When Does Giving Up Give Back?

“It feels like you’re skirting around it, but you’re not saying it.”

My screenwriting coach was onto something.

I had been telling her about my frustrations with Stargazer, my current screenplay.

It’s a psychological thriller set in the Mojave desert.

I had worked on it for a couple of years, and I had hoped to take it to market this year.

I loved it.

My coach did not.

Now art and craft can be a subjective thing, but screenwriting is one which needs approval from lots of people with lots of money.

There are other factors, like trends, timing and right project / wrong person, but I pay my coach to tell it to me as she sees it.

And she saw my screenplay wasn’t market ready.

Which hurt.

A lot.

Now of course I could have sent it out anyway and taken my chances. But once a screenplay “does the rounds” and doesn’t find a buyer, it can be almost impossible to get the right people to consider it again.

So I had one shot at a great first impression.

I loved my story too much to shortchange it.

So what was I “skirting around and not saying?”

That I was thinking of giving up on this story and moving onto another.

“Giving up” is not in my vocabulary, which is why I couldn’t bring myself to say the words.

But I made an argument anyway as to why I should.

I had written many versions.

I had done my best.

I had thought this was “the one.”

So my coach pointed out that I could come back to it another time with a less emotional attachment.

I agreed but inside doubted I ever would.

I had attacked this story from so many angles that I was convinced I had already exhausted all the possibilities.

Nope, this was to be put down to another big step on my screenwriting journey, extra skills acquired, new lessons learned.

This screenplay was burnt toast.

It was time to trash it and move on.

I announced that I would start a brand new screenplay about twin droids on a moon station.

I left the session surprisingly lighter than when we started.

I had put a lot of weight on Stargazer’s shoulders, and now that I had lifted it, I had also taken the load off me.

I had let it go.

And then magic happened.

That very night as I lay in the bath, the story I had just let go of found its way back to me…

A much simpler way of telling the story almost completely unveiled itself in my bath-steamed brain.

I grabbed my phone and dictated these “notes from heaven” for a full ten minutes.

Then I lay back and went over what had happened.

I had set my story free and it had come back when it was ready.

And I was waiting with open arms when it did.

And the bonus?

I had stood on the precipice of losing faith in my ability to write a great movie.

I hadn’t given up…

I had let go.

In return it had given me the major story moment in the new version of the movie…

My main character’s pursuit of a missing boy takes him to the edge of a deep, dark crevice in the rocky desert.

He has a choice: turn back and save himself, knowing he had done all he could without killing himself, or…

He could jump into an unknown blackness with the chance of saving a boy’s life.

He could let it go, or he could keep bashing his head against a wall.

So…

What does he do?

Well, I’ll leave you to watch the movie to find out.

All I know is, by understanding my own need to let go of control, I freed up Stargazer’s hero to tell me how he wanted his story to be written all along.

He may have been on the brink of eternal darkness, but he always kept his eyes trained on the stars above. ?