Most of the stuff I've written has never even gotten made. It's par for the course. It's a great living, but it also gets very frustrating.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I like the writing life, but it's not something that always makes enough money.
Writing is hard work; it's also the best job I've ever had.
For me, writing has always come out of living a fairly to-the-bone kind of life, just really being present to a lot of life. The writing has been really a byproduct of that.
Most people won't realize that writing is a craft. You have to take your apprenticeship in it like anything else.
I love to write, so it rarely seems like work - even when it gets arduous.
One of the things I learned from my father, and it did not serve me well at all, was that he was a successful writer, he earned a living. And it was a shock for me to find out that it was actually hard to make a living as a writer.
I read a lot of scripts, and there's a lot of good writing and a lot of OK writing and a lot of crappy writing. And even with the really good writing, it doesn't necessarily speak to me.
Writing, for me, has always been a way of not having a career.
I'm still very blunt: If you want to be a writer, get a day job. The fact that I have actually been able to make a living at it is astonishing.
I was always told you're not going to make much money from writing. You can actually do it. Now I've built a really good, big house out of words.