Thread by @CoreyDeshon, So if you've read this far, you might agree that it's a [...]

So if you've read this far, you might agree that it's a fair assessment to say I knowingly make the journey harder on myself by going out of my way to do whatever I want.

I owe credit to the last 4 years for reshaping the way I value my own time. This just has to be on my terms.

And as luck (or I guess, not-luck) would have it, the thing that attracts me the most to any given idea such that I would want to invest my time in pursuing it is the very same thing this industry seems to fear the most.

Risk.

Again, I'm just here to find out what’s possible.

I’ve come to terms with the fact that I'll take any opportunity to disregard traditional form when storytelling, and have to constantly remind myself not to deviate too far from the path just for the sake of deviation.

But to me, experimentation is what makes filmmaking exciting

I'd rather take a huge swing (even if it means a huge miss) than land somewhere in the middle. The idea that a writer's ability to play by the rules in a compelling enough way for a script to sell as being the sole determining factor to what makes them a good storyteller is...

Ridiculous.

But anyway, that was a really long tangent to say that my spec work is not always the most accessible one could find, as often that's what attracted me to it to begin with.

I also refuse to stick to one genre, and I also write with a writing partner on occasion.

Reading this, you could reasonably draw the conclusion that my approach has almost been anti-rep, and I wouldn’t blame you. Plus, a lot of “how to get a rep” writer advice threads pretty much boil down to “stay in your lane,” and what I ultimately did was just make my lane wider.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand why reps say that when looking for new writers, especially when they’re first starting out, but remember, I'm stubborn and selfish and as far as I'm concerned, fuck that noise, I'd rather see if my way works. So maybe don't take my advice, but...

It's worth saying, as much as I love working in the industry, the combination of its nepotism, predatory practices, and institutional racism make it very hard for me to respect the industry. And I just can’t conform to something I don’t respect. That's why I'd rather do it my way

So you might not want to use my example if you don't feel the same. For me, this even boils down to the types of films that make me excited to be a filmmaker to begin with. They don't conform to the industry standard either.

One of my favorite films is Bela Tarr's Turin Horse.

I can't really fault anybody for being completely disinterested in watching two people eat boiled potatoes and stare out of a single window for two hours as a metaphor for Nietzsche's concept of eternal return, but I would go make that film TOMORROW if I could.

I love Roy Andersson, but can't fault anybody for being completely disinterested in watching visual poems of nearly two dozen characters going about their mundane lives in short contained stories virtually devoid of any plot and shot entirely in tableaus from a stationary camera.

But that brings me back to the notion of "needing to love" a piece of material in order to champion it.

Which, holy shit... that finally brings me back to reps.

See? I knew this was all going somewhere! Yeah...

I can’t fault every rep for not loving the stories I want to tell when the audience who would love them is also very niche. That’s why I’ve happily taken OWAs with more commercial stories, and now even network TV with a writing partner.

That's how I ended up writing every genre.

So to rep me meant to take all of that. To accept that this is who I am, this is what I’m going to be doing with my career, and you can either chose to help me with it or not.

But otherwise… I’m good.

And I do wish more writers saw it that way.

Why not look for the reps who are excited by the very idea of what you bring to the table, by your ambition and your ability to deliver on that ambition, not by the package they can neatly fit you into?

I mean, are they representing you, or are you working for them? Those lines look like they’re getting crossed these days, but that's another story.

So let's go back to the whole white guy thing for a sec...

I won't conclude that those white male reps didn't love my work strictly because they were white males.

I will however say the unwarranted undervaluing of my experience in relation to their white clients is very much because they're white, and fuck that particular noise as well.

But the idea that any given creative expression of a single individual can only be championed if it is first filtered through the lens of someone else's subjectivity is a very weird notion that we've all come to accept as "normal" here, and I just don't get it.

So to those of you whose job it is to judge writers, I ask you this… Must any given work really do nothing more than confirm your own experiences and belief systems of what "is" in order for you to find value in it?

Doesn't the idea of something challenging that intrigue you?

I mean... Wouldn't life get boring otherwise? That's something I'll never quite understand.

A piece of material doesn't have to conform to your subjectivity in order for you to consider it worthy of praise.

Riffing off the song lyric, "You're nobody until somebody loves you," Black Thought offered the retort, "You're nobody until they're speaking highly of you."

So here's the story of how I got a rep...

It's no coincidence that one of the best allies I've met in this industry so far just so happened to be a showrunner who looked past her own preferences at the words before her on the page, and saw a writer she wanted to invest in.

She spoke highly of me to people who listened.

She read my "unmarketable" sample of a genre she typically didn't even like and said, "This is a talented writer. Let's see who else thinks so." Within 48hrs she sent my work to a studio who offered me a development deal and to more than one agency to find the "right" rep for me.

Yeah. Now I have a team of five agents.

And this next part has to be a coincidence but... four of them were the first female agents to ever read me, and coincidentally the first to ever ask me what else I was working on. And boy did I have an answer to that motherfuckin question

After 20 min of explaining what I'd been up to for the last 8 years, and what I planned to do with the next 8, they offered to rep me on the spot. So did the next two places who heard it.

So I have the right reps now.

The moral is... just do you. Maybe one day it'll be worth it

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