Student Blog: Maybe This Time I'll Write a Script for Myself

It used to be that I could only do it after rehearsal had ended, after my homework was done, after my bedroom lights had been turned off. I would sit in my bed, my laptop screen the only light in the room, and write for as long as I could before my body begged me to sleep. 

Now I sit in class and get assigned scripts and my mind flies with images and ideas for what could come of the assignment until it is the middle of the day, after class, and I am sitting in front of my laptop thinking of all the things I could do before actually writing the script. 

I thought that getting to go to school for writing, for my passion, would be phenomenal. And it is, don’t get me wrong. I am incredibly lucky and terribly happy. But it is also wildly different to have to write for other people instead of for myself. I talk to my friends about the scripts they are working on, or the ideas that they have for class assignments, and one of the most frequent things they say is “well I have this one idea, but I’m saving it because I don’t want it to get ruined in class.” 

But if we go to all the trouble of going to class and listening to our professors, and doing the assignments, shouldn’t the work be about something we care about? Shouldn’t we love what we’re writing and want it to be ripped to shreds so that it can be remade into something better? I don’t think the issue lies in the workshopping process of the scripts; it is fundamentally that when you take something that is so inherently personal, such as art, and bring it into a setting that has been built your whole life around the impersonal, the obligatory, the love that you had for the script is stripped away. 

Will it always be like this? I sit here, procrastinating on yet another project of mine, wondering if maybe I made a mistake choosing to pursue my passion in college instead of doing an academic major like my mother wanted and writing on the side. If I struggle to find the urge to write my assignments for class, what will happen when I – if I – am in the industry, writing scripts for showrunners, or producers? Will it feel as tedious then as it does now? Will I spend the rest of my life saving my best ideas for the scripts that I write in the dark, in the middle of the night, when I am simply writing for me? 

There’s this scene in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, where the title character, who is figuring out whether or not to pursue a career in standup comedy, asks an established comic whether or not he loves it. He says no. He says if he could do anything else in the world, he would. I like to give an answer akin to that when people ask me if I love writing. It takes a piece of my soul. It’s mentally exhausting, it incurs an alarming amount of self-doubt, and it is so intangible it drives me insane. If I could do anything else, I would. But I can’t. Because writing is simply what I was meant to do. 

Last year I risked an idea that I loved in class. I wrote it with vigor, and excitement, and yes, at midnight, and when it was finished, my professor smiled. Mind you, this is a man who never does anything but push the scripts he receives in completely different directions. But he simply smiled. And said it was good. 

Perhaps the issue lies not in the education system, or the private, personal nature of the artistic world, but in the fantasy of it all. Perhaps all this comes from an inability we have to truly grasp that we are being given the opportunity to do what we love. That this is real. And that if we manage to truly grab onto it, it could be real for the rest of our lives. 

Khalas.