Kenneth Atchity's Blog, page 143

Story Merchant Books: Sell Your Story to Hollywood FREE Until March 16th!!

Dealing with Hollywood High Concept and more! "#1 Writer's Pocket Guide to The Business of Show Business"!





Through the expanding influence of the Internet and the corporatization of both publishing and entertainment, the process of getting your book to the big screen has gotten more complicated, more eccentric, and more exciting.

This little book aims to help you figure out how to get your story told on big screens or small. It’s not going to give you rules and regulations, because they simply don’t exist today. Any rule that could be promulgated has and will be broken. What this book offers instead is nearly thirty years of observation of how things happen in show business, the business of entertainment (better known around the world as Hollywood). Dr. Ken Atchity’s Hollywood experience ranges from writing to managing writers to producing their movies for television and theaters. He’s seen the Hollywood story market from nearly every angle, including legal and business affairs.

Dolphin Boy Fundraiser Screening March 16th to Benefit Lashon Academy

Please Join a Special Screening of  Yonaton Nir and Dani Menkin​'s  Dolphin Boy for Larger Than Life, supporting Israeli kids with cancer and Lashon Academy, The first Hebrew Charter School in the valley.

RSVP Here

Introducing Ken Atchity's Master Class in Storytelling!

For Every Author Who Wants To Master Storytelling



"Our innate ability to tell stories not only makes the world evolve, but is the foundation of great, unforgettable books.


Introducing: Master Class In Storytelling

What you will learn:

    Master the art of storytelling
    What is a story
    What is a storyteller
    How to harness your innate storytelling vocation
    What is the value of stories
    What stories do for us
    What are the storyteller's responsibilities
    What you need to do to create great stories

Who is Ken Atchity?


Ken Atchity is a best-selling author, writing coach and L.A. based movie producer whose accomplishments include

Teaching:

        Former professor of comparative literature and teacher of creative writing at Occidental College and UCLA
        Fulbright Professor at the University of Bologna

Work History:

        Produced nearly 30 films in the past 25 years for major studios, television broadcasters, and independent distribution.

        His documentary special for Discovery Channel, based on the New York Times bestseller “The Kennedy Detail” by Jerry Blaine & Lisa McCubbin, was nominated for an Emmy.

        Has worked in nearly every part of the entertainment and publishing industries.

        Nearly two dozen of his clients have been NYT Bestsellers.

He is also:

        An author who has been on the inside of the publishing industry and knows how it works

        An author of over 20 nonfiction books and novels

        An experienced writing coach who has helped literally hundreds of writers to find a market for their work by bringing their craft to the level of their ambition and vision

And:

        He was a book columnist for The Los Angeles Times Book Review

        He is the founder and co-editor of DreamWorks: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Dreams and the Arts


This Master Class In Storytelling shares a lifetime of secrets learned by, and from, the most successful writers and creative industry professionals globally.


Ken Atchity is uniquely qualified, as a best-selling author and writing coach, to help you understand everything you need to know and do to master the power of storytelling.


    Ken Atchity is the author of these six best-selling guides for writers:


Here's Exactly What You're Going To Get With The Master Class In Storytelling:

    Video Training that will change your attitude
    A Discussion Forum Online
    Fast track material so you are not overloaded with material you DON'T need
    No padding, just what AUTHORS NEED to learn, FAST
    A guide to removing the roadblocks to your success as a storyteller
    A program that will set you up for long-term success
    Access to Full Course Online, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
    You can take this course when you want
    No deadlines for completion
    Additional Support, If You Take That Option
    Please see the list of modules further down the page for even more detail!

Total Retail Value: $78 - for the basic course - BUT YOU WON'T PAY THAT


AND IT'S 100% Risk-FREE!

If MasterClass In Sorytelling doesn't deliver on its promise you WILL receive a full refund, This Is A No Quibble Refund Policy!
Special Pricing When You Order Now

The total value of what you're getting today is $78, for the course. But the good news is you are NOT going to pay that price.

Because I know what it's like to struggle, when you're an outsider in the industry, and because I want to do everything I can to help you succeed, TODAY we're giving you everything listed at a special price of just $39! That's right, that a 50% discount for a LIMITED TIME ONLY.

Order Now!

Claim your copy of this exciting and informative NEW Master Class from Ken Atchity!


Total Value: $78 - for the basic course, but you won't pay that price. Your price is $39.


