My friend Walt sent me an email a day or so after our hike.
He had the names and contact information for three writers who all lived in the Salt Lake City area. Two of the writers he knew personally — and they both wrote for a few different reality shows. I wasn’t all that interested in those two guys because I wanted someone with experience in writing episodic television scripts.
That’s what the third guy had.
Walt didn’t know this writer personally, but he said that one of the other writers did, and he told Walt that this guy had a very successful television-writing career in Hollywood.
So I looked up the third guy on IMBd and soon discovered that he indeed did have a big past — including a job as the head writer for a multi-season series that was filmed in Utah. Plus, he had other writing credits in LA that completely convinced me that he would be a great place to start.
I remember trying to figure out how to send this guy an email. He didn’t know Walt, or me (obviously)…and the last date I could find on his IMDb profile was from close to ten years prior. So I remember being afraid to reach out to this unknown writer.
Why did he stop writing for television?
Maybe he doesn’t do that kind of writing anymore, and I’d just be bothering him…
Part of me was afraid of reaching out to him only to experience more rejection and disappointment, while another part of me was desperate to try one more time to keep Roy invested in me and Eloise. My need to try one more time trumped my fear of rejection — like it always does — and a few days after Walt sent me the names, I emailed the writer.
I remember that the writer replied right away. I couldn’t believe it! And even though I recall being so nervous that his quick response meant that he wasn’t interested in meeting with me, my heart was pounding with hope that maybe he wasn’t put off by my long explanation of what I was looking for…
When I opened his email, it was short and sweet:
“Got ur email am open to discussing this project and how I may help u. Call me on my cell.”
I was so thrilled that this writer actually replied to me that I tired very hard to overlook my personal dislike of misspelling things like “your” and “you” just to save two letters, and, his lack of good sentence structure. It was just such a big deal to me that someone who actually knew how to write an episodic script was willing to talk to me! So I immediately sent him a well-worded text message to the phone number he gave me to see when he would like to meet me. He replied immediately…
