Aspiring Screenwriter Tip #4 -- What to Eat

Ace has been rather busy working on a very cool new script, so when I bounced an idea off her for a little post here she gave me this kind of wavy go-ahead-and-do-it gesture. At least, I think that's what it meant. She was eating an egg roll at the time, so it may have been a come-here-quick-and-give-me-the-Heimlich gesture.

Y'know, now that I think about it, I haven't talked to Ace since that night...

Well, anyway, Ace and I were talking one time long before the eggroll incident and she told me a funny story she'd heard about a finalist for the Nicholl Fellowship. I'm sure you've heard of the Nicholl, yes? Where they give you $30,000 dollars, spread out over a year or two so you can focus on writing a script rather than worrying about paying the bills. Anyway, said finalist was very gracious and glad to get where he was, and was eagerly awaiting the final word, but he had one problem.

How was someone supposed to live for a year off $30,000?

This blew me away. Honestly. As a guy who's spent most of his life with an income that's average-to-low (and has pretty much just been low since I started writing full time), the idea that someone couldn't survive on such a sum is stunning to me.

Then again, it's not that surprising. People have certain needs and standards. So here's a dinner tip. It's something you can eat that will save you a couple hundred or more over the course of a year.

Swallow your pride.

One thing I've seen again and again is people who want to be writers, they want to have all that spare time, but they're not willing to give up anything for it. They still want to buy organic eggs from Whole Foods and the 7-grain wheat bread and y'know Kraft Macaroni and Cheese is just a little tangier than the store brand (you really can taste the difference). Plus, they want to go out to clubs and movies. And, really, are things so tight that you need to buy the Value crackers in those embarrassing generic-white boxes?

Give it up. Swallow your pride and admit that if you really want to put time and energy into writing you need to make cuts somewhere else. And the easiest place to do it is food. I'm not saying starve yourself, but ditch the name brands, start shopping cheap, and admit that the taste difference between Kraft and Value macaroni & cheese isn't worth sixty-five cents a box. Most movies these days are just as good on Netflix as they are on the big screen, and hell, there's still a lot of good stuff on television. Basic television, I'm not even talking about cable.

A lifestyle that costs less is a lifestyle that takes less to support. That means less time you need to spend selling suits or bagging groceries so expenses are covered and more time you can spend writing. If you're writing full time, there's a better chance that inexpensive lifestyle can now be supported by your writing. Which means more time writing.

I've been writing full-time for three years now. No other job, no savings to live off, nothing else. Every cent in my bank account comes from my ability to string words together in a way that appeals to people enough that they'll pay me for it. I haven't ordered a pizza in those three years because I can get a decent frozen one for 1/5 the price. The last movie I paid to see in a theater was V for Vendetta (no piracy--my job lets me go to screenings, and I can wait for Netflix on a lot of stuff) . Generic rum costs less than half what Captain Morgan's does and when it's mixed with Coke you can barely tell. Heck, after two or three drinks you can't tell at all.

You know what my big splurge was when I sold my second book? We got Thai food. My girlfriend and I walked up the street to a little place near us and got take out chicken pad-thai and curry. Our gigantic splurge was about twenty bucks. Yeah, it's not much, but she understands that freedom to write for another three or four months is far more important to me than living it up for three or four nights.

If you can't bring yourself to do your grocery shopping at Food 4 Less or the 99 Cents Store, you're probably not going to make it as a writer. If you refuse to drink wine that costs less than $8.00 a bottle, odds are you don't have what it takes. If it's impossible to start your day without name-brand breakfast cereal and organic milk, you probably won't be doing a lot of writing that day.

You'll definitely never have a prayer of catching up with me, that's for sure.

Starving screenwriter tip: How to find an extra $1000 -- and more importantly, some peace

How often have you come up with your best ideas while in the shower, or taking a drive by yourself, or practicing a relaxing hobby? Your subconscious is working on story ideas and plot twists all the time, but it needs a chance to communicate with you. That requires long blocks of protected peace and quiet. You never know quite when you're going to slip into this meditative, daydream state.

Now, isn't it really frustrating when you're having an elaborate dream, and you can't wait to see how it all turns out -- and then you're jarred awake by, say, the yammering of morning DJs, causing the dream to slip irretrievably out of reach?

In the same way, phones invade your mental space, shattering the dream-like state of "flow." A few times when I've forgotten to shut the ringer off on my phone, I've lost entire paragraphs, scenes, and dialogue exchanges, because some telemarketer called -- literally, a day's worth of work that could never be recovered. Non-writers don't understand why these interruptions are so devastating, because they think writing is pretty much just "typing" -- when in actuality, it's hours of contemplation punctuated by bursts of transcription. They think if you're interrupted, you can just recover your train of thought some other time. But you can't, any more than you can recover an elaborate dream once the alarm clock has intruded. So why on earth would a writer want to risk this intrusion 24/7, everywhere he goes?

The solution: ditch your cell phone.

Getting rid of your cell phone is enormously freeing. First of all, starving writers should avoid buying anything that requires an expensive long-term contract, such as a cell phone. You may be able to afford it this month, but three months from now you might dearly wish you were free of that financial obligation. Even a minimal cell phone plan costs you many hundreds of dollars per year, and some people even spend well over a thousand dollars a year on a fancy cell phone, unlimited minutes, texting, etc. I suppose this might make sense for a few occupations, such as ER doctor, or perhaps "celebutante." But why would a writer willingly sign up for indentured servitude to a device that has a devastating effect on his work? That's just plain crazy.

