The thrilling, challenging and terrifying thing about the arts is that there is no guarantee that you’ll have a career with actual income.  We continue blindly down this long and winding road toward uncertainty, hoping to reach our destination, never knowing how far we have to travel.

Everyone says, “You’ll get there if you stay on the road long enough”, but just where exactly is ‘there’? 

‘There’ could be a script doctor, a story consultant, a documentary or reality TV writer, or it could be a professional hobbyist.  Sadly, just like the cliched forty year-old rock star who continues to play gigs at his local bar on weekends, you could end up writing Indie films for unknown producers and never make any money.  It’s a strange business.  No wonder our parents tell us to get a ‘real job’.

Last night, I met an aspiring pro, Kyle, who had just started to learn screenwriting.  Thinking he had found his calling, he quit his job and moved to Toronto to focus on writing.  Great!  It’s hard enough to know what you love to do and going after it takes guts. 

The only problem with Kyle was that he had yet to complete his first script. Yet Kyle was reluctant to take a full-time job thinking that he would miraculously get hired on as a writer somewhere.  It’s important to stay positive, but it’s more important to be realistic.  If you’re just starting to learn the craft, chances are you’ve got a few years to go before you master it.

I know professional television writers who are taking production jobs right now because they can’t get writing work.  I don’t know what Kyle’s writing is like; he might be brilliant, but it seems highly unlikely that someone who has yet to finish a script is going to get hired over someone whose already written for TV.  But that’s the funny thing about this business, you could be a nobody today and have a deal tomorrow.  Or at least it seems that way.

Most stories of new hot writers, actors, directors and such are made to look like overnight success stories.  Why?  Because people love rags to riches tales.  It reinforces the American Dream.  It gives people hope.  But these stories are not true.  No one wakes up one day saying they’re going to write a script, knocks one off on the computer the next, sends it out to a producer a day later, gets a million bucks for it and wins an Oscar.  Not even Diablo Cody.

For every instance of Juno or Corner Gas, there are a hundred or more cases of writers who have to work hard for years to get their first break.  Just take a look at the long list of professionals in my article “Breaking In” to see how tough it is to get in the door.  So why are fledgeling screenwriters so naive?

Students leave film school with a couple of specs thinking they’ll get an agent and then get a job and it’s a done deal – nope.  Most graduate take five to ten years to get their first writing job.  Most first jobs in the industry have nothing to do with screenwriting.  Think about how many grads come out of one school, then think about how many film schools there are.  There aren’t enough jobs to go around.

I’m not trying to rain on anyone’s parade, I’m just trying to offer a little perspective.  The film and TV industry is one of the toughest to break into.  You need to make sure you’ve got the best work you can show and let go of the expectation that it will get produced, or that you’ll get hired right away, or that you’ll be rich and famous overnight.  The best thing you can do is keep writing, keep telling people, get them to read your work, and start producing your own work.  If you’re serious about being a screenwriter, whatever you do, do not get off the long and winding road.