About the cake, the icing and the cherry

Even during the most excruciatingly difficult rewrite, while I’m tearing my hair out and banging holes through the walls, I’m happy - because I make cakes.

The cake: I always get to make the cake and I always get to eat it. I’m a writer, I love writing and so I write. There’s nothing anyone can say or do that could keep me away from the cake. I get the ingredients, I make it, I watch it grow, I breathe it in, and I’ll munch it any damn way I please. I always get the cake.

If you’re lucky-brilliant-experienced-crafty-clever-networked enough, you may occasionally get hired. Getting hired is still the cake - it’s just making and eating cake, and getting paid to do it - it’s nice - but it’s still the exact same thing - it’s making cake. Whether you’re on your own, whether you’re hired or fired, whether you’re writing your spec or whether you’re slaving through a dozen crazy drafts with no end in sight, whether the collaboration is blissful or maddening - it’s healthy to remember that it’s all cake. Enjoy it!

The icing: All of that cake just may lead to the occasional icing - you may get produced. And that’s lovely - great to see your name in the credits - fantastic, even. But remember, as nice as that is, don’t rely on it. It isn’t what you're in it for - you’re in it for the many scrumptious cakes you make.

The cherry: Once in a rare while you’ll get recognized for your work. Your name is singled out, you’re nominated, you’re awarded, somebody hands you statuette. Recognition is wonderful, but it’s healthy to remember that it really is just a cherry. If you depend on the icing or the cherries, you’re screwed, you’re setting yourself up for a severe case of misery.

I’m no Aaron Sorkin, I’m nowhere near Aaron Sorkin - I’m probably not even on the same planet as Aaron Sorkin. But if there’s a universe called “Writer’s Passion” - then we’re both in it. We write because we’re passionate about it - because we need to write, because it fulfills us.

I don’t know about Sorkin, but I get withdrawal symptoms when I don’t write. I miss it, badly. I get cranky - I need the stories around me, I need to spend quality time in all the odd places and with all the strange characters my mind can and does dream up day in day out.

There’s a saying that, as long as you try to meditate, you’re not meditating. Because you’re thinking about it, your not there, your on the outside, trying to get in. To me writing is meditation - not always, but ever so often. You write, and sometimes you just continue writing and it’s not you writing, it’s you, fully immersed, living in that world with those characters. You’re in the zone. When you’re in the zone, you’re just there, things just happen, there is no time - or, put differently, there is all the time in the world because that thing you’re experiencing is all there is.

You can get this sense of bliss from just about everything, I guess. If you’re a carpenter, hopefully the crafting of an exquisite chair gets you so immersed that all else fades away until there is only that moment of eternal time. I could start ruminating now, get philosophical - but let’s leave that for another time. To get back to the writing - if you’re a writer, write for the cake of it. Enjoy the icing and the cherry when and if they happen - but always remember that you’re making cakes and no one can take that away from you. I write, I make cakes, I’m happy.

PS: Oh, and if writing doesn’t make you happy, doesn’t fulfill you, causes you pains - then stop. Goes with number 8 of my screenwriting principles.