Wrapping up the cowriting session early today. Enjoy your day & REST up.

You believed in it. You wrote draft after draft. You pitched it, queried it, and entered it in contests. And nothing. At some point, belief becomes stubbornness. The industry isn't rejecting you; it's rejecting this specific project at this specific time. And that's okay. Some projects will never be made. But that doesn't mean they were wasted. A great unproduced script is still a great sample. It still proves you can write. It still opens doors, just not the door you originally aimed for. The danger is putting all your eggs in one basket. One script. One idea. One dream project. If that basket breaks, you're starting from zero. So ask yourself honestly: Is this project moving forward, or am I just moving in circles? Your answer determines what comes next.

A decade ago, my niece — who is hard of hearing — led me to produce a horror short about a deaf child whose mother was possessed. It was deeply personal. And it opened my eyes to something the industry still hasn't fixed. Stories centering differently abled people are rare. Hiring differently abled actors and crew is even rarer. We live in a world full of people who look different, move differently, and experience life differently from us — yet we keep writing characters who only mirror our own experience. That's not just a missed opportunity for representation. It's a missed opportunity for better stories. I challenge you: step out of your comfort zone. Include a character who is integral to your story, whose life is drastically different from your own. Do the research. Talk to people. Get it right. You'll be surprised by what it does for your story — and for the community of people who finally see themselves on screen. Who's the character you're not writing because you're afraid to get it wrong? Drop it below. Let's figure out how to write them right.

This is where scripts get sharper. Bring your scene, your act break, your logline, or that problem you've been circling for weeks. Live feedback from peers who understand what you're building. Not surface-level praise. Real notes that move your project forward. If you've never joined, today is your day. If you've been before, you know the value. Either way, show up ready. See you 2 hours.

We're drilled to "show, don't tell." But sometimes telling is exactly what your scene needs. When to tell instead of show: - When the event is too traumatic or graphic to depict the character recounting it often carries more emotional weight than the visual ever could - When the backstory is complex but the present moment is urgent a few lines of exposition keeps the story moving - When the telling itself reveals character how someone describes an event shows who they are, what they remember, what they omit - When restraint creates mystery letting the audience imagine the horror often lands harder than showing it Think of the opening of Jaws. We don't see the shark attack. We hear about it. The telling builds dread the showing would have diminished. Every conventional rule in screenwriting has a time when it needs to be bent or broken. "Show, don't tell" is a guideline, not a law. The question is always: what serves the story and the audience in this specific moment? Do you have a scene that tells instead of shows? Drop it below. If not, try incorporating this in your next scene or script and see what happens.