P.S. Never before have you had such a unique opportunity to have this PROVEN expert take you by the hand and help you get in the right mindset to write great stories.

7 classic books you need to read in 2017

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Winter is finally on its way out, and it's time to start thinking about spring vacations — and the books to read while traveling to the nearest body of water that isn't frozen over.

The phrase "beach read" might evoke images of Harlequin romances or frothy chick-lit paperbacks rather than the Great American Novel, but it's time to rethink what's on your reading list. Some of literature's greatest stories are entertaining and can be read outside of a classroom.

1984

Sales of George Orwell's book, published in 1949, have risen dramatically since Donald Trump's election, with the book hitting the top of the Amazon best-seller list and a theater adaptation slated to open on Broadway in June. Clearly the dystopian novel about Big Brother and the Thought Police is resonating strongly with the American public.


The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The first book in Douglas Adams' comedy science-fiction series follows Arthur Dent, the last surviving man on Earth after the planet is demolished, to make a hyperspace bypass. He embarks on a series of adventures and misadventures with a crew of hilarious sidekicks, including the depressed robot Marvin the Paranoid Android.


The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain's story of the adventurous orphan first published in 1884 offers a scathing satire on societal standards, especially racism. The book has long been the subject of discussion and debate about the language and racial slurs that fill the pages as it narrates the story of Huck and his friend Jim, a runaway slave, who travel down the Mississippi River on a raft.


The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

The 1961 story of "The Teacher Who Changed My Life" may seem tired to some, but Miss Jean Brodie, an educator who declares herself to be "in her prime," definitely changes the lives of a few of her students — although not in the ways one might expect. The "Brodie set" receive a real-life education about love, sex and politics.


The House of Mirth

Few books expose the hypocrisy and social pressures that women had to endure throughout history more movingly than Edith Wharton's 1905 story of Lily Bart. Lily is a well-born but poor woman who struggles to move up New York's social ladder, racing against time as she approaches the apparently unmarriageable age of 30. Her heartbreakingly tragic conclusion causes this book to be a guaranteed tear-jerker.


Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Thomas Hardy's 1891 novel was censored and scandalous when it was first published, due in part to its sexual content. The story of a young woman whose life is shaped by how men treat her, Tess includes addresses rape, religion and the danger of keeping secrets because of societal shame.


Little Women

For those in the mood for something a bit lighter, Louisa May Alcott's story of four sisters growing up during the Civil War is a heartwarming story of family and friendship with a powerful thread of feminism and emphasis on independence published in 1868.

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Pitch A Producer With Ken Atchity At The Dublin Writers' Conference June 23 - 25, 2017

Los Angeles based movie producer with 30 major movie and TV productions created, member of the Academy of Motion Pictures (the Oscars), author of Sell Your Story to Hollywood, The Writers Pocket Guide to The Business of Show Business, and Writing Treatments that Sell, book publisher, previously professor of comparative literature, vice President of PEN, LA Times book reviewer.

Ken will listen and critique a 1 to 2 minute public verbal pitch by you about any story, for print, TV, film. His feedback could change your life. Only ten places are available. Apply early – email: admin@booksgosocial.com after booking your conference place.

SIGN UP NOW – EARLY BIRD PRICING AVAILABLE  

Guest Post: Writers, weird writers and nudity by Jerry Amernic

Writers are a weird group, each one with his or her own particular quirks. Make no mistake, writing is torture, especially fiction, but it’s pleasant torture in which you proceed bit by bit to the end even if the process takes years. Michelangelo was asked how he, at the tender of 24, was able to carve his masterpiece The David. He said it was simple. All he did was take this big slab of limestone and remove everything that wasn’t David.

Easy for him to say, but we can apply that principle to a novel. It’s about the ability to focus. A literary agent once told me the key is to write in ten words or less what your novel is about, and then put those words over your keyboard so every page, every paragraph and every sentence you write is about that.

If it isn’t, cut it.

The manuscript for my first novel Gift of the Bambino was 454 pages when an editor got hold of it. He taught me about “excisions” and with his help we whittled it down to 227 pages. Exactly half! Then it was published.

A lot of this has to do with the writer’s ego. You have to get rid of that when you write, and write for the reader. But every writer is different.

I have to write in silence – for fiction, non-fiction, or assignments from clients. No TV, radio or headset. It’s the same when running; many joggers are plugged into earphones but not me. I like to hear my breathing, the birds, the wind, and if I’m running by the lake the water crashing against the shore.