You'll be amazed how much more creative you'll be, how much clearer your thinking will be, if you ditch the infernal device. Whenever you're alone on the bus, or you're sitting in the park with your dog, or you're early for a meeting, you can read a book or jot down some free-associative ideas. I know it's a totally "retro" idea that anyone should actually be alone with his own thoughts for a few minutes, instead of having a vapid conversation and/or text dialogue about every inane thing that happens throughout the day -- but try it. (By the way, if you hate being alone, and are easily "bored" by contemplation, then a writing career is probably not right for you.)

Okay, so...how do people get in touch with you?

Ah. Well. There's email, of course, which is both convenient and free. And there's this old-fashioned thingy called a "land line," which can be surprisingly adequate as a telecommunication device. Chances are if you live in an apartment building you're going to need to get one anyway, because the front door intercom (err...if you're lucky enough to find a building in which this device isn't broken) usually connects to your phone line. You can get a bare-bones land line for about $10-$12 a month -- but, note that this doesn't include long distance, which can be expensive with a bare-bones plan. To make long distance calls you might want to get a pre-paid phone card (it's still cheaper than a monthly cell phone service), or, arrange for family and friends who have fancy cell phone plans to call you back during their "free nights and weekends."

I definitely recommend spending the extra few dollars a month (+ annoying set-up fee) for voice mail; it's a bargain. I have a land line, but the ringer is frequently turned off; with voice mail I can check messages when it's convenient for me and won't interrupt my writing. When I won the Nicholl and was suddenly deluged with calls from reps and producers, I made the small investment to get voice mail service, and have been satisfied with it ever since. It allows people to leave messages if I have the phone turned off, or if I'm on the internet (by the way, I have free dial-up, and you can get it too -- but I'll talk about that in an upcoming post). When people leave a voice mail they have no way of knowing they aren't reaching a cell phone, so if for some reason you want to maintain the illusion that you're one of the cell-phone-owning masses, voice mail will help you keep up the facade.

Now...maybe you're worried that you'd feel vulnerable without a cell phone, afraid that you might get stranded somewhere and be unable to call for help. This is a totally understandable concern, and perhaps a good reason to get one of those temporary, pay-as-you-go cell phones that are for sale in grocery stores. But -- don't give anyone the number; it's only for an emergency!

Money saved by ditching your cell phone: Varies; many hundreds of dollars per year.
Daydreams saved from oblivion: priceless.

Starving screenwriter tip: How to save over 1,000 dollars (and hours!) per year

$1000 could really help your screenwriting career, couldn't it? Think about it:

$1000 equals six months' worth of food, if you eat frugally (about $5/day).
$1000 equals entering two or three writing contests every month.
$1000 is postage for over 2000 snail-mail query letters.
$1000 is a new computer, the one expensive thing a serious writer can't do without.

Where can you find an extra $1000 a year? Here's an easy way: If you have cable or satellite TV, GET RID OF IT.

Yep, get rid of cable. Really. It sucks up your time. It sucks up your money. Having all those channels encourages you to "veg out" and look for something, anything to watch whenever you have a block of free time. Writing a book or a screenplay requires daily effort and motivation, much like training for a marathon. You have to work at it pretty much every single day whether you feel like it or not, and much of the time you won't initially feel like it. (Starting is always the hardest part, isn't it?) It's so much easier to follow the path of least resistance: "Damn, I was gonna write tonight, but I have to find out how 'Unsolved Mysteries' turns out. Maybe after the show's over. Oh, but then there's this cool show about ancient weaponry on...." Sound familiar?

It's always easier to be passive than to be active, so eliminate the extra temptation. Every hour you spend watching TV, you probably could have written another quarter- to a half-page or so. How many hours a day do you spend watching empty and forgettable TV? Two? Four? Over the course of a year, that's a whole first draft of a novel, or first draft and first re-write of a screenplay you might have written!

I'm not saying "never" watch TV, nor am I saying that TV is "bad." There are some wonderful, fun, well-written shows, with compelling storylines and complex characters, which can enrich your life and your creativity. But figure out what handful of shows you really want to see, and plan your viewing carefully. If you miss out on a really great show you can catch it later on DVD (more on cheap and free DVD rentals in another post). Just don't sit around channeling-surfing* to "see what's on." Skip the junk shows that don't add anything to your life or your creativity (reality shows, talk shows, tabloid "newsmagazine" shows, and all the "filler" shows you don't like but are scheduled in between shows you do like). Shut off the nonstop distraction and give your mind the space to work on your projects. Take a walk. Read. Do a puzzle. Bake. Paint. Take a nap. Doodle. Daydream. Whatever allows you to think.

Let's say you waste about three hours a day watching forgettable shows you don't really care about. This is actually a pretty conservative figure, considering most people waste that much time just on "late night TV" alone; most people waste much MORE than three hours per day. But anyway....

3 hours a day x 365 days = 1,095 hours a year, wasted.

Do you know how many hours there are in a month of 31 days? Just 744.

In other words, if you waste a mere three hours a day watching TV, you are frittering away well over a solid MONTH out of every year. So don't tell me you "don't have any time to write," if you're still watching hours and hours of TV every day. You are simply choosing to be passive, rather than choosing to take the harder (but perhaps infinitely more rewarding) path.

*Now, none of this advice applies to the normal, regular person who isn't a professional or aspiring writer. By all means, you dear normal folks lucky enough to be free of "the midnight disease," enjoy all the scripted shows you can find! After all, without readers and audiences to entertain, what would be the purpose of writing?

Money saved by getting rid of cable: $500 - $1200+/year.
Time gained for writing, reading, thinking, and sleeping: priceless.