First, I just want to say that yes, I did have to look up how to spell spaghetti. But also, my first guess was right. Take that, Grammerly.
The interesting (or should I say soul-crushing) thing about the profession of screenwriting is that you're never really "there" when you think you're there. If you, I don't know, say, sell a spec, maybe you celebrate with this mentality: "I have arrived! I have finally, at long last, reached my dream of becomming a professional screenwriter! It will be comparitively smooth sailing from here!"
Let me say from first-hand experience, this this mentality is pretty much not even a little bit true.
I sold a spec feature. I got the phone call about it in November 2020. I signed the contract for it in February 2021. The script isn't even on IMDB as "in development" yet. It hasn't been announced in the trades, and the money I'm to get when it finally goes into production (which is where the vast majority of the sale price went) seems lightyears away. Oh but wait, you say. A spec sale is huge. You should easily be able to get repped off that at least. Right? Ha ha, right.
I sound so cynical. I'm getting there. It is hard, trying to break in (understatement of the century!). I've heard it compared to making it into Major League Baseball. That comparison actually makes me feel a lot better about my slow progress. As a Catholic, I begin to feel that it might truly take a straight up act of God/miracle to get me where I want to be in the screenwriting world.
That being said, 2023 brings me to my 33rd birthday in March. My Jesus year (that's how old He was when He died, for those who don't know what the h I'm talking about here). I'm kinda hoping, and very much planning, for my Jesus year to be huge, professionally speaking.
Though I do believe it will take an act of God to make any of this work, I'm plotting out how I can do my part and follow what St. Augustine said: "Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you."
I already made a list of goals for 2023 in a Word doc which is very rough and brain-stormy, but I want to lay out here my throw-all-that-freaking-spaghetti-at-wall plans for the year in a more coherent form:
Finish a low-budget grown-up rom-com
I made a connection in 2022 with an agent who liked a spec sample of mine she read and wanted to rep a low-budget TV-type rom-com project from me. She's not repping me across the board, just this one project she thinks she can sell for me, which will be pretty low-key and not even close to WGA minimum pay, but will still be something if she can get it sold.
Right now, I'm two drafts into the script and have at least a few more weeks of work on it before I feel good enough about it to send her, but I'm starting to like where the script is going and think I could feel proud to have my name on it (hopefully!).
If I weren't so neurdivergent, maybe I'd be able to figure out how to ask this agent, "What even are we?" and figure out how to make the most of our professional relationship for my career. Unfortunately, my social anxiety and lack of ability to communicate with near-strangers makes this feel like a puzzel I can't solve. So that's fun.
But I'm still hoping this project turns into a sale and some actual money (which would be super duper great, since my little family and I are living on my husband's med school student loans!).
Find a producer for my microbudget spec
I have a script called Delivery Route that I say is The Spectacular Now meets Juno with a dash of Searching (because it takes place all on screens) that can be made so easily and cheaply. I've had realistic possibilities for it to get made three times, and all have fizzled out.
I'm hoping to take a deep dive into my past connections in the industry from school and elsewhere (unfortunately, I'm not really in touch with any of them anymore -- thanks again, neurdivergence!) and find someone who wants to make a cheap/easy/fun script.
Considering that I'm not looking to make any kind of substantial money on this thing, you'd think this would be an easy task. But of course it's not. It's beginning to feel like I can't give the thing away for free (and at this point, I'd consider it!). I wrote it to get made. In 2023, I want to find someone to make it.
Find an outlet for a novel adaptation
One of my favorite specs, The Cow Ate My Homework, I decided to adapt to a young adult novel. It's finished, and I've queried some agents, but only rejections and crickets so far. I don't want to self-publish because I have a problem falling into oblivion on the internet (trust me, I tried marketing my blogging before...), and I'd rather have a lit agent so I can get published by somewhere that can make it impressive enough to be considered legit IP.
Final goal: get that darn script made. But I surprisingly really like the novel version of the story too. If I keep getting agent rejections and crickets, I might try an online self-publishing upload site that seems to take very little effort, just throw it up there and see if anyone reads it. Because I seriously have enough of rejection from the film world. Who needs that garbage in two different mediums at once.
Maybe maybe write a Christmas script
This idea feels cringey, because I've seen so many Christmas rom-com posters that make me really not want to watch them. You know the ones I mean. And yet, a lot of producers seem to want them.
After watching a Christmas rom-com on Prime video this year that was surprisingly not terrible at all, I think I'm actually gonna write one myself. I plan to talk to this agent-connection of mine, to see if she thinks she could sell the concept I have in mind. Because money. And another credit would certainly not hurt. So this one is a maybe, even though it's very much a stepping stone to where I'd like to be longterm.
Maybe maybe maybe write a biopic
There are so darn many biopics on the Blacklist every year. It's quite possible that I shouldn't concern myself with what makes the Blacklist and instead should just keep my head down and write and keep looking for a rep.
But I am a very competitive person. Every year when the Blacklist comes out, I fight envy and self-pity because I'm nowhere near there, and it hurts.
I have a biopic concept in mind, something in my country vein that I think could make a good dramedy. Research isn't always my forte, and I'm gonna need some serious motivation to carry out it. But if nothing else keeps happening in my career, I think I might go for it and take this swing.
Attempted humility and the realistic knowledge that I am a total unknown nobody prevent me from coming out and saying it to anyone but my husband, but: I want to have a script on the Blacklist. One of the writers this year didn't have a rep, and she'd made a list of goals that included the wildly unlikely one of getting on the Blacklist this year. And she did it.
For me, this really would take at least a mini miracle because I have such trouble making and sustaining relationships in the industry. I've been trying to widen my network through screenwriting Twitter, and I don't feel like I've been succeeding at all.
Somehow, I need more people to read my work. And I can never seem to figure out the appropriate way to say, "Hey! Hi! You don't really know me that well, but do you wanna read my scripts? Do you? Do you??" (Is that how it's done??? Something like that? No? Shoot.).
So if someday I can figure out how to network like a normal person, or maybe land a rep who actually connects with my weird humor and love of rural settings, maybe I can get somewhere.
I'm not gonna hold my breath for the Blacklist this year, but God can certainly work that miracle if He wants for my Jesus year. And if not this year, I've got some realistic smaller goals to get a little momentum going and hopefully spring forward to bigger things. I'll throw all the spaghetti I can and see where the year takes me.
(Also, is it just me or does this spaghetti not look all that appetizing?? This was best speghetti pic Wix had for free.)
