I have been out here for several years trying to break into TV writing. I've had a few bites. I interviewed for a staff job on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I almost got into the Nickelodeon Writers Workshop. I have written numerous spec scripts and original pilots. I have had meetings with networks and studios. I was developing pilots at production companies and studios and was working on a web series idea. A lot has happened. But nothing came to fruition.
I've been knocking my head around trying to please all of these people and give them exactly what they want. But I hadn't been saying YES to what I want.
I'm a good networker and schmoozer. Sometimes I think that has come off as a bit desperate. So I'm LETTING GO of this idea that I need to hunt people down and I'm just going get my work done. I have three strong pilot ideas that are in various stages of development. This year I wrote a new play and a spec of Glee that I submitted to various writers workshops run by the studios. I have been working on one specific TV idea for months that seemed to stall out.
I meet with my friend Larry a few times a month just to shoot the shit and to check in with each other about where we are in terms of the scripts we are writing. Larry suggested that I stop hitting my head against the wall with this script that had gone from a half hour to a one hour and various incarnations with different ideas for characters, spinning and spinning into a desperate spiral. I had mentioned that I wanted to write a simple half hour show about my relationship with The Drummer. We're two different types of gay guys. I'm very obvious. He's not. And then trying to get our very different groups of friends together is sometimes challenging. I think there's a show in that. We also happen to be of two different cultures, but even within our gay culture there's a lot of culture clash. So I took Larry's advice and I started writing that show. I had a draft within a week. It was a messy shitty draft, but I had gotten it done.
In the meantime, I had a brainstorm about my previous idea. I had great characters, a great premise and I knew I had great plot. What I didn't have a great story. I didn't have the show. One of the characters is based on my Mom and her recent loss of her husband, my Father. This character always reached out to me and was the one I connected with. But I was writing a pilot that was about four women and three of them were rich, powerful and successful and at the top of their game. One was a former sex symbol, one was a broadcast journalist and one was a university professor. Then you had this woman who gave up a career and became a stay at home mom and who had just lost her husband. I had all of these great reference points and a wonderful intellectual conversation about who these women were and what they represented and their historical significance...blah, blah, blah. Not an interesting show. Interesting subject matter, for sure.
Then I decided to focus on this woman who is basically my mother. And I decided to make her the focus of my attention. Then the show came together with these other women written out and other women written in her place. I know the format. I know the journey of the pilot and where it will go from there. I have sat with these women for a little bit of time before really writing out my story and plot. I know what I want this show to be.
But I also knew that I wanted to write a one hour soap. I didn't have an interesting milieu and that's something I've been searching for. I want to write a big soap with people who have money and power and influence. I want to write deep family drama and sweeping epic stories as well. But I didn't have a setting. I had been writing something that took place in the art world, but that didn't seem authentic to me. It kept getting more and more fabricated.
I got in my car a few days ago and I thought to myself, "I need to come up with that magic idea for a one hour. These half hours are great and I'm excited about them. But I also have these dramatic plays and nothing to pair them up with in terms of a great TV sample." Then I went back to my family background. I have been hesitant to write about it. I write about being Latino or about being Asian, but never about both. Never my story of being of mixed race, of being Chexican (Chinese and Mexican). Then I thought about one of my favorite subjects. I'm deliberately being vague, I realize. But it's something I'm obsessed with and it's a world that does have money and influence. It also has struggle. It also has various levels of success and different types of characters already built in. There could be a criminal element to it. And some of my characters are Chexicans. I have a title. I started writing up my characters right away. And I'm off to the races.
I'm saying YES to writing all three of these projects before the end of the year. I'm LETTING GO of the feeling that I can't come up with an idea. I'm just letting it come to me.
I also have an idea I want to pitch with my best friend. She loves the idea. Her manager is reading my treatment and my new material. So that's four pilot ideas. I'm just trying to be here now. My worry has been that people are going to judge me on my past. On the fact that they know me in another capacity and not as a writer. But if you give them enough that is different, they can't judge you on what was there before. They have to judge you on who you are now if you give them enough information in which to make that call. But ultimately it's not about them and it's not about being judged, it's about being who I am now. And as long as I focus on that, the then will come.
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