Not Good, Not Bad

A few weeks ago, I put my pages in the hands of screenwriters and producers, hoping someone might find something worth keeping, or at least not recoil as if the words themselves burned. The response was the same as it has always been.

I am not the genius I once allowed myself to believe.

I am also not the fraud I fear I am in the quiet hours before dawn.

That leaves me in the most uncomfortable place possible. The middle. The place with no mythology to hide behind.

The only thing it really means is that the ache never went away. It just learned how to wait.

I have started to see my work differently. Not as some grand vision misunderstood by lesser minds, but as a wounded thing I once carried in from the cold, fed with scraps, and then left sitting in the corner long after I forgot why I brought it inside in the first place.

People say you should write the story only you can tell. The one that leaves its mark on you. The one that stains your hands every time you try to hold it.

That advice made more sense before the world began choking on the same stories, over and over. Before everything needed a label before it could be loved. Before originality became something measured against existing IP instead of lived experience. There was a time when nine out of twenty-five films felt like they were reaching for something new. Now it feels closer to four, and even those arrive half-exhausted. The rest barely draw breath before they are buried under the next announcement.

The ground shifted while I was still digging.

Now the landscape belongs to faceless giants circling one another, waiting to see who will grab the last edible scrap. Nobody takes chances anymore. Nobody risks what little leverage they have left. If your story has not already proven itself somewhere else, you are not invited in.

Given that reality, it makes sense that stories about lost brothers, absent fathers, gentrification, grief, and the quiet violences of ordinary life do not spark much hunger. Nobody lines up for them. Not even when they are dressed up and renamed.

Still, I cannot pretend the blame lives entirely outside me. If my scripts truly carried the spark I want to believe they do, someone would have noticed. Agents would have called. Managers would have followed up. Even a stranger might have reached out. Instead, my phone stays dark.

I missed the mark. Not for the first time.

That happened because I let the early attention go to my head. One script did well. It picked up awards. The next ones followed closely enough that I began to believe my own story. I told myself the door would open if I kept writing, that eventually I would walk through it like I belonged there.

That belief led me right back to the beginning, staring at the same wall with fewer illusions left to cushion the impact.

Now my only real goal is not to lose whatever spark remains. It feels fragile. Built on sand and old regret. My mind resists as I reach beyond the familiar ache of small towns and personal sorrow, testing action, horror, thrillers. Anything that might smuggle a real story through while no one is paying attention.

I told a friend it feels like I have been slicing cucumbers, arranging them neatly on a plate, then acting surprised when nobody wants plain cucumber. Maybe the move is to toss them into a bowl, add heat, add salt, call it a salad, and see if anyone is hungry enough to try.

You have to make the thing look like something someone might desire. Or at least something they will not reject after the first bite.

Part of me still wants to insist that people do not understand. That I am meant for something bigger. That the work deserves more than it has received. That voice still shows up.

But another part of me is starting to accept that wanting something does not make it lighter. Maybe the work ahead is heavier by design. Maybe carrying it will either make me stronger or finally break me.

Either way, this is the work now.

As a writer.