Welcome to part five of our five-part series on upgrading your screenwriting game! We’ve been exploring five main pillars of a screenwriter’s life and how taking an assessment of each pillar can help you break through any blocks or plateaus you may be experiencing.
You can check out these links to learn how to level up your writing community, technique, creativity, and productivity. But today we’re covering perhaps the most important thing a writer can level up to reach their goals: their MINDSET.
We all know a screenwriter’s career is more of a marathon than a sprint, but as writers' rooms get smaller, episode orders get shorter, and series pickups have slowed, the marathon has become an ultra-marathon and at times can feel like there’s no finish line at all.
In many areas of life, if you “do all the right things” you’re bound to see momentum and growth. But as the internet has made it easier than ever for creatives to learn about screenwriting from the best of the best, the talent pool of amazing writers is growing faster than opportunities.
Now I find many writers I work with are producing writing samples that are beyond strong enough to get them into a room. But since they haven’t broken in or found representation yet, it’s easy for them to feel like they must be doing something wrong when they really aren’t.
So what is a writer to do? Level up your mindset.
Let’s take a look at a few ways we can do this:
The first way to level up your mindset is to acknowledge that luck is involved. The paradox of luck and skill states that “the more skilled the competitors are, the more the outcome is determined by luck.”
If you have the two best tennis players, football teams, or poker players go head-to-head in competition, their skill levels are so comparable that it’s impossible to remove luck as an influencing factor. With a “great script” being so subjective, luck comes into play even more.
If it’s understood that staff writers are in the room to learn and grow, and their skill level doesn’t need to be above, say, a seven out of 10 in order to really contribute quality work for that level, but all of the writers interviewing for the position are producing work at an eight or nine out of 10 because they’ve had nothing but time to learn and access to online courses taught by showrunners and gurus, then deciding which overqualified writer gets picked for a room can come down to a number of miscellaneous and random factors.
But wherever the luck comes into play, accepting it as part of your screenwriting journey can save you a great deal of stress and existential questions. It can also help you better appreciate those who move forward when it’s not your time yet.
While you’re learning to be zen with the luck of it all, another mindset shift you can try is to —
Kim Liao is known for trying to get 100 rejections in a year. By setting this as a goal she guaranteed that she would apply to more opportunities. It also guaranteed a positive mindset, because instead of counting her successes, this exercise redefines success by measuring it in relation to your attempts rather than your wins. Whether or not your attempts lead to paid work or awards, this mindset keeps your perspective on your effort and celebrates the fact that you’re putting in the work.
The bonus here is that by putting in the work, you will inevitably grow as a writer. Again, whether or not that leads to paychecks and prizes is less important than the fact that by putting the time in, you are improving your craft.
So until the wins come in, celebrate your attempts! And while you’re at it…
As your screenwriting career advances, you will likely find yourself growing from quarterfinalist placements to finalist placements. You’ll start getting positive feedback from writers you admire. You’ll get meetings with reps and execs. The first time each of these things occurs, they’re easy to celebrate. But promise yourself that you won’t get used to them.
It’s far too easy to become numb to victories that a year or two ago would have felt like a dream come true. Remember that every piece of good news is worth celebrating, just as is every attempt, and even every rejection, because you’re pursuing something you love to do, and just showing up every day to put in the work is worth acknowledgment.
If you’re still feeling stuck or like your writing has plateaued, one of the best mindset shifts and reminders on why to keep going comes from Ira Glass. No one says this better than him, so I’m sharing the quote in its entirety here:
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years, you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take a while. It’s normal to take a while. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
While you process the uncontrollable influence of luck, set rejection goals, continue to celebrate the small stuff, and mind the gap, there’s one more mindset shift to consider in order to level up your experience as a writer: celebrating the wins of others.
I don’t mean tell them congrats or send them flowers, although, yes, go ahead and do both if you can. But what I truly mean here is to take a minute on your own to celebrate those who are succeeding around you. They don’t even have to know you’re doing it. But this will change you. And the more you practice this on your own, the more you will see an even deeper joy come to life when you see those around you succeed.
Not everyone has trouble with this one, but given the competitive nature of the industry, even if you struggle with this a tiny bit, it’s worth addressing. After all, someday it will be your turn too, and it will be nice to know you learned how to cheer on those around you when it comes time for others to do the same for you so you can appreciate every single second.