Reader Question: Would you support your children pursuing a screenwriting career… or try to dissuade them?
Reader question from Jeff:
Here’s an interesting question for you, Scott… would you dissuade your kids from following in your footsteps and going the screenplay/film route, knowing what you know about the biz?
I ask because my oldest daughter (she’s 9) is expressing great interest in what I do and is becoming quite the film fanatic of late…
To underscore… I showed her “Seven Samurai” last weekend and she LOVED it. Which blew my mind. She made the leap from Shrek and Flushed Away and all that to Kurosawa with nary a second thought. I beamed with pride AND shook with apprehension. I’m not sure how I’d handle her shunning Webkinz in favor of Final Draft????
Jeff, it’s a good question. There is so much to enjoy about working in the entertainment business, but as you well know, it is extremely competitive. Thus a person has to have a certain type of mentality / personality to stomach the inevitable ups-and-downs re income, employment, success and failures, etc.
As I mentioned in a previous post, “Movies don’t owe anybody a living.” You can not expect that you will succeed financially in the creative arts.
That said, life is not simply about money. And I would always encourage a person who has talent and feels a creative calling to pursue it. Better to “follow your bliss” — at least explore the possibility of that — than ignore one’s creative self for an entire lifetime.
Two more things:
* First, screenwriting is something a person can approach as an avocation, a path pursued by many, many past and current professional screenwriters until they achieved their break. In other words, you can always work on spec scripts while holding down another job.
* Second, I’ve read several articles in the last few years where corporations are pursuing ‘right-brain’ / creative types. Combined with the emergence of content creators on the Internet, there are plenty of opportunities for writers beyond the scope of Hollywood movie studios.
Perhaps the best thing I’ve read recently in this regard is from Derek Sivers in this post “Compass in Your Gut”:
When I do my 1–2 hour talk to a crowd, I leave this point until the end, because I consider this the most important lesson I ever learned.
For YEARS I let smart people talk me into things that just weren’t right for me. I’ll bet you have, too. I went down wrong paths, doing things I wasn’t excited about, because someone or something convinced me it was what I “should” be doing.
Then I finally figured out something that’s made all the difference, and I’ve been happier and more successful since:
There’s a compass in your gut that points two directions : EXCITING and DRAINING.
No matter what advice anyone gives you — no matter how smart the person telling you what to do — you need to let this compass override your other decisions.
Whatever excites you, go do it.
Whatever drains you, stop doing it.
The rest of the post is well worth reading.
So my advice? Support your daughter’s passion about movies. Open up a Final Draft document for her and let her type away to her imagination’s content. Let her read screenplays to her favorite movies. If it’s something that excites her mind and emotions, and brings her joy, what can be wrong about that?
Maybe she tries to become a screenwriter, maybe not. But if she’s got the movie bug, I say feed that interest. In my view, movies are the greatest form of storytelling humankind has invented. And stories feed the soul.
Besides you must be curious about where this latest twist in your daughter’s interests will take her own life-story. Maybe you do have a budding Callie Khourie on your hands!
How about the rest of you parents? Support your children’s interest in creative arts, even as a profession, or steer them toward safer, more reliable revenue-generating professions?
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