Q&A: December 2005 Archives

A: If you’re hoping for some kind of Algonquin round table, don’t hold your breath.

The emailer asks a question I’ve heard before, and it’s a good one. Most writers are hermits and slugs who sit in small rooms and lose themselves in their own imaginations, which is precisely why they can see the benefit of living and working in a very different way.

What we want is the comraderie of fellow screenwriters with whom we can commiserate, laugh, share ideas, exchange comments and critiques, and bond over our unifying love of writing for television and movies.

Sorry. That’s what we think we want. The second we find ourselves in some kind of actual social circle like that, we usually start planning an escape route, or, barring a convenient exit, a method to quickly and untraceably kill everyone around us.

Perhaps I’m being a bit too curmudgeonly, but unless we’re actually working with other writers on some writing, the pressures of being both friends and competitors can overwhelm the best of intentions. Our desire for exchange of comments and critiques becomes a quest for approval, and any disappointment in that regard is noted on some internal ledger and paid back in kind. The need to commiserate evolves into either whining or false humility.

That’s the dim view, of course.

Here’s the positive view.

I find that most of my writer friends (and I have a bunch) work in a different genre and field than I. Specifically, my writer friends tend to work in reality TV. It’s a great arrangement. We’re similar enough to be relatable, but are dissimilar enough to avoid the traps.

As for screenwriter friends, I have a few, but they all share something in common.

They’re all better than I, and they’re all more successful than I.

This isn’t calculated. It just happens. I think it’s probably motivated by the fact that I find them more interesting than screenwriters who are living what I’m living or have yet to go through what I already have. A happy side effect is that there’s nothing for me to get hung up on.

As it so happens, none of them seem to have the problem of being friends with me, and I thank them for that.

Still, the friendships aren’t of the sit-around-the-table-and-laugh variety. They’re telephonic, mostly. Some of my screenwriter relationships aren’t even telephonic. They’re textual.

You know what? Textual relationships can be very satisfying too. That’s what I started the forum. Ted and I probably see each other in person once every few months, but phone and email pretty much covers it. John August and I probably wouldn’t count each other as “friends” in the normal sense of the word, but I have no problem emailing him as a friend when I have a question or thought, and the same goes for him.

Frankly, that’s worth more to me than the thought of hanging out with a bunch of writers in person. I know that there’s a romantic buzz about the whole thing…the Algonquin round table in New York, or the screenwriters’ hangout at the old Garden of Allah in West Hollywood…but for me, I’d rather expend my social energy in a different vector. I spend a lot of my time writing and thinking about writing. The remaining time is mostly for my family. It’s possible that I’m unique in this way…

…but I don’t think so.