with my parents. I'm the weird one in the family for being a writer instead of a dairy farmer or bull semen salesman. Most of my family members do try to "get it" when it comes to my screenwriting, but well. You know.
So, I listened to that voicemail, and I calmly brought my phone over to my husband to play it in his ear with basically no explanation. I made a sedate annoucement about my voicemail to the curious extended family members and excused myself to go call the producers back.
And it was legit, just like their voicemail had said. They are hoping to film next year. They were even impressed enough with my writing that they told me to send them some of my other specs for them to read.
After that, things moved pretty slowly with them, as I waited for a deal memo and contract. So I admit that I kept waiting for it all to go up in smoke somehow and not really happen. But it's going to be an outright purchase, and it's decent money (a vague term, I know; let's just say that some people would think it very little money, but to my husband and me it seems like a fortune).
So now finally, at long last, I am starting to feel like I'm winning.