But writers also have to evolve and that includes technology. I remember making the transition from an IBM Selectric typewriter, which was big in its day, to a word processor and then a computer. Indeed, learning to write on a screen, as opposed to a page, didn’t happen overnight but when it was mastered the writing improved.

On the other hand, I once met Nelson De Mille at a writers’ conference and he told me he writes all his manuscripts on paper in longhand! He doesn’t use a computer. But even in the days before computers writers had quirks.

John Steinbeck did his drafts in pencil and kept a dozen sharp pencils on his desk. His editing was so intense that he always had callouses on his hands.

Truman Capote was superstitious. He never began or ended anything on a Friday, he would change his hotel room if the phone number had ‘13’ in it, and he never left more than three cigarette butts in his ashtray.

Some writers like to write in bed and they include Mark Twain, George Orwell, Woody Allen and Marcel Proust. Ernest Hemingway wrote on his typewriter standing up while Dan Brown of Da Vinci Code fame resorts to inversion therapy in order to relax before he starts writing.

But Victor Hugo was the weirdest of all. He liked to write in the nude! When he was facing his publisher’s looming deadline for The Hunchback of Notre Dame, he had his valet take all his clothes so he couldn’t leave the house.

This is a different type of discipline which I might consider doing myself. But I live in Canada. And it’s winter.



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EQUALITY. NOW MORE THAN EVER! Writers Essays

In the tradition of Dr. Martin Luther King's Stride Toward Freedom and Malala Yousafzai's, I Am Malala, Equality: What Do You Think About When You Think of Equality? presents thought-provoking and compelling personal essays that probe a concept professed to be the very foundation of our democracy--a concept that may even be more vital today than in the past.

From international bestselling author, Anne Perry who asserts we must look within ourselves to our emotions, experiences, and beliefs before we attempt an honest and truthful answer, to Dennis Palumbo, psychotherapist and author, who claims diagnostic labels used in treating mental illness often stigmatize and dehumanize the patient causing clinicians to view their patients in terms of their diagnosis rather than people, and Barbara Abercrombie, writer and distinguished university professor, who explores ageism as yet another form of stereotyping and discrimination in the language we use to describe older adults.

These award-winning and best-selling writers, and twenty-two more, tackle equality across multiple spectrums--racial, social, political, religious, marital, gender--and run with it in surprising directions.

Kia Kiso on "I am honored to have been asked to write about my mentorship experience with Kenneth Atchity for the The Producers Guild of America’s publication." ~ Kia Kiso, Zaza Productions

"I am honored to have been asked to write about my mentorship experience with Kenneth Atchity for the The Producers Guild of America’s publication."

 ~ Kia Kiso, Zaza Productions

Time Management for Writers: The Stopwatch Method for Massive Creative Productivity

Managing your work is a fool’s game because work is infinite. Good work only creates more work; in fact, bad work creates more work too.

So the more you work the more work you will have to do. It’s basic common sense that you can’t manage an infinite commodity.

What can you manage? Time.

You not only can, but must, manage your time because time is all too finite.
They say, “If you want to get something done, find a busy person.” The busy person succeeds in getting things done because he knows how to manage his or her time.

We all have the exact same amount at our disposal: 60 minutes each hour, 24 hours each day, 168 hours each week, 8,736 hours each year. If you put one hour into a project each day for a year, you’d have worked on it for 365 hours—more than enough time to write a book, and a screenplay, and a treatment or two.
“If you place a little upon a little,” explained the ancient Greek almanac writer Hesiod in his Works and Days, “soon it becomes a lot.”


Time Management Should Be EasyWhere do you find the time to get your most important work done every day?

One memorable day in Manhattan I was delivering a broken antique wall clock to my favorite repair shop. As I completed my drop off and turned to leave, I noticed an ultra-modern stand-up clock constructed of shiny pendulums, a different metal each for hours, minutes, and seconds, all enclosed in a sleek glass case. It was simply the most beautiful timepiece I’d ever seen.

Then I realized: it had no hands. At first I thought, No wonder it’s in the shop. It’s broken. But I studied the clock more closely.



No. It was designed without hands. It was a timepiece that Salvador Dali would have been as thrilled with as I was. Time moves in its own way unless we somehow capture it.

