I've been in a much better mood the past two weeks. Mostly because I took a "slight" step back and refocused my goals and how I plan to attack them. This actually allowed me to get quite a bit of planning of my next project and writing done the past two weeks.
I wrote first drafts on both my portions of the final three quarter of the Charlie Welles movie, "Well Beyond Reason." "The Virgin Sacrifice" and "Ashes to Ashes" are both in decent shape. Easily the best first drafts I've ever done. I really think my writing is coming along, which was the entire point of spending so much time writing this summer.
Seriously, in the past three months, I've written six comics, three and a half short screenplays, a corporate script, some novel work, and a bunch of long form blog entries, not to mention scripting and pitching a TV show (which failed). More importantly, I think they're pretty good. I think I can feel myself making significant strides in my writing.
Here's the thing with me: I'm all about out working people. It's how I succeeded at sports. I'm not that great of an athlete but I was always successful (not as successful as I'd like to have been, of course), not matter what level I was participating on. I think of my self as a winner athletically because I was always willing to do things other people weren't in order to improve.
However, when I began getting into the creative arts, I foolishly thought that talent was rewarded and because I was talented it would be different. It would only be a matter of time before I was discovered....
Yep, I'm an ass-clown.
I'm not sure if it was arrogance, ignorance or a combination of both but I didn't attack "my dream" the same way I attacked "my mission." Did you catch that? Cause I have a hunch that this is where and why a lot of people fail. It has always been "my dream" to be a filmmaker and a comic book writer. Growing up I'd spend hours day dreaming and plotting out ideas, but very little time actually writing them down. Don't get me wrong, I probably wrote more than most kids around my age, but I didn't spend nearly as much time jotting down my thoughts as I did conjuring them up. Part of that was because I have a near photographic memory, so if I commit a thought or idea to memory, it's there. I still have stories from my childhood etched into my brain. Like most kids, make believe was my escape. My shelter. It was a comfort zone.
Contrast that to my high school/college athletic experience. As I said before, I'm not a gifted, natural athlete. I didn't even start developing athletically till junior high school. Part of that might be because of the eyes, but that really doesn't factor into the equation here. As I was saying, in high school, I decided that I was going to be forever enshrined in the "legendary" Streamwood High School Athletic Hall of Fame (I put legendary in quotations because my high school was notoriously bad in sports) as a 2 sport athlete in football and wrestling.
See the difference. I decided wanted to be a filmmaker/writer, come hell or high water, I was going to be in that Hall of Fame. It wasn't a dream, it was a reality that simply hadn't come to pass yet.
So that's what I did in high school. I played sports not because I necessarily wanted to (don't get wrong I love sports and am not saying that I didn't enjoy what I did) because I HAD to. It's what drove me every day. It's how I defined myself. I don't know if anybody believed that I was going to...I don't want to say "achieve those goals" because it's a cliche and they really weren't goals, they were a future that had not yet come to pass, as I said. I didn't care if anybody believed me either, it was going to happen. And sure enough my senior year, it happened. I was an All-Conference/All Area Nose Guard, Captain and Most Valuable Lineman on the Football team and All-Conference/All-Area, Regional and State Championship Wrestler.
I did it. Sort of.
You see my wrestling State Championship wasn't the State Championship I really wanted. I won a Greco-Roman state title, not a "true" Illinois High School title. You see, I fell short of my goals. Did you catch that? "Goals." More on that later.
I was so upset and devastated about my senior wrestling season, that I decided that I would continue my path and wrestle at the division 1 level. That was always important to me, being a Division 1 athlete. D1 athletes are generally regarded as the cream of the crop in their sports and freshman year of high school, I decided that I was going to be one and NOBODY believed I could do that. You see it takes something special to be a D1 athlete. Most people think it's talent. They're kinda right in a way.
Sophomore year in high school, I was given the most backhanded compliment I ever received, "J.D. isn't very athletic but he'll out work anybody." I say backhanded because it is. There's nothing an athlete wants to hear less than you aren't very athletic and I refused to believe it until after my athletic career wrapped. Another reason I thought it was backhanded was because I naively assumed that everybody worked hard. I spent so much time focusing on my own growth that I never really noticed what my teammates were doing. I started taking notice afterwards.
