Creating Distance from Anxiety

It's the beginning of Spring. Flowers are in bloom. Pastels seem appropriate. Easter is coming soon.

If you're working in the TV industry, it's pilot season. Pilots are the first episodes of potential TV series that have the potential to be produced as series in the Fall. As pilots are being cast and filmed, the TV writer is rising out of hibernation. If he's a smart writer bear, he has been using his hibernation to write a new TV sample. In many cases, that means an original TV pilot. In some cases that means a sample of a pre-existing hit TV show currently on the air that's both critically acclaimed and popular. If you're a bit of a mentally slow writer bear, you're still writing your sample of SMASH or MODERN FAMILY or THE GOOD WIFE. That or you're trying to get a spot in some sort of writer's workshop run by one of the studios. And some writer bears are theatre bears and writing plays as their original samples.

The nice thing about theatre bears is that people think they are smarter than the average bear because they write PLAYS. From this point forward, we will refer to them as Yogis. And while we're clarifying terms, let me just say that my use of the term "bear" refers to someone who has just come out of hibernation in their writer cave. It does not refer to a thick, hairy gay man. Because even though I have documented in this blog that I've gained weight lately, I am still far from being a bear in the gay sense. Yes, that is my own self judgment. Because in my gay LA world, gaining weight only means 10 pounds. As long as I hit the gym and run the whole time I'm in Portland, I can come back in fighting shape, ready for all of these meetings I think I'm getting as a result of my brilliant original play sample.

That huge prologue was just an intro to talk about the anxiety that takes over the town during these wonderful Spring months. Everyone's getting pilots from their agents, managers or friends who have agents and managers and are able to get them CDs with the pilots on them. Or the passcodes to their respective agency's web script library. And they're reading, making lists of what shows they would be perfect for. Then they're going back and looking at their samples and dressing that their samples don't fit perfectly into what the networks and studios are looking for.

Most years I would be actively participating in this circle jerk of anxiety, getting myself all worked up into a lather. But this year I am not working in an office that's trying to staff writers. I've been teaching. I've been writing plays, directing plays, workshopping plays, reading plays, going to plays, talking about plays, etc. Which puts me square in the middle of a bukkake circle of anxiety about whether or not I'll be workshopping my new play at a summer theatre festival. But that is ANOTHER blog post.

Most people would have anxiety for not being in the loop. That probably is what kept me in the loop for so many years. But what I've discovered in my time away from all of this anxiety about staffing is that some of that anxiety affected my work. I was obsessed with what was good, what was bad, what was getting picked up. I'd send frantic emails to my managers saying they needed to send me out for X, Y and Z. I made diagrams of my six degrees of separation from showrunners. I reached out for favors. It all seemed pretty desperate. And it was. But it was also me doing my job of trying to get a job. It was my proactive, organized, direct approach to getting a staff writing job in an industry that's filled with insecure writers who are trying to crack the code of what will get them a job. So by nature it's desperate, even though I had the best of intentions.

SO what's my master plan this year? Just to lay back and let it all come to me? No. But I'm just trying to focus on being good. I have a script that I'm finishing that people seem to be interested in...at least in theory. They like the IDEA. But of course the expectation of what people have in their heads after you tell them your idea can get you in a world of trouble. It creates its own pocket of anxiety closer to home. So I'm trying to just get this done. I'm trying to focus on something that Twyla Tharp mentions in her amazing book THE CREATIVE HABIT. She says it's important to Fail in Private, so you fail less publicly.

That's what I'm focused on right now. Failing Privately. And when I'm done failing several times privately (and quickly), I'll be ready to succeed in public.

When this script is done, it will go to those people who are being supportive and who think my play will work well as a sample. Then I will let those people who are friends as well as colleagues spread the good news of this play like a virus. Then I'll go back to writing the next thing.

That's the only thing I have control over. Getting up. Getting to writing. Distancing myself from anxiety. And being productive. That's all I can do. The rest is not up to me.

Simple. And it has taken YEARS to figure that out.