TALKING TURKEY OR WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE A MEMBER OF THE PRETENDERS (Part One)

Last night I went out for a drink with a very good friend of mine whose name I've decided to make up. Let's call her Alma. Alma is the only one of my friends who actually lives in my area. She moved here about two years ago when her husband took on a temporary two year work assignment. We were introduced to each other via our husbands. Alma and her husband are moving back to where they came from in four months. I will miss her dearly. Sitting outside in balmy 50 degree weather wrapped in blankets while looking out at the ocean we ordered a couple of Pims No. 1 cocktails and started to talk.

Alma is a screenwriter. She became one after a 25 plus year business career that saw her make upwards of a million dollars annually at the peak of her productivity. It was a career that she thoroughly enjoyed but at the end of the day, when it came time to leave the company after it was sold to a foreign corporation, Alma found herself questioning who she really was if not her job. It was unsettling question, one that she had never asked before, perhaps because she had been so enmeshed her career.

What she decided was to become an actor.

Alma went to an agent to find out what she needed to do to establish herself in the industry. The agent suggested she break into the industry by doing background work. Actors who do background work do things like mill about in crowds, or look animated at cocktail parties, or endlessly cross back and forth across a street. You never really notice these actors unless of course, for example, they get knocked down by the star of the while running after the bad guy. Another example is the gratuitous T&A shot where the camera pans across a body or set of bodies and we never see notice the actors' faces.

Alma worked very hard to establish herself as a working actor. She got a job in a producer's office as an assistant to learn the ins and outs of the business and to establish contacts. She starred in endless numbers of no-pay student films just to hone her craft. She took courses in Improvisation to become better at comedy. In short, Alma grabbed hold of her goal and went after it wholeheartedly. Her efforts began to pay off and she found herself doing very well as an extra. She appeared in big budget films and even had an opportunity to speak a few lines of dialogue. And even though she was starting to see some success she realized that it wasn't was really was she wanted to do over the long-term.

Working with a couple of partners she thought she might try her hand at producing instead. That's how she stumbled upon her second vocational calling in life. Thanks to a dropped ball in trio's partnership she found herself writing a script. She loved it and producing fell by the wayside. The same exuberance and diligence she used in pursuing an acting career served her well when exploring the working world of screenplay writers. She read books. She bought the software to work in the proper format. She queried producers and production companies to learn about what type of screenplays they were looking for. She joined industry organizations and actively participated in meetings. And, although in the past three years she's only made a modest amount of money from her writing, she gets up every day committed to working on what she now considers her passion. She would love to have one of her screenplays produced with a big budget and stars attached but she knows that even if she doesn't, even if it never happens for her, she's doing something in life that truly makes her happy. She doesn't give a crap about how others perceive her efforts or how they measure her success (and for many that is usually about how money you make). First and foremost, she's writing for herself. In so doing, she has won the respect of many.

What we can learn from Alma's story?

1. Identify something you want to do. Initially, for Alma she picked acting.

2. Drop your ego off at an ego shelter station. In her past life Alma ran a highly successful company where she made millions of dollars for herself and for the company's owner. Imagine how humbling it would have been to make less than 50 dollars a day and be treated somewhat poorly because she was now an extra the low person on the acting pole. Imagine how humbling it would have been to be "supervised" at the producer's office by people half her age who had no managerial training. Imagine how humbling it would have been to learn that she wasn't good looking enough or young enough to be considered a serious talent in her chosen field. And none of these humbling experiences deterred her from pursuing her goal.

3. Explore your chosen field thoroughly. Whether she was pursuing acting or screenwriting, Alma took the time to talk to industry experts, inform herself of the industry protocol and processes, make contacts, read industry related magazines and learn ways to self market.

4. Give yourself permission to fail. After spending a couple of years pursuing an acting career, Alma learned that it just wasn't for her. And that was alright. At the very least she had given it a wholehearted effort and so she would never have to suffer a case of the "if only's."

5. Open the door in front of you. When you enter the room it might not be the one you expected but look at it as opportunity to learn something new about yourself. In Alma's case, she only happened upon her passion for screenwriting because she had pursued acting first.

6. Your measure of success is the only one that counts. If you measure success via the opinions of others, you my friend, are screwed. You will never be happy. You want to know why? There are 6 billion people on this planet, give or take a few million. There is only one of you. Now throw in the fact that these people were brought up with different values, in different cultures and in vastly different economic circumstances. How the hell are you possibly going to fulfill all of their expectations, requirements, needs and whatever else it is that they throw at you? If you even think about trying you will end up in a dark corner somewhere, unable to move, dream, want, wish or talk. Not the future you imagined for yourself? Set your own bar. If you don't measure up then figure out if it's the right one or figure out what you need to do to get there. In the end you only you know what you want. Like Alma you'll probably be admired and respected by the people whose judgement you feared in the first place.

7. Nothing happens unless you take action. This is said over and over again for a reason. It's true. Don't you remember high school physics, "for every action, there is an equal reaction." It's a law of the universe.