When I decided on Northern Illinois University, a small D1 school with a young, up-and-coming wrestling program, a coach from Miliken University, a D3 school, actually called my dad and told him not to let me go there because I'd be "making the biggest mistake of (my) life." Some people would use that to fuel them. Not me, I was way too arrogant to care what a D3 coach thought. I was going to be a D1 starter at NIU and my goal was to be an NCAA All-American.
Take a guess what happened and what didn't?
Five rough years later, I was NIU's starter at 197 pounds and ranked 25 in the country. I was one match away from qualifying for the NCAA tournament and I failed. That failure is something that still stings me. I'll never get over it completely because it should've happened. I should've had my story-book ending. But I didn't I failed. I've thought about that a lot over the years and have replayed a thousand different scenarios in my head but I know why I failed. I never believed.
It was only after my dad, while trying to comfort me said, "you were never supposed to make it this far," that it really clicked. In my mind, making the team was just like the HOF, it was a reality that hadn't happened yet, my goal was to All-American. See, I knew I was going to make that team, even though by all accounts I shouldn't have for several reasons (not athletic enough, not big enough, not technical enough, no high school State Championship), it was going to happen, at least in my mind....
There it is, right there. People talk about believing in yourself, but believing isn't really the right term. It's accepting it. There's a big difference there. In order to believe there has to be a certain amount into the equation. But when you accept, you're faced with the truth. There's no need for doubt, because it's there, it just hasn't happened yet.
So when I got out of school, I immediately went right into writing. My first screenplay was about wrestling. My second was a horror story (that's me in a nutshell). I worked on them both in my off time for about a year a piece. In retrospect, they were both brutal. But so were my first two wrestling matches.
The first script went on the shelf for about a year and I eventually worked it till it was decent enough to be the subject of my first film, which I find brutal, but other people tell me is good (I don't believe them). My second script got a few reads but in reality wasn't good enough to be picked up by anyone.
I didn't write my next script till December of 05 and do you know what I did with that script? Nothing. Two year later, we decided to film it. That would take another year and a half to finish. A co-wrote another script in that time but the less said about that the better.
I've been beating myself up recently because I'm almost 30 and I feel that I haven't achieved my professional goals. Now, don't get me wrong, I am director, again that was a foregone conclusion in the making, but I'm nowhere near where I want...no, where I should be.
But have I done? Three scripts. 1 indie feature and 2 shorts. All that in six years. It's not that I haven't had ideas. My brain is so full of ideas that it feels like a virtual multiplex is going on in there. Why haven't I achieved the success that I feel I should have?
The answer is simple: While I still have my mind made up that I will be a success, I haven't pushed myself the way I used to. I don't force myself to sit and create with the same sense of urgency that drove me athletically. I've been waiting for someone to hand me my future because I think I'm something special (BTW you have to in order to succeed) and I've haven't done nearly enough to earn it.
The same thing with comics. In the fall of 07, I decided I wanted to get into that ballpark to, so what did I do? Did I go out and create my own stories and self-publish and kick and scratch to get my name out there? Nope, like a total tool, I wrote to Marvel, DC and Dark Horse trying to get them to look at me....
I swear to God, I can be the biggest moron ever....
Instead, I became the kind of person I used to mock: the guy who just talks about stuff. That was never me. I was a doer, but unfortunately, I let life sideline me. Be it my job, my diet, my hobbies, whatever. It all became more important to me than the actual work I needed to do to get where I need to be.
The best thing that ever came out of wrestling for me was the revelation that "hard work is a talent because most people can't do it." The wise words of John Stutzman.
This isn't a revelation that came to me today. I figured this out this past spring, that's why I've had this creative rebirth. Why in the past three months I've done more than I have in years and I still like I could be doing more.
Maybe I'm not as good a writer or director as I think I am. The actual truth hasn't really ever been a concern of mine before, shouldn't really start being one now. All that matter is the perceived truth. Your perceived truth.
Don't set goals. Don't dream. Dreams by their very definition cannot be attained. They aren't real. Whatever you want to do with your life, make a decision and accept that not as your "dream" or your "goal" but as reality. A reality that just hasn't happened yet.
I am a director. I have three films to my credit. I am a writer. I have several scripts under my belt now. My stuff will be out there for everyone to enjoy, it just hasn't happened yet...
But it will.
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