You put the nail in the wood, stupid.
Once upon a time, when I was a much younger man, I used to build houses. I was okay at it, I could swing a hammer and drive a nail. I could read a blueprint and heights didn’t bother me too much but I was always shit with the nail guns. I once shot myself through the thumb with one. Sideways, thank God, not into a piece of wood. I was toe nailing a wall and the gun just missed on the second nail but just enough to catch the safety and… Bang! Nail through the thumb.
Off course, you hold your damaged digit up and there’s this THREE INCH FUCKING NAIL shot through it. Which as anybody will tell you is just plain wrong. Then you do the stupid thing and pull the nail out at which point your body, recognizing the breach in your system tries to plug the hole with blood and it all dissolves into a Sam Peckinpah construction film. Also because you are young, you wrap the thumb in paper towel and electricians tape for the rest of the day, cause you can’t lose the pay and you’ve got a family to look out for.
Lucky for me, the nail missed the nerves and any veins and my Tetnus shots were up to date, so my mouth still opens and closes. The nail was brand new and clean, so no infection either. I did however stick to my hammer after that and leave the nail gun to the other guys.
I guess the moral of the story could be, know your limitations but I prefer to look at it as, know which tools suit your hand and leave the ones that don’t alone.
Too often as writers, we try to fit the wrong tools into our hands and the resulting work looks a lot like my thumb did that day, bashed, bloody and full of holes, pissing life blood everywhere. See I write horror and I write thrillers because I know the tools required to build the structures. I tried to do a family comedy a few years back on the urging of my agent and it… Well it was shit, to be frank. See I initially wrote a dark little piece about a family so disfunctional, that both parent leave the marriage on the same day, and the kids are so relieved, they maintain the illusion, just to give themselves a break. I wrote it like a Dimension Film but my agent wanted a Disney film. So the final script after nine drafts looked a lot like my thumb in the end and it really hurt me for a couple of years as far as spec writing goes.
Lucky for me it didn’t hurt the bread and butter writing. Much like Pavlov’s dog, I salivate at the mention of money and pee on the rug with happiness when the money is actually sitting in my bank account. Something my wife isn’t too happy about. Between myself and my autistic son, who really likes to go for distance when he takes a whizz… well, we’ve really got the house covered.
But seriously, the worst thing you can ever do is write something that’s not you. I’m not saying don’t experiment or push yourself. We all need to do that to feel alive. I’m saying don’t commit to a project that ultimately is going to be complete bullshit and drive you insane because it’s not what you do. Tell them to find somebody who’s thing it is, that they want.
I know it’s hard, when there’s money on the table but believe me, you’ll feel better and in the end, they’ll respect you more for saying no, than for just being another hack whore, who took their money and never gave them what they wanted. If however, you took their money and gave them exactly what they wanted and they’re still bitching? Fuck em. Life is too short to deal with amatures with delusions of glory.
Told you I was back.