A screenwriter's pitch is not the same as the process a literary author goes through to sell their work.
This morning someone who was attempting to be beyond challenging hit me with his ignorance. If my work wasn't headed for the movies, it had no value to this man.
You see he knows a (one) screenwriter who is talking to important people, who is attending conventions, who is working towards a deal. I know several screenwriters who are also in this part of their process. I have met child actors turned screenwriters who are working their contacts, getting in there and making a pitch when their screenplay isn't written yet, and I have met a lot of people whose deal has fallen through at the last minute, or they were offered a small amount of money - a reduced amount - a couple years after their initial pitch and they backed down. All part of the process.
LA is so full of screenwriters that you can joke when you meet someone about hearing that they have a script in a drawer somewhere and they'll assume you are psychic. I've worked on a few projects that I think would be good screenplays, and maybe everyone "sees" their work on the big screen. Even me. It's not easy to know if what you find interesting or exciting in your life will translate to a great action adventure, mystery, or biopic, but I think that writing is still valuable to the writer as a process, as a way to exercize skills, even if the distribution of the work is limited to family members and rude copies from the local printer.
Still, the process of selling literary work - whatever that is - a novel, a memoir, fiction or nonfiction - which is destined for print media - a traditional book or an e-book - is about agents and publishing houses, sending manuscripts - partial or complete - still mostly via paper rather than electronic technology - and making it through the slush pile reader. You might be able to network into a deal, if you happen to be born into a family that's already into publishing - and some authors had just that in but most do not.
Like many authors I too have listened to others speak in classes, book signings, readings, and events such as the Los Angeles Times Book Fair at UCLA. I have asked or heard asked that important question "WHAT MAKES YOU A "REAL" WRITER?" Audience members want to believe that writing 3 pages or 500 words a day does. They want to know the habits of the successful. AND THE TRUTH IS THERE IS NO ONE WAY. There are those who write every morning while the children are sleeping, others who seem disorganized, the computer savvy and those writing with a pencil on recycled paper. Publishing may validate you to some extent, but you do not have to be published to be a writer.
I BELEIVE YOU ARE A WRITER BECAUSE YOU WRITE. THE MORE YOU WRITE THE BETTER YOU GET AT WRITING. YOUR CHALLENGE IS THE TIME TO WRITE, the more time the better !
IT's OK TO WRITE WHOLE NOVELS THAT YOU DON'T PUBLISH. NO SHAME IN HAVING THAT SCREENPLAY IN THE DRAWER. SOME WRITERS ARE BORN, OTHERS SELF MADE, most of us have recognized a talent and honed it.
I HAVE KEPT MOST OF MY WRITING and on occassion I reread what I have written. I am stuck with knowing I had talent long before I ever took a community college night class, and I see that a lot of what I wrote and thought was good at the time has been surpassed by experience.
