Gary W. Goldstein, Producer/Author: ...Our work evolves and over time it becomes less careful,
less anal, less conscious and more a reflection of the truth of our soul.
Film Courage: What's the DNA of a writer? Gary: People are so fascinating.
I don't know that I've ever met someone who is not possessed of the most surprising story
in life experience. The only people who don't know it is the person living that story.
They take them you know...people take themselves for granted. They tell a lesser version. They have
these sort of...they don't see themselves the way I see them or the way you might see them.
I think the DNA of a writer is so deeply anchored both in this life
experience ancestrally in every sense um there's a wonderful quote
by ben kingsley and i can't remember it precisely but it's something like
our work evolves and over time it becomes less careful less anal
less conscious and more a reflection of the truth of our soul
and i think that's really the journey of an artist
it's there but it needs to be freed it's like carving the day of it or letting off
wine mature and it's like as we grow into what we do and we relax into it and we have the confidence
that we don't have to we're not thinking from the neck up so much we're finding the truth zone right
i think we spend much of our life mastering something
becoming really good at the craft whatever that is whether it's a creative pursuit or not
but then in time you just cross this sort of invisible threshold
where it just you start taking deeper cuts you trust yourself
that's when it gets really interesting what's the difference between writing as a hobby and
writing as a career the difference between a hobby and a career as a writer it's a choice
and sometimes that choice is conscious and sometimes it's not
there may be someone who you know who who is a hobbyist who's as serious
and and devoted and and possessed by the act of writing as anyone else
they may lack the commitment to do what it takes to make a career out of it and there are a lot of
people who think it's a career but they haven't you know like what's the measure of a career
well the measure of a career would be superficially are you earning a living doing
it but it would also be are you really getting the appreciation acknowledgement are you forging
the relationships with the people who really constitute that community in a meaningful way
or are you an outlier and not an outlier but are you are you an outsider
who's really not knocking on those doors um i think there are so many brilliant stories that get
lost to us that are important because people don't knock on the door because they're they're more
content in the safety of it being a hobby they may not refer to it as the word hobby but not really
and i think there are a lot of artists who need champions they need people they need
a sherpa they need a guide you know one of my early heroes was max perkins and max was
a man of letters he was a brilliant writer himself but he was also
most of his adulthood and the single best editor in my view of the in the 20th century in america
and he was the father figure who discovered uh and nurtured and launched careers
for faulkner and hemingway and ring lardner and thomas wolf and just the list goes on
um and a lot of these creatives either would have there are a lot of inside won't get
into particular stories but there faulkner might easily have never come to hollywood
he might never have had certain of his books published had it not been for max
and the same probably is true in varying degrees with certain of his other illustrious
clients so i think it's sort of a you know it's it's hard to adjudicate at what point
people have the constitution to really take it into their own hands and say
consciously i'm going to be disciplined i'm going to find my way in or i'm just going
to be a soloist and enjoy the active writing and there's a lot of gray in between those two
um i think the first thing is just to recognize the phenomenal joy if that's your if that's true
for you right like for me i'm a natural writer i'm not an author and i'm not a screenwriter i'm
a writer they're different i take enormous joy in writing it's one of my happiest moments of the day
but i don't see that i'm a professional writer i think my my my marketplace skills
are better uh i'm better as a producer i'm better as a fire starter and a facilitator and an organ
orchestrator than being and i'm a very good editor but i don't think i'm a screenwriter
so it's kind of knowing yourself and how far you want to push it and do you have the gumption to
do so if we were going to break down the day of two screenwriters so one who is quote waiting to
be discovered versus one who as you say leverages their entertainment career what would those two
days look like oh gosh very different now they may have equal levels of discipline or lack of
discipline when it comes to how and when and where they write i mean some writers it's like they're
early morning writers or their nighttime writers or whatever is their sort of biorhythm creatively
right uh and do they do that consistently and do they black out a certain number of hours and
do they hang the same go on fishing sign on the door so the family knows leave me alone right um
so those are all one sort of one category of of um discipline and decision that a creative makes
one is self-response makes a decision to be self-responsible like it would be great to have
an age but it's not essential i'm still going to make it so i'm going to be intentional and
i'm going to allocate a certain amount of my brain and my my heart and my consciousness and my time
to having a plan i'm going to build my own plan i'm going to say i'm going to dedicate
anywhere from 30 minutes a day to an hour a day to two hours a day on my career versus
the hours that i spend writing which is about my craft i'm going to have a vision a plan long term
