Your Own Room

April 2017. This was the month my daughter turned 21. It was also the month that I uprooted my life to move to Hollywood, and ended up renting an apartment with JTM - The Crafter - to complete a play I had started in New Orleans a couple of weeks earlier, where I hunkered down for three weeks of intense location scouting and research. Oh, and I was also accepted into the Cambridge Writer's Workshop so there's that.

It's now February 2018. Ten months later, and I've completed the play, a feature script and an outline for a romantic comedy. I've also fleshed out the idea for updating a classic noir film - and finished a big chunk of the research to go along with it. I'm excited, and most importantly, content. This is the life that I've actively charged into. Willfully. Consciously. With intent.


I've had so many ideas cooking in my head for years I was afraid they'd disappear. I have random notebooks and half-finished stories lying around everywhere. One day I caught myself saying, "I could produce that better." The light went on that day. If I can, why don't I? What's stopping you??

They say that people are afraid to start because they're afraid to succeed, or to fail. But that's not true at all. I'm just absolutely terrified of poverty, of losing my house and struggling to eat.  Is that a fear of failure or success? I wouldn't say that I'm afraid of either. I just want to eat. That's a pretty primitive fear. And since I live in the United States of America, I also recognize that unless I'm truly in deep poverty (and perhaps not even then) there's no safety net to help me. So when we talk about taking risks, this one's up there, maybe just behind jumping off a bridge.

Now, the struggle is real. I want to keep writing. I want to continue my research, and to keep traveling and exploring. But I also need to eat. And pay my mortgage, for gas, for heat, all that kind of real life stuff. So my writing has taken a back seat to working 6 days a week for 1/8 of what I used to earn. It's mind-numbing and sometimes awful, but it's an honest dollar. I console myself with the idea that every day I bring in a dollar is a decent day. The bigger struggle is to find the time and the energy and the focus to keep plowing away and not abandon that goal for which I gave up so much.

And I'm realizing one very important thing: that true creators, risk takers, and dreamers need support. We need practical assistance, emotional support and financial backing. This is a reality -- not of today but of all time. The process of creating something uniquely new is always a labor of love and rarely pays the value of the tireless effort put into it. It takes free time to focus on your work. It takes money to buy the raw materials. It takes effort to invest in the research and build the necessary relationships.  Even Jane Austen, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo needed sponsors. Patrons for the arts were considered fundamental to the development and maintenance of culture, of ART. So yeah, I need a patron or two.

As I lie here in bed writing this tonight, I am reminded of Virginia Woolf:  "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."

The personal liberty necessary and fundamental to creating art is - for good or bad - entirely dependent on the means to produce it. I'm fighting hard for my own room. I'm not going to glorify this journey for anyone. If you really want it, you will need to get it. You will need to fight for yourself. And you will have to struggle. Set your sights and get ready to brawl with fate. It's a bloody battle and it's the only way to get out alive.