John August

Psych 101

Finding confidence

Psych 101, QandA

As a fledgling screenwriter/English major in college I
often feel insecure about my work. How did you get over this as a writer
and any advice for the
rest of us?

–Jeff

Alas, the flip side of Insecurity tends to be Arrogance. I highly recommend
the former over the latter.

Ideally of course, you’d find a middle ground called Confidence. Maybe you’ll
be lucky, and that will come early in your career. Until then, here are a few
pointers in no particular order of importance:

  • Remember that you’ll never please everyone with your work.
  • Seek out the opinions of people you trust and respect.
  • Don’t make changes based on opinions of those you neither trust nor respect.
  • Remember that first drafts are never perfect.
  • Strive to make every sentence as good as it can be, even if it’s just a
    character walking through a door.
  • Just because someone is more successful than you, doesn’t mean they’re
    more talented.
  • Role models are fine, but remember you’re only seeing their successes and
    not their failures.
  • Patience is a virtue, but impatience might make you work harder.
  • Most good writers weren’t popular growing up.
  • You will fail and succeed at various times for various reasons you can’t
    predict. Know this going in, and you’ll roll with it when it happens.

Past mistakes

Psych 101, QandA

Now that you look back on your career, what was the single biggest mistake
or wrong assumption you made early on that someone else could learn from?

–Damion

From the moment I got to Los Angeles, I felt I didn’t deserve to be here.
I was never a classic movie buff; I didn’t have a favorite director; my Honda
was rusting out, but not in a glamorous, beauty-in-poverty way.

I felt like a fraud, an imposter. Worse, I was taking up a slot that some
genuinely deserving person should have gotten. Working in Hollywood was never
my childhood dream. It was almost a flip-of-the-coin decision. For all I knew,
the next Spielberg was stuck flipping burgers in Wichita because I had taken
the last available opening.

Honestly, I felt this way for about three years. I kept waiting to get found
out and sent back to the Midwest.

Thinking this way was easily the biggest mistake I made. When you don’t think
you deserve to be in the room, no one else will, either.

But the truth, which took me an embarrassingly long time to realize, is that
all of the smart, confident people I was meeting really didn’t know any more
than I did. Okay, I had never seen Terrence Malick’s BADLANDS. But I had seen
every episode of "Bewitched," and that was just as valid.

And I could write better than most of them. That seems like an egotistical
statement, but considering I was marking myself lower in every other category,
that lone bright spot was a beacon of hope.

It’s hard to synthesize this advice without making sound like insipid pabulum, "just
believe in yourself." Perhaps it’s best expressed in the negative: "you’re
no stupider than everyone around you."