Learning the craft of screenwriting and handling discouragement along the way

This line in the Chris Sparling interview I posted via ScriptShadow the other day:

SS: How many scripts had you written before Buried? Which script did you realize that maybe you were getting the hang of it?

CS: Before Buried, I think I'd written about nine or ten features and two TV specs. Truth be told, it didn't start to click for me until about my seventh feature script.

Reminded me of an observation from Nina Jacobson, former President of Disney:

"Most screenwriters, they write five to ten things that aren't any good before they're even ready to show something."

This goes along the lines of what Malcolm Gladwell says:

[Dustin] Hoffman famously did not land his career-making role in "The Graduate" until he was almost 30 years old. He spent the previous 10 years (the amount of time Gladwell says it takes to accumulate the 10,000 hours) struggling to make it in theater and film in New York City, but most of that period he actually wasn't working as an actor. "I know I've said it a million times, but it's not the worst thing in the world to be unemployed, because a writer can write, a painter can paint, but an actor can't act without a job. That's what's painful, you've got to have the job," says Hoffman.

When asked if 10 years primarily waiting tables or doing temp jobs counts in the quest for 10,000 hours, Gladwell, reached by phone, explains: "The question is not at what point you're capable of doing your job. The question is at what point you've mastered it."

The keys here are to generate lots of different story ideas, work them out one-by-one, then write the hell out of them. There's a chance you'll get lucky early on and sell something (K-9 was my 3rd script), but for most people, it just takes time and effort to learn the craft.

If you find this fact dismaying, here's another video snippet with Jacobson:



The key excerpt:

"It is a tough business. And there are moments of enormous discouragement along the way... I mean I got fired from my first two jobs for not having done anything wrong... so I got my heart broken twice in 18 months. And it was my first 18 months in the movie business. It would have been very easy to say, 'I should have been a veterinarian,' which was my other thought. But I love movies so much, I had to come back to it, I couldn't give up."

Fired from her first two gigs in Hwood. Now check this out. After this interview, Jacobson got fired again:

It was immediately after the birth of their [Jacobson and her partner] third child on 17 July 2006, while still in the delivery room, that Jacobson was fired over the telephone by Richard Cook, studio chief for The Walt Disney Company.

"While still in the delivery room"! Talk about low. But:

By the start of 2007, she was back at work, this time once again with DreamWorks SKG. She signed a three-year production deal with the company in December, 2006.

Jacobson is a producer on Diary of a Wimpy Kid, the screen adaptation of the hugely popular chidren's book series and currently has 6 other movies in development and/or production.

So yes, it takes time to learn the screenwriting craft. And yes, you will almost assuredly have "moment of enormous discouragement" along the way. But if you really love movies, the only person who can stop you from succeeding is you. Just like Dennis Foley says:

"Hollywood is the only town where you cannot fail. You can only quit trying."