short term in the next month or you know every month i want to make these kinds of measurable
steps forward i wanted this to happen in six months this to happen in 12 months
and you may or may not hit those marks but the intention the entrepreneurial sort of energy of
yeah there's this other rail this other track that i'm going to pay attention to and and and respect
as much as i respect the greater amount of time that i spend with the actual writing and it's kind
of be consistent it's like an athlete when you're training you know it's you've got to be um you've
got you've got to be a bit rigorous and say you know what what do i need if i'm going to succeed
you know if my manuscript or my screenplay is not going to show off its own head in their drawer
while it gathers dust what do i need i need a team i need to know people i need people to
uh collaborate with and i need people to you know who are
but before i need them i want to have the relationship with the people that
eventually i'm going to need when i have a new project ready who are those people
and then make it a point to build out your i mean there's nothing more important than just i i
i don't really love the word networking but that's what it is it's saying i need
i need my village i need my tribe i need my team whatever that looks like and i'm not
talking just about a representative i mean a real community of people that are my my creative collab
so twitter going on twitter being a part of writer organizations whether they're on social media or
separate from social media absolutely where do i get immerse myself in that conversation
so that i can get feedback so that i can find resources i can share resources and opportunities
and if i want to introduce someone to someone else it'll be a generosity that's well received
and reciprocated yeah put yourself in that flow when you're not in your writing space
i think it's and and not just and not just with other writers um i think it's important
that you color outside the lines and that you be a little bit imaginative and daring not just
with your writing but in your choice of uh you know we've talked about this before most writers
uh think in terms of agents or producers either representation or who's going to get my help
get my project produced and that's all wonderful but there are all these other people out there
that people aren't knocking on their door and they're available and they'd love to talk to you
and share their wisdom so why aren't we reaching out to the line producer the casting director the
et cinematographer et cetera there are editors and other writers that you can glean
inordinate wisdom from and have real fun with
so i think that you know it doesn't always have to be specific you know like a specific result or
goal that you want to achieve it's just saying my greatest currency is really being a part of this
community that is the filament and tv enterprise right i i need to walk the streets of my community
and know my neighbors and be able to talk to them and be welcoming of them
and what if you're shy and maybe they're not welcoming of you i don't believe for
a moment that they're not welcoming i do believe that a lot of people are shy
and but that's you know being shy is not an excuse not to succeed it's just not
um it's hard but i've had i can't tell you the number of people
that i've coached over time who come back and go oh my god i had no idea
this is like you know the red sea parting i didn't know it was so easy and so much fun to
meet people i thought it was scary i thought there was a monster in the closet i thought
these were fire breathing weapon terrible terrible people who didn't want to know me
and and and it's like oh my god i just forced myself and it was very uncomfortable it was
extremely awkward i didn't like it but i forced myself to do for one week what you suggested and
i'd make two calls a day for a week and by that friday it was like oh my gosh there was
one person who was too busy there was one person who had some attitude but eight people welcomed me
and i'm going to be speaking with most all of them again in another week just the way you taught
and it's it's it's i'm not taking credit for it it's just like it's it was just like a push
go jump in the water you're not gonna drown flop your arms you're gonna swim may not look
beautiful the first time but it it doesn't take long before it's like oh you let your shoulders
down and say you know what i can let go i can lay down the stories that don't serve me
and a lot of people have that story that oh i'm sure is there two sides of the
coin was i'm too shy i'm introverted i'm not comfortable it's scary i don't want to do it
and the other side is they don't want me to do it they're not friendly they're not welcoming
i have or i have no value and nothing to contribute to the conversation like i'm
subhuman and those stories are just stories they're not real but we only learn by doing
that may be an exaggeration but i really believe that doing is the way we learn fastest and if you
pick up the phone and force you to do something that's really not native to you that's really
actually quite audacious and you do it a few times it's suddenly it's like public speaking everyone
says publix more people fear public speaking than death were you afraid of your ted talk um i i was
always horrified of public speaking i actually enjoy it now um the things that you worry about
uh no one else is worried about it's crazy because we think we are the universe but no
people are rooting for you we see that all the time in performances whether it's public speaking
or you know singing or whatever it might be athletes you name it we want people to win
if you just lay those stories down long enough to take some action
you grow a new muscle very quickly it's not terrifying it's actually appreciated
and it's the fastest path to from a to b you