It reminded me that time is a free force. It just happens, whether you do anything about it or not. It’s up for grabs. It doesn’t belong to your family, or to your friends, or to your day job, or to anyone but you! What you’re working on at any given moment is how you control it.

The trick is where do you find that free time?—a question busy people are asked regularly. Here’s their secret: busy people make time, for the activities they decide to prioritize. One good way to wrestle with the problem they’ve solved is to ask yourself, “Where do I lose it?” When you find the answers to that question they may shock you.

I ask writers to make a chart of their weekly hours and use it to determine how many hours they devote to each activity in their cluttered, over-stimulated lives.
Maybe you’d be surprised—or maybe not—that most people have no idea where the time goes.

They come back to me with a grand total of 182, or 199, or 82 hours of activity—until I remind them that they, like every other human, have the same 168 hours each week to spend.

Then we get serious and analyze exactly where they’re lying to themselves about the time: forgetting about the endless phone calls with friends, or the true amount of time in front of the television, or the accurate time devoted to the daily commute, or the time doing absolutely nothing but staring out the window. When we get the time inventory accurate most people are surprised at the truth. But truth is the first step to freedom, and managing your time effectively is the greatest freedom of all.

I call it “making the clock of life your clock.” I believe in this philosophy so much I haven’t worn a regular watch for nearly thirty years, despite owning a vintage wrist watch that belonged to my father and an even older pocket watch that belonged to my grandfather. The only chronograph I carry around with me is one that allows me to make life’s clock my clock:a stopwatch.

The stopwatch makes the Spanish proverb, la vida es corta pero ancha (“life is short but wide”) come true.

You can get a free stopwatch app on your cell phone! In fact, most smartphones come with a built-in stopwatch app like the Clock app on iPhones.
The Stop Watch Method of Time ManagementThe stopwatch method of time management is simple. You use it to capture time, to make sure that your Priority Writing Project is getting the amount of attention you want to give it to move it—and your career success–ahead with certainty.
You know that the wall clock, or the one on your wrist or displayed on your cell phone, has a way of running away with your day. You say you’ll work on your Priority Writing Project from seven to eight a.m. and something is certain to come along to disrupt that hour almost as though life were conspiring against you.

What’s really happening is that you’re letting life interfere with your personal time management.

Of course when the interference occurs, you tell yourself I’ll catch up later,or say, “I’ll start again tomorrow and this time protect myself from interruptions.” But over the years we discover that life usually runs rampant over any and all such resolutions.

The stopwatch method works best in a life jam-packed with stimuli and distraction. It allows you to steal time. While clocks on wrists and walls record public time, your private prime time happens only when your stopwatch is running. The stopwatch allows you to call “time out” from the game everyone else is engaged in.

Simply promise yourself you won’t go to sleep at night until, by hook or by crook, you’ve clocked on your stopwatch one hour (sixty minutes) of working on Priority Writing Project.

Turn the stopwatch ON when you’re working on it, and OFF when you get interrupted.

Your stopwatch minutes may be harvested over a six-hour period, or over a twenty-four-hour period. You steal them when you can: waiting at the dentist’s, commuting to the ferry, when your lunch appointment hasn’t shown up yet, when your cell phone dies and no one can reach you until you’ve replaced or recharged the battery, when your date for the evening calls in sick.

It takes a few days to get used to this process, but once you do you’ll recognize the power it gives you over time.

If I could give you a magic pill that guaranteed you would work on your most important goals and dreams in life for one hour each day, would you take it?
Of course! And that’s exactly what the stopwatch method of time management does—it guarantees that your most important work gets done each day if you stick to the plan.
Optimum Attention Span (OAS)How do you know how much time to devote to your Priority Writing Project—or to any activity, for that matter?

That’s a function of what I call Optimum Attention Span (OAS). For some activities, like watching your favorite sports event or shopping, your OAS might be extremely wide; for others, like listening to your boss complain or to your domestic partner nag, it might be miniscule. The trick is to determine what the OAS is for that Priority Writing Project.

At the start of any project, OAS tends to be smaller; as the project gains momentum and begins to appear reachable, your OAS expands. So when you start planning to write that novel, nonfiction books, or screenplay, give yourself 30-45 minutes on the stopwatch during the first week.

But reassess OAS at the end of each week because OAS changes and evolves. By the fourth week you may well be up to an hour and a half—ninety minutes on the stopwatch.
Increasing Productivity with “Linkage”Isn’t it hard to work in fits and starts?

