Frustration in LA
I’m really under the gun this week, so this entry will be brief. I’m still in California, but next week it’s back to Chicago. I’ve spent the week thus far pitching my ideas to people who make movies. Very nice people who have lots of suggestions and enthusiasm, but all I’ve got so far is a bunch of good notes and a few pleasant conversations. There are no story deals in my immediate future. It’s enough to get anyone down.
I think that the movie business settled in Los Angeles because of the weather. Not because it’s well suited for filming, but emotionally. You come out of a meeting where everyone has just said no to what you thought was the greatest idea of all time, you’re usually not very happy. But the sun is shining and the air is balmy and you can’t stay depressed for very long. If everyone had to make their pitches in the Chicago cold and gloom, there’d be writer’s committing suicide right and left, dropping like flies.
I was talking (or complaining) to a friend of mine a couple days ago about just this subject.
“I just get tired of working so hard for so little,” I said.
“I guess you’ve got to be tenacious in that business,” she told me.
Miriam Webster defines tenacious as “persistent in maintaining, adhering to, or seeking something valued or desired”. That about sums it up. But tenacity is like the stock market – the degree to which one can maintain an optimistic attitude goes up and down. Some days you’re certain that your big break is just around the next corner. The next day you’re sure that all that’s coming around that corner is a truck.
Chicago’s cold and wet these days. LA’s sunny and beautiful. I don’t want to go back, I’m not ready, I’ve still got ideas to sell. But until the idea part of my business model starts paying the bills like my bars in Chicago, I’ve got to go back and take care of those businesses. Or get a job – and that’s not going to happen.
I’ll be back out to California soon, after I get things settled. And while I’m in Chicago I’ll get up every morning and work on the ideas that I’m developing. I’ll send out query letters and make phone calls and try and crack this nut. But this morning, thinking of walking off the plane under gray skies, those bitter Lake Michigan winds swirling around me, the winter doldrums having sucked the bank account dry, it’s hard to get excited about going back to Chicago. I just have to remind myself of the same thing that I tell other writers; that this is a business that takes time. Do your work and be patient. It’s all about being tenacious.
— Ric Hess, Feb 29, 11:59 AM
