Category: Productivity

…Especially if we are, or want to be, writing TV:

by Leslie Schapira

Growing up, I was a “winner.” Not that I was particularly special or talented; I just happened to be part of a generation that, as the stereotype had it, received trophies for everything from tying our shoes to brushing our teeth. In school, we were promised that as long as we tried, we would succeed. But now that I’ve entered adulthood, the rules have changed. Job competition and fewer opportunities have made those instantaneous wins hard to come by. And for the first time, I’ve had to come face-to-face with a word that was rarely spoken when I was a kid: failure.

If I had known the obstacles that awaited me in the real world, I wouldn’t have been so quick to race through college. But I did, believing that if I took the right classes, made the right grades and got a head start on a writing portfolio, my dreams of becoming a TV writer would turn into reality. I graduated early, networked like crazy, wrote every night and day, took random freelance gigs and waited for any window of opportunity to crack open. Then, four years later, through the grace of a godlike mentor, I was invited to join the writers’ room of a network TV show in L.A. It was the chance of a lifetime. read article