You might very well ask that very good question. The answer is that it’s actually easier to work that way than it is to work without stopping if you employ my time-management technique of linkage, what Hemingway referred to as “leaving a little water in the well.”

Here’s how linkage works. The phone rings, so you have to turn off your stopwatch. But you let it ring one or two more times, taking that time to make a mental decision about what you’ll do when your stopwatch is running again—that is, in your next Priority Writing Project stopwatch session.

And here’s an interesting secret: it doesn’t matter what decision you make when you turn the stopwatch back on.

The minute you make that decision, as you answer the phone and go on from one activity to the next, your mind starts thinking of better decisions than the one you just made; in fact, your mind becomes increasingly motivated to get back to that Priority Writing Project because it knows exactly what it will do when the next session begins.

You’ve created an automatic linkage—that makes restarting when your stopwatch is next running no longer an occasion for blockage.
Instead, you’re fully ready to jump in and get as much out of that next session as possible before it’s interrupted by life’s next distraction.

And, yes, have a desk drawer filled with stopwatches so you can employ a different colored one for each major project you’re engaged with. Or you can use different stopwatch apps on your phone.

The stopwatch method will truly make the clock of life your clock.It’s the magic writing pill.
Dr. Kenneth Atchity (Georgetown B.A., Yale Ph.D.) has been teaching time management throughout the United States, Asia, and Europe for decades.

Books include A Writer’s Time: Making the Time to Write (ebook: Write Time: Guide to the Creative Process, from Vision through Revision—and Beyond); How to Quit Your Day Job and Live out Your Dreams ; Writing Treatments that Sell (with Chi-Li Wong), Sell Your Story to Hollywood: Writer’s Pocket Guide to the Business of Show Business and, with Ridgely Goldsborough, Why? Marketing for Writers . Dr. Atchity’s more than thirty films include Meg, the Emmy-nominated Kennedy Detail, Hysteria, Erased, Joe Somebody, and Life or Something like It.

Companies serving writers include www.thewriterslifeline.com, www.storymerchant.com, and www.storymerchantbooks.com. and teaching sessions can be accessed at www.RealFastHollywoodDeal.com.


 



Free Video Training Course

Oscars: Hollywood Therapist, Dennis Palumbo, on How to Relieve Anxiety Over Losing, Guilt Over Winning

As nominees hit their Hail-Mary cleanses and agents lay the groundwork for post-Oscar quote hikes, the town's army of shrinks is soothing the roiling emotions that lie beneath the just-glad-to-be-nominated miens of Oscar hopefuls. Dennis Palumbo, a Sherman Oaks-based licensed psychotherapist who specializes in treating Hollywood creatives, recalls one memorable Oscar session: "I had one patient, a big-name director nominated for an Oscar, whose psychic predicted he'd win. The day before the show, he told me that another nominated director — a friend of his — was told by his psychic that he'd win. Turned out to be the same psychic. And neither man won. My patient's response? 'Now I don't know who to trust.' " He continues: "We all know that thing where you see the five nominees and then watch the frozen plastic smiles on the faces of the losers," says a sympathetic Palumbo. "I've had patients with that frozen smile and thought, 'It's going to be about six weeks here in the office with this guy.' "

Working in Hollywood is stressful, but when Oscar season rolls around, a heightened wave of anxiety sets in for even the most seasoned veterans. "I have been to a lot of these ceremonies, and each time it feels like I had never done it before. The flashes seem brighter, the carpet seems crazier," says best supporting actor nominee Jeff Bridges (Hell or High Water), who took home the Oscar for best actor for 2010's Crazy Heart. "I still get stressed out at the idea of saying something. My mind overloads."

Bridges is not alone. Whether you're an actor or an agent, the Oscars can bring on a set of anxiety-ridden behaviors, starting with nomination announcements and continuing through campaigning, awards shows and the aftermath. "I have tremendous compassion for people both nominated and not nominated, because it's like getting a report card when you're a kid," says Palumbo. "Some people find that [the Oscars] is the arbiter of how they can feel about themselves."

