How To Begin

Rights, liberty, the common man? Mr. Jefferson, with writing like that, you will never be published.

At TSA, we are constantly receiving inquiries from people who tell us that they have a great idea for the next award-winning film.  They just need someone to write it.  Here is the thing, it is not from ideas that great films or books or articles are created.  It is in the execution of the idea.  An idea is just that, floating around in idea space.  It becomes something special when it is captured on paper or a computer.

I have written four novels (five if you count the one I re-wrote from an adult story no one understood into a youth/children's anyone can comprehend) and over thirty screenplays.  Every one of them started out the same.

Here is the secret to writing, you sit down with a computer, a typewriter (if those still exist) or an old-fashion pencil and paper and you begin to write.  If the idea takes shape, you might have something.  If it does not, it was just an idea.

I heard the story of the guy who always wanted to walk the Appalachian Trail.  He finally strapped on a backpack and started out.  After the first day, he went home.  There is one thing he knows he does not or cannot do.  Next...?