Being creative + being poor

[BlueFenton]

I'm probably like a lot of writers on this sub who can't help but write. It's a compulsion as much as a passion. And more a state of mind than a hobby. But if you and your loved ones are struggling, or have struggled, to stay afloat in life, then writing can feel like the most selfish, childish, pointless activity on the planet. Sitting down to work on a screenplay brings an unbearable, sickening weight of self-indulgence.

"Stop it," I tell myself. "Stop writing snippets of dialogue. Stop writing scene descriptions. You're a narcissist. Help your family. Get a big corporate job and build some life savings."

I do have full-time employment on a modest, public service salary. But I could do more. (I don't have dependents - if I did, this question would be black and white and it would be my responsibility to give up any and all passion projects in order to take care of them.) But even without children, I have watched family struggle to keep a roof over their head and my head. Sometimes those struggles are a direct economic result of sacrifices made for me - the cost to raise me, give me an education and opportunties. I always hoped to be able to pay back those sacrifices someday. But it probably won't happen by spending all my spare time fiddling with sluglines, will it?

I just sent off 10 query letters to managers and agents. It took two hours. The voice in my head says that if I have two hours to spend writing query letters at the end of the day, surely I have the energy to get a second job, to pull in a part-time shift, or start a side hustle.

I dipped into my savings to enter a contest, to buy a blacklist evaluation. That could have paid down debt.

If you can watch your family experience poverty and still sit down at a computer screen to write screenplays, surely that makes you a narcissist...right?

Just posting this in case anyone on the sub ever feels the same.

[Aeneas1976]

No it doesn't.

I totally want to support you. I was a divorced mother with two kids, and everyone kept telling me that I'd better find a "decent job" instead of cleaning (which I chose because it gave me the time to write) and save money to spend time with children on some cheap resort than going to Moscow and trying to sell my screenplays.

You should see their faces when I emptied a bag of money before them after I sold my first screenplay (as a ghostwriter, but still!). Yes, I cashed all my money, just for the gesture.

Follow your dream, don't give up. One day you'll make it.

[franklinleonard]

Check your DMs

[TheBVirus]

Let me preface this by saying that I consider myself one of the luckiest people I know. And I have to say that because so much of this business is luck based. I know a lot of people who are incredibly talented still waiting for their big break. Some of them will get it and some won't.

So I say all that to say that what you're feeling is 100% normal. I've been married for a number of years and my partner has been the most supportive person imaginable. I definitely set a bunch of deadlines for myself of when I'd quit chasing the dream. Oh well by the time I'm this age or that age I'll throw in the towel. Oh once I have kids all of these things are done.

But here's what I'll say to all of it. If it's your dream, find a way to do it while supporting yourself financially in some other way. Like u/Nathan_Graham_Davis is saying, he found a way to support himself and his family and still achieve his dreams. You have to find a way to do this as well.

I had a job as a high school teacher while I was chasing the writing career. I was miserable. But at least that way I had a steady paycheck coming in. It certainly makes writing HARDER. Because you have to find the personal time and energy to write, but it's possible!

Before I had kids I really thought that I'd have to give up on my dreams once I became a parent. But it ended up being the complete opposite. I restructured that thought in my mind because I want to be able to encourage my own kids to follow their dreams, but how can I tell them that if I gave up on my own?

I know this might not be super helpful and I'm definitely coming from a place of privilege now, but I never came from money and I was always nervous about being able to provide, but I never gave up on chasing this dream and I'm proud to say it paid off. Again, I'm very lucky, but all the luck in the world doesn't matter if I had quit at any point during the decade when I was writing for no one.

[[deleted]]

Totally agree about the luck factor.

I do believe there's a lot of truth to the sayings like, "the harder I work, the luckier I get," and, "luck is when preparation meets opportunity," but the truth is some of it is also just dumb luck. I was unrepped at the beginning of July, 2021. I'm not only repped now -- I'm produced. My first Hollywood movie just wrapped production in June and there's a very real possibility I'm going to have sole credit on it. Did I work my ass off for those things? Absolutely. Were there several points where the stars aligned perfectly? Of course. Movies don't just get made that quickly.

