T-Minus 9 Days: How This Will End

Some ground rules today.

This website has three end conditions.

By end condition, I mean if any of the following events happens, the story this website tells will be finished. And I stop updating the site.

1) I Get Paid.

I sign some papers with a studio, and get paid to do exactly what I'm doing now. Everyone seems to assume that selling a screenplay, or being hired for an assignment, immediately precedes eating gold-plated sushi off of naked Japanese models. This is not true, because:

• a) After taxes, agents' fees, lawyers' fees, and Writer's Guild dues, you have a lot less than you thought.


• b) You simply don't know where or when your next dollar is coming from. It could be months, years, before you get another gig.

So I don't forsee my life magically changing in the event of earning a substantial sum of money. In fact, I think I would say that the magical change is happening. Right. Now.


2) I Go Broke.

Naturally, I get a lot of questions about what happens in this scenario. I was talking to my mom about it, and I was telling her that I'd probably move back into my folks' home for a while. Just long enough to finish whichever script I'd be working on at the time. I'd get to help out at my mom's shop, take walks with the dogs in the woods near the house. It'd be nice.

But my mom said, I've got a better idea. Why don't you stay in your dad's apartment in Shanghai when he's not there? Wouldn't that be cooler?

And I was like, daaaaamn, mom. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree in the Lo orchard.

After finishing that last script, I'd return to Los Angeles, and start knocking on doors. I'd probably have to get a particularly unfulfilling job in order to make ends meet at that point. But on the other hand, if all goes well, I'll have three brand new screenplays to show. It doesn't sound bad.

My friend Brian wanted to know about my contingency plan, and I told him the above. He said, "This is NOT a contingency plan." But in my view, when you make a contingency plan, you're preparing yourself for failure. Which is not necessarily a bad thing to do, as long as it doesn't distract you from preparing yourself for success.


3) A Scenario I Haven't Thought Of.

This is most likely to happen.

[ Up Next: How I Saved The Money ]