Hope

Hope is something those of us wanting to break into TV or film in this country have to live with every day. As I say on my blog, "It's not the rejection. I can handle the rejection. It's the hope I can't stand." Never a truer word spoken.

One of my readers came up with the phrase, "keep on, keeping on". That's what it's like to be considered a new writer in the UK. I've been writing for seven years now, honing my craft, learning, absorbing, and most of all polishing. I don't consider myself a new writer. Unfortunately the industry does. So I keep on, because that's all I can do.

It's like being a door to door salesman. Your spec script is immediately treated with suspicion, especially if it hasn't come via an agent. The quality of the product doesn't seem to matter, neither do the years you've put in to your trade, when you approach people you are automatically lumped into the category of, 'enthusiastic nutter' and I imagine they slip your script to the bottom of the pile.

It helps to understand that producers, agents and production companies receive thousands of unsolicited scripts a year. Out of those thousands only one or two might actually show any promise. But to find those two scripts some poor reader has to plough through all of of those scripts, some terrible, some horrific, and most simply no where near the standard required. It's no wonder it's tough to break in.

But hope is what drives us on, what feeds our addiction to writing. Yes it is an addiction. Those long hours spent staring at a script rewriting it until your eyes feel like they are filled with sand takes writing to a level beyond hobby. Writing is something you live and breath every moment of your existence.

Hope is knowing that someday soon all that hard work will pay off and your break will come.