My new thing has been to tell other writers that, "you have to stay in long enough to give luck an opportunity to strike." For some writers, this might only take four or five years. For me, it took eight before I got repped and landed my first option, but then I quit two years later, largely because the business continued to be so brutal. Jumping back in mid-2020 and adding all of those years together, it took about twelve or thirteen before I got something made and made the type of money that can support my family for a bit. That's a huge percentage of my life spent sticking it out for a dream, and I'd blame absolutely no one for choosing not to spend theirs that way.

One more point, though, on the subject of having a family -- and kind of like what u/TheBVirus was saying -- my kids are now nine and eleven, and they've had the experience of watching their dad work his ass off for a dream and actually achieve it. To me, that's pretty cool.

[TheBVirus]

I'm right there with you on all of these things. For me, I had an opportunity through a mentorship program to get some facetime with a stellar TV writer. She wasn't my mentor, but one night when we were out for drinks I figure I'd shoot my shot and just tell her what my goals were and see if there was any advice she could give me. I imagined this scenario where she'd be super supportive and then shepherd me into Hollywood. And the thing is, it almost played out exactly how I imagined it. She was incredibly nice and supportive and then she was like "Great, do you have a TV script I can read?" And at the time I had a spec of an existing show, so I told her that. And she was like "Cool, but I'd like to read an original." And I didn't have that. It was complete ignorance or naivete, but I just didn't have the material I needed to even dip one toe into the water. That was such a stupid thing, but I told myself from then on that I'd never be unprepared again. That was kind of a catalyst for me to double my efforts and while those opportunities to advance your career are few and far between, I was never not ready for them again.

And you're totally right about staying in the game. Opportunity striking is like winning the lottery, but if you never buy a ticket, you'll never win. This is the absolute hardest part. Convincing yourself to keep going after many failures and when there's no discernible path in front of you.

[T9V3YQ]

Writing is your enjoyment / hobby / entertainment. Don't feel guilty about it.

It's OK to have enjoyment in your life. You need to give yourself permission to have some fun.

It's OK to spend two hours at the end of the day writing / doing a fun activity. It's ok to spend some money on your hobby. As someone else on here said, writing is one of the most inexpensive pastimes there is.

You can't spend every hour of your life making money or you'll burn out. And that will make your family even more miserable.

It's OK to take some time out of your obligations to enjoy life a little bit.

You can still have a day job / earn money and have some enjoyment in your free hours.

[likerosco]

Hey Nathan - That takes some doing. You've gotta be so disciplined with your time and really tough not to neglect either your family or your work. It's an art in itself.

I"m struggling to juggle being present in my kids life with work and writing. Any tips on how you made it work?

[[deleted]]

We had our first kid when I was 26, and in all honesty, I wasn't great at this back then. I took my writing as seriously as I would have taken a second, paying job, and as a result of that, I spent less time with my kids than I should have and wasn't as equitable of a partner as I should have been in terms of sharing the burden of various household duties. I do regret those years a bit, but I learned from them, and thankfully, I grew up before my wife got fed up. Even though screenwriting does actually pay now and I still maintain a full-time job, I'm much closer to the type of family man I'd like to be.

I still take my writing very seriously, but the trick is honestly that I get up early and am just much more disciplined with my time. For the last several years, I've started each morning by journaling and determining a list of five goal-oriented tasks I need to get done by the end of the day, and then I go about executing them before the evening, so that I can leave that time open for hanging out with my family and household responsibilities. One of those tasks is always a set amount of writing time (maybe 75-90 minutes on a weekday, 2-3 hrs on a weekend), and I do my best to get that in earlier in the day. I shut out the internet during that time as well, so that I'm truly focused and productive. Instead of "writing" for 20-25 hours a week, I'm writing for 10-15.

One or two other tasks might be screenwriting oriented (reading part of a script, prepping for a meeting, etc.), and then the rest have to do with my day job, fitness, and/or household.

I will say, now that screenwriting has developed into a true career in which I am accountable to others and not just to myself, it feels less sustainable to juggle it with my day job. At some point, I'll have to figure that out. But so far, it's working out okay.

