Oh, How I Hated Writing

If you’d asked me whether I was a writer at any point in the first half of my career, I would have told you no. Hell no.

I’m a director. That’s always been my ambition — the chair, the camera, the set, the actors, the controlled chaos of bringing a story to life in front of a lens. Writing was someone else’s job. Writing was the thing I needed done so I could direct.

So I did what any self-respecting director-in-waiting does: I found writers. Gifted, generous people who could put thought to Final Draft faster and better than I believed I ever could. I asked friends to write for me. What I didn’t know — what I wouldn’t admit to myself for a long time — is that I wasn’t avoiding writing because I couldn’t do it.

I was avoiding it because I was terrified of what would happen if I tried.

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The Real Problem Wasn’t the Page

Here’s the thing about being a creative person who isn’t yet where they want to be: it’s easier to look outward than in.

I came up below the line, working on sets — good sets, bad sets (not pictured), small sets, big sets (definitely pictured)...

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— and I watched people younger than me slide into writing rooms and directing gigs like the doors had been left open just for them. I’d be standing there thinking: I can do that. I know I can do that. Why won’t anyone just let me show them?

Some of that was real. The industry is built in ways that favor certain paths, certain schools, certain handshakes. If you work below the line, you're only ever going to be valuable to producers as that.

I was angry. Frustrated. Entitled, if I’m being fully honest. What I couldn’t see yet was that underneath all of that was something quieter — fear. Fear that if I actually sat down and tried to write something that was mine, from me, and it wasn’t good, then maybe I’d been wrong about myself all along.

So I kept asking other people to write for me. The industry had its walls. I had mine. I called mine collaboration.

Nobody’s going to give a damn about what you want to be until you’re already in motion being it. If you want to work above the line, you have to BE above the line mentally. I know that now. But I couldn’t hear it then — partly because of how the game is set up, and partly because I wasn’t ready to stop waiting for permission.

Eventually, my collaborators moved on — as gifted people do. Talent opens doors, and those doors led them elsewhere. I was left with no recourse.

I had to write for myself.

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The Script That Changed Everything

It was time to graduate from short films to something grander. Thus was born my feature film script, The Crimson Pool. By "born", I mean metamorphosed over many years and drafts.

It’s about Jessica Miller — a young, disenfranchised writer who is broke, blocked, and told by the seasoned author she worships that she's talentless. She breaks into that author's home, finds him apparently dead, and jumps at the chance to finish his unfinished manuscript and claim it as her own. Problem is: he wakes up while she’s drowning in the euphoria of writing again, so she does the only thing that makes sense to her: she takes him hostage.

Jessica doesn’t just want recognition. She’s starving for it. Jobless, houseless, abandoned, and utterly incapable of finishing anything she starts. Her drive isn’t lagging. It’s six feet under.

I wrote that character because I knew her. I was her — minus the breaking and entering. (Probably.)

The Crimson Pool is about the turmoil of making something when you don't yet trust yourself to make it. I didn't realize I was writing about my own fear when I started. That came around draft twenty.

Twenty drafts. (It was probably more.)

Not because I didn’t know story structure. Not because I lacked the ideas. But because every draft felt like standing in front of a mirror that was a little too honest. Around that twentieth pass, something shifted. Jessica stopped doing what I told her and started doing what she needed to do. The script stopped being about me trying to prove something and became about her trying to survive something.

And I realized: that’s the same thing.

Jessica gets through her story the same way I got through mine. Not by maneuvering. Not by gaming the room. By sitting down, alone, doing the work until the noise disappears and all that’s left is something you’re proud of.

That feeling — a first draft done, something real on the page that didn’t exist before — that’s got to be what winning an Oscar feels like. Nobody can take that from you.

The Crimson Pool went on to earn a place on Coverfly’s Summer Reading List (RIP) and now has a full pitch package making the query rounds.

None of that would exist if I’d kept waiting for someone else to hand me the pen.

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What Writing Actually Is (Once You Stop Running from It)

Now I’m three features deep (I think you REALLY dig The Empress of DäGar and The Great Zombie Recess War), working on the next one (TEASE), and I don’t hate writing anymore. It no longer takes me twenty drafts to put the heart behind my ideas onto the page.

The process of finding the words is the process of figuring out what I actually think, feel, and believe. That's how writing became how I connect to myself — and eventually, how I connect to other people.

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If Only I’d Had a Map

I grew up as a curious kid in the Midwest whose world got cracked open by films, comics, music, and books from people who didn’t live where I lived or look like I looked. That expansion made me better. Fuller. Richer. I’ve never forgotten what it first felt like to see a world beyond my own reflected through a screen or a page.

That’s why I genuinely believe the world needs more stories from more perspectives — as many as humanly possible. Not as a talking point. As a lived experience.

Equitable worlds. That’s what I enjoy building. I want to help you build yours, too.

Twenty-plus years in film and television. Sets ranging from The Office and Parks & Rec to The Dark Knight Rises and Thor. Scripts that placed at Austin Film Festival, the Page Awards, and Coverfly. A process built the hard way — through fear, frustration, fury, and about nineteen more drafts than I wanted to write.

All of that forged my process. And now it’s something I can share with you. If you’ve got an idea in your head but don’t know where to start — I brought a map.

Harness Your Fire: For the Beginning Screenwriter

Oh, it may have taken ME twenty-plus years and countless trial-and-error iterations to complete my first solo script. But yours takes thirty seconds to download.

It's FREE. Go get it.

GET YOUR FREE BOOK

It's not a course. It’s not a certification. It’s my actual workflow — from the first spark of an idea to a completed first draft — broken down into steps you can actually follow. It’s what I would have handed myself back when I was asking everyone else to write for me because I was too scared to try.

I don't hate writing anymore, and I don't want you to either. If you have a story you want to tell, I'll do whatever I can to remove any adversity that restricts your voice.

Start writing. Share your process along the way, and let us know with #HarnessYourFire

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If any part of this sounds like the conversation you've been having with yourself — subscribe. I write about the process, the fear, the industry, and what it actually looks like to build something in a world full of no's and not yets.

You won't be alone in it. Trust me.

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