Just Another Chance For My Life To Completely Change - Or Not

“Do not lose hold of your dreams or aspirations. For if you do, you may still exist but you have ceased to live”
~ Henry David Thoreau

When you've still yet to have your break

- the moment Hollywood realizes you've been knocking at their door for like 5 years, in the rain, without an umbrella, and finally lets you in -

You learn that concentrating too hard on contests, or a producer getting back to you, or an agent deciding they like your work enough to not use it as a napkin during taco Wednesday, will make you insane. If you focus on these things, your brain will begin to melt through your nose, and when bad news comes, you will have to be forcibly removed from the wine bottle and an incoherent weekend marathon of Law and Order: SVU.

Of course, waiting and hoping is all part of the game, just like rewriting and (ugh disgusting) shmoozing, but if you make the subjective decision part of this art too big of a focus, you will yank your hair out trying to write what you think other people want. And we all know how that turns out: fucking awful.

But. Okay. But - every once in a while? I pay attention. Maybe I count down the days until a specific production company emails me back, or cross out the months until a big contest announces its finalists, because these situations are different than the rest. These situations? Could literally turn my life around and my dreams into a tangible job.

In a few weeks, I'll find out if I'm part of the 2012 Screenwriting Lab at Sundance, a week-long summit in January where writers and directors and other important people actually look you in the face and say, "hey, let me help you turn this script of yours into actually something."

There are only two rounds of decisions. I made it past the first round. I got the email and flipped my shit and screamed into the phone at my Dad and poured myself a victory whiskey sour and maybe (but I can't verify) listened to a Britney Spears song 15 times in a row. And then I tried to forget about it. But of course you don't forget about something with the word Sundance in it. And so now I know that I have about 15 days before my life changes - or it doesn't.


I don't need to write about what would happen to my voice and my blood pressure and my world if I actually won. Whatever. We all know the answers to that. But if I don't win? I mean, life will go on. I'll probably be sad for a little while, only because I've been a bridesmaid so many times I could literally string my Almosts and Maybes across the state of Colorado, but then I'll get over it. I have to. Even if I want to quit writing for a day, or a week, after the announcement, I can't actually quit. Twelve years of hard work would gurgle down the drain. And my identity would be much vaguer, and my life would be emptier.

I'm good at preparing for What Will Probably Happen (as opposed to What I Want To Happen), and so I've already got a plan of how I'll pick myself after I have a heart-stopping moment of complete and utter life despair. These moments are familiar. They pass. Because they have to. Or else I buy a one-way ticket to Barbados and no one ever hears from me again.

But, god, what if by some magical, Ryan Gosling moment of beauty, I can finally realize what it feels like to not need the Emergency Despair Repair kit?

I'd probably just throw up.

Right then and there. Immediately.

Just open my mouth up and barf, all saucer-eyed and confused, like a baby.

And it will be awesome.