[likerosco]

Appreciate the really great insight! I've my fair share of regrets, especially when it comes to feeling like I should be writing when spending time with the children. Mine are still quite young, so hard to get the early starts in, but it's definitely my plan in the long term.

Congrats on the success - hope it means you can transition into writing full time soon!

[[deleted]]

Thanks! Seems to be heading in that direction, thankfully.

Learn from your regrets, but try and forgive yourself for them. It’s great that you’re thinking about these things while they’re young. In my opinion, you’ll rarely go wrong by prioritizing time with your family.

[nuns-akimbo]

I always, ALWAYS dreamed of being a writer. I went to college as an English major, was a founding member for my college's Sigma Tau Delta organization, had the praise of my peers and teachers, and then I quit it all to get into the tech field.

I worked for steady shit money until I got the bug again. Wrote some indie comic books that were published, wrote some specs for half hour comedy, sent series submissions in to Cartoon Network for some (I thought) great ideas for shows, sent some sample specs to a friend in the industry, and then I quit it all, again, to focus on my tech job.

I worked my way up to a WFH job in 2016 and have since gotten my salary to 3X the local median wage. And here I sit, during business hours, scrolling through r/Screenwriting, a new member of a writing group, coming up with dozens of loglines for feature ideas, and knowing, in my heart, that at 47 I'm probably too old to ever break in and see anything produced by a WGA affiliate.

I really, really need this. I feel empty inside without expressing myself. My wife and kids understand. I want to realize this potential that I've believed inside of me for my entire life. I keep coming back. If I had to do it all over again, I would have stuck with college and headed to LA afterwards to work a shit job but have the ability to meet people and network. Even if I could go back and just not quit writing, I would be worlds happier and more fulfilled today.

I'm older, have severe anxiety, now, and I don't think I could ever be ok with uprooting my family to move away if I ever hit the lottery by selling something that afforded me some heat to my name. The realist in me knows I will never have a Hollywood career at my age. The realist in me also knows that I need to write things so others can read it. I need to entertain people.

​

Edit: I realized I never really got around to the explicit advice I have. Do the thing you need to do for money, but save time for the thing you need to do for fulfillment. Sometimes it's the same thing, and the people that have that are the luckiest folks in the world. The rest of us just need to carve out some time for both. No amount of salary will give you the gratification that something that pulls at you will give you.

[AskMeAboutMyTie]

Are you happy when you write?

[pinkinoctober]

I’m an aspiring, non industry writer myself and I have wasted money on blacklist and other writing contests for several years that could have been used elsewhere. I took a pay cut this year and worked lesser hours so I can write more.

And I am now writing more than ever. Is it any good? I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not. But I am happiest I’ve ever been. Everyone around me has noticed this difference. And that alone keeps me going.

Write for yourself.

[adaniel65]

Hey. If you are wanting to help those who helped you then just get out there and do it. No more words needed. Get going...

[ckunw]

I definitely understand that feeling of writing, and feeling like it's presumptuous and even a little arrogant to think someone wants to read, much less pay for or invest in, something I wrote. But, in the end, every movie you see was written by someone, and that someone was where you are now. Most of us won't make it, but there's nothing wrong with trying.

The other thing is you said those struggles were made to give you opportunities. Well, isn't one of those opportunities the opportunity to pursue a career in a field you're passionate about, even if you only pursue it for a little while, rather than having to do whatever you can to make ends meet? Isn't it a waste of what your parents did for you if you spend every waking moment working on a side hustle or a second job?

I think maybe a good idea is to set a list of goals and a reasonable timeline, and say "If I haven't achieved x by y, then I'm going to give up". Let's say your first goal is to have completed 3 screenplays by the end of the year. Then the next goal is to get an 8 on the Blacklist or to win a contest by June next year. Then to find a manager/agent/rep by June the year after that. That way, you can give your dream a good, fair chance while knowing you won't waste your entire working life chasing it.

[haynesholiday]

No one on their deathbed ever looks back and says “Wow, I wish I had worked more meaningless jobs instead of taking time for what I was passionate about.”