HOW OSCARS STRESS MANIFESTS IN HOLLYWOOD

'The most common form of anxiety across the board at this time of year is insomnia, says Philip Pierce, a clinical psychologist with Oscar winners among his patients who sees them "waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to get back to sleep over the uncertainty and the stakes." Other symptoms include substance abuse, low-grade depression, disturbed appetite and spending sprees — which can simulate a low-grade version of the adrenaline rush that comes with winning an award. "There's this thing where they just zone out, and it's all across the board — it could be producers, actors, directors — they sit there in front of their computer and just go shopping," says psychotherapist Larry Shaw, who treats patients across the industry spectrum. "[It gives them] control. Whether it's on eBay or Amazon, you stick it in the cart and you've 'won.' "


Illustration by Luci Gutierrez THE BIG PSYCHE DIVIDE: ACTORS, AGENTS AND EVERYBODY ELSE

Nominees who don't spend time in front of cameras, including writers and producers, are typically the most anxious about awards season, according to Pierce. "They're very much worried about the public aspects, talking to people they don't know and being in a strange situation," he says. "My directors, on the other hand, just assume they're going to win."

Actors generally are less stressed about campaigning, though there is the sheer physical exhaustion involved with engaging in endless red carpets, awards shows, junkets and photo shoots. "It seems like there is a lot more campaigning these days," says Bridges. "There ought to be a special award for the best campaigner." But high visibility also puts talent at a greater risk for emotional distress, according to David Levy, a professor of psychology at Pepperdine University. "When you're the actor, you are the product. If you've written a screenplay, you're attached to your baby. If you've directed a film, it's your product. But when you're a performer, you are the commodity. So when you get rejected, it's you." For some talent, "ironically, they have conflicting feelings about being in the spotlight," adds Mari Murao, a Beverly Hills psychotherapist with nominated patients. "A part of them seeks it out, and often nothing terrifies them more."

Even agents and managers have their issues. "It would surprise my creative patients to know how much fear reps have, fear that their client is going to leave them if they become successful," says Palumbo. "Creative types never see their reps as fear-driven. They transfer parental feelings on to them. I can't tell you how many times I've had to say to a patient, 'She's your agent, not your mother.' "
Levy also sees some reps taking their clients' nominations personally. "Part of it is financial. If they're an agent or a manager and their client wins an award, it means more work and a higher asking price, and they're going to make more percentage on the next job." But it's ego-driven, too: "They feel personally let down if things don't work out the way they want them to."

THE AGONY OF DEFEAT

When it comes to Oscar night, Palumbo says some patients ask their families not to watch the broadcast because they can't bear to have them see their reaction if they lose. One A-list patient, nominated for best supporting actress, asked him to "let us use our session to practice her 'good loser' face in case the camera was on her when one of the other actresses won," says Palumbo. (A new low-downtime surgery is also an option; see page 102.) "I suggested we concentrate on her self-esteem issues instead."

Losing sets off feelings of failure and lack of self-worth — "a lot of negative self-talk," says Shaw. But "most of this stuff is beyond your control," cautions Levy. "A lot of this is luck, happenstance. And some of it is politics." Levy encourages his losing clients to talk about feelings, "but certainly not in the public arena." It's an ego issue, he says, "and that's what I try to help them reduce," using therapy to get his patients to not take things personally. "They're too attached to the winning and losing."


THE ANXIETY — AND GUILT — OF VICTORY

Winning a coveted statuette comes with its own unique stresses. The acceptance speech is the star of many a session on the couch. Even confident directors ask, "What if I win and I've got to go up?" says Jeffrey Blume, a licensed psychologist in Beverly Hills who has worked with creative talent for 25 years, adding that he deploys hypnotherapy or deep relaxation to "try to help them imagine going up onstage and practicing while they're relaxed. So when they actually get up there, they can be relaxed."

Some people feel survivor's guilt, that they won and deserving others didn't. "It's hard sometimes for people to take in success and they feel guilty. Their friend or colleague didn't win," says Blume. Adds Pierce, "Many very successful people in the business have the deep-seated fear that they're a fraud," he says, adding that these patients often see their anxiety increasing after an Oscar triumph, "as they believe now they will surely be exposed."

After all the excitement and celebration, post-Oscar blues can be common, followed by stress over ever measuring up again. "I had a writer come in a year ago with their award," says Blume. "He had the anxiety of, 'Now I'm supposed to write another masterpiece and I don't have any ideas.' " Directors might apply extra pressure to themselves "because of the auteur theory — if you are nominated or win an Oscar for best director, you're in the company of Billy Wilder, John Ford, Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, the real