Writers Best Avoid Reader Pool

OK, here’s the scenario: Big talent agency has received 125 head shots from aspiring actors in the mail. Mr. Mucky Muck Agency President tells his staff, “I want you to audition each one of these actors and find me some talent.”

Agents scramble to set up interviews but realize they can’t possibly meet everyone. What to do? “Hey, I’ve got an idea!” says recent USC film school graduate turned agency lackey. “Let’s hire a pool of out-of-work, disgruntled actors to audition these head shots. Who better to know real acting ability than performers who themselves are struggling for that one big break!”

Brilliant. How many of those head shots do you think will ever see anything but the bottom of a Dipsy Dumpster?

The above may sound like my entry into the “Aren’t I clever, aren’t I hip” school of Counterpunch rebuttals, to quote Marsha Freeman’s commentary on screenwriters (“Reading Between Lines of the Script,” Calendar, Sept. 18) but stop and think about it--it’s not that funny. Hiring writers to critique other writers’ work sounds good in theory, but boy, does it stink in practice. Talk about vicious circles.

I don’t pretend to have an answer to this dilemma; who else knows quality story structure and good dialogue better than another writer? But as I’m sure Freeman knows from having spent eight years doing this, if the fate of your script, play or novel has ended up under the pen of a reader, it’s probably as dead as Joe Gillis’ body floating in Norma Desmond’s swimming pool.

Writing is a lonely occupation. It isn’t glamorous. It’s not romantic. It’s hard work. Freeman implied that today’s “high-profile” scripts are masturbatory: “Those writers aren’t writing for the reader; they’re writing for themselves.”

I say writers, no matter what they write, better be writing for themselves and believe completely and wholeheartedly in what they’re writing. Sometimes their work may fall short, and there’s a reader at every Starbucks waiting to tell them just how short, but they must be selective about criticism received and keep working. New heights are set by the people who have the foresight to write from their heart and stand behind what they believe . . . no matter what. There is a certain amount of tenacity and blind faith at work here.

Of course, success is all about “business.” The so-called “good writers” know this. Once you’ve got the business end down, you don’t have to believe as hard anymore, your mortgage payments will fuel you on to greatness.

Maybe part of what David Mamet and Scott Morgan were saying in earlier Counterpunch articles is that if you plan on making a living as a writer and climbing “that big ladder of success,” try to ensure your work bypasses the reader pool as often as possible. Be clever. Find a way to get your work into the hands of someone who may still tear it to shreds, but, eventually, may actually be able to do something with it.