Crippling Doubt & Giddy Enthusiasm

I've been reviewing my old writing journals. It is amusing to see crippling doubt trade blows with giddy enthusiasm over individual writing projects as well as my entire calling as a writer. Last year's journal tells of my Hollywood internship. The hardest and best part of the job was writing reviews (or what they call 'coverage') of the scripts that were submitted to us. My opinions (and how persuasively I wrote them) helped determine if scripts advanced up the ladder. I could read a script and write four pages of good coverage in about half a work day. The bosses asked a lot of me but they valued my opinion.

Then, on my last day, I submitted my best script, a theme-park park comedy called AMUSED. I went home and checked my email hourly for two weeks. I envisioned them writing, "Matt, we love Amused!!! Dare we call it genius? We have forwarded it to Judd Apatow's agent--who loves it!--and would like to meet. When can you come to L.A.?" I pictured walking through the production company offices on my terms; not to Xerox seven-hundred page books and make coffee but to talk million dollar deals.

Then I finally got the email response on what was already a nerve-wracking day. I was preparing to do an open mic; I made such a clown of myself at the last one that it took me a year to do another. I opened the email with my schedule book in hand. It was four quick sentences, thrown off with little care and what seemed like a cursory reading of the first five pages of my script. The carrot I'd been chasing for a year was rotten. My blood, sweat and tears had resulted in them thinking my best script was an offensive, pointless piece of crap. Or so it seemed. I wrote this poem:

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REJECTION SLIP

When the voice of the last artist is finally silenced, the world will end.
Without revelation or second chance.

Just the ash of a dead fire,
a line of smoke,
and the smell of burnt garbage.

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That's what I think about the importance of the artist.

I kicked ass at the open mic, by the way.