How to be luckier

I’ve talked about luck on here before.  Mostly, I think I've expressed my own belief that luck can play a role in a person’s (or writer’s) success, but only to a certain extent.  I think it’s one thing to get a lucky break, but quite another to take that lucky break and make something substantial out of it (let’s just say, I’ve seen plenty of people get “lucky” and land amazing jobs…only to be fired shortly after because they couldn’t handle the responsibilities).

They shoulda had one of these babies!

However you might feel about luck, I don’t think anyone would say they DON'T want to be lucky.  But how can a person "be luckier" (an oxymoron)?  Lifehacker ran an article yesterday called "What Lucky People Do Differently Than Unlucky People" that describes a psychological experiment I recognized immediately because it also appeared in Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers a couple years ago (see, I told you to read it already!).  Go ahead and read it again, though.  The experiment involves two groups of people, one that considers themselves "lucky" and one that considers themselves "unlucky."  Each group is asked to count the number of photos in a newspaper.  The lucky group, on average, completes the task in seconds while the unlucky group takes minutes.  This isn't due to the lucky group's superior picture counting skills, but due to the fact that most saw a message on the second page of the paper that said to stop counting and gave them the total number of pictures.

In other words, the lesson appears to be that lucky people catch a break (in this case) because they are more relaxed about the task and not so focused on one narrow thing that they missed a better opportunity.  This is a little hard for me to swallow.  After all, successful people have specific goals and get things done and I worry sometimes that if I don’t stay focused on specific tasks (like finishing a script) that I won’t finish anything.

But, I think there’s a balance to all this.  Like I said before, getting a lucky break and having success after that break aren’t necessarily one in the same.  Maybe it’s best to think about this luck stuff not in terms of tasks you WANT to complete/will be beneficial to you as a writer to complete (like writing your dang script) but tedious tasks you DON’T WANT to complete/don’t make you a better writer (like searching for a job, networking, and counting pictures in a paper).  So maybe the best advice is, be more relaxed in networking situations and don't try so hard to just pass your script along, and you might have the good fortune to make a friend who will help you more than a casual connection.  Or, stay open minded in your job search instead of focusing on one specific job or bust.  Or, just win the lotto already if you’re so lucky, jeesh.

How do you become a successful writer?

I was talking to a group of industry peeps recently and we were debating how much talent, hard work, and luck all play in a person’s success.  There were dissenting opinions, but I was of the belief that all three were important to differing degrees and sometimes one can masquerade as another.  I might say “Oh, Jane is so lucky she got a writer’s assistant job this year,” but the truth is, Jane worked for 4 years as a PA busting her butt and it was the connections she made doing that job that got her the better job.  That’s not to say luck didn’t play a role…maybe Jane was lucky her PA job was on a show that didn’t get canceled after 5 episodes.  In the end, I’m of the opinion that luck exists, but it’s what we do with it that really matters, we’ve got to take advantage of lucky breaks (and know that talent and hard work are what will keep us employed after we get those “lucky breaks”).

Anyway, luck aside, all that talk about success made me want to write today's post, and wouldn’t you know, someone way smarter than me, Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D. wrote an article for The Huffington Post I recently saw titled, "9 Thing Successful People Do Differently." Read the article, and read below to see some applications of what the article is talking about, as it might apply to success as a writer.

From Charlie Sheen's personal collection.

 1. Get Specific

I actually talked about this before when I mentioned my dislike for vague New Year’s Resolutions.  Give yourself a specific writing goal: “I will finish that zombie apocalypse screenplay by April” or “I will write that Mad Men spec to submit to the ABC Writing Program this year.” 

2. Seize The Moment To Act On Your Goals

In  that same old post mentioned above, I also talked about this when discussing whether writers should write everyday.  What this point is basically saying is that you need to take your free time (how much or little you have) and get to writing.  Tell yourself specifically, I will write for 1 hour after I get home from work, everyday…and do it!

3. Know Exactly How Far You Have Left To Go

This is all about monitoring your progress.  My Significant Other suggests dontbreakthechain.com as a good visual motivator to track that you’re doing that writing you promised, maybe you could also make yourself a spreadsheet or something that counts down to how close you are to being finished on that new script (i.e. 50 pages down, only 50 more to go).

4. Be A Realistic Optimist

This just means that we need to get it through our little baby skulls that this industry is tough (as if we didn’t know) but I think I know a person or two who got discouraged and quit when they didn’t find instant success, so I think there is something to this.

5. Focus On Getting Better Rather Than Being Good

I think this is about understanding that this is a journey not a destination (or something new agey, like that).  In other words, don’t think you’re going to work and work and one day wake up and say “Hey, I’m a great writer!” know that you can always improve your writing…I think having that sort of willingness and humbleness helps baby writers improve (instead of getting offended by notes or stubborn about changing the way they do things).

6. Have Grit

The article describes this as “a willingness to commit to long-term goals, and to persist in the face of difficulty” so I guess it’s like number 4 in that no matter how many rejections your get, you should know that this wasn’t going to be easy, and just keep trying to improve…baby steps.

7. Build Your Willpower Muscle

This can be summed up as, “You want to be a writer?  Then finish your damn script already instead of watching repeats of Jersey Shore!”

8. Don't Tempt Fate

This is kind of the opposite of number 7 in that it’s saying, "Don’t burn yourself out."  Don’t try to write that novel, spec, pilot, and screenplay all at once.  One thing at a time...if you have Writer’s ADD like me, this is tough, but important.  While I don't think I ever worked too much on so many things to the point I “burned out” I definitely have spread myself too thin between too many projects and ended up with a bunch of half finished stuff.

9. Focus On What You Will Do, Not What You Won't Do.

When you focus on the negative all you think about is the negative: “Don’t smoke that cigarette, don’t smoke that cigarette...” leaves you obsessed with smoking that cigarette.  So, I guess for this, instead of thinking “Don’t watch TV, don’t procrastinate, don’t, don’t don’t…” focus on the stuff you DO want to do “Write for an hour after work.”

Also, while I don’t subscribe to/haven’t read The Secret or most self-improvement type books, I think one good thing I have heard that I guess the book mentions is putting out what you want into the universe (i.e. tell people what you want).  Makes sense to me (in a non-magical non-secretive way).  Who’s going to send you job offers or read that new script you wrote if they no one knows that's what you need?  The last time I was looking for a job, I emailed a bunch of former coworkers and put it up on Facebook, and guess what, people wrote back to me!  And not just the typical former coworker people…random people...from high school...who don’t live in LA but had friends of friends who worked at studios...and yeah a couple people sent me job offers.  Now, don’t abuse this practice by soliciting yourself too much (or posting a job ISO on a huge tracking board) you’ll just annoy people to the point of ignoring you, but do put yourself out there.  Sometimes if you want something, you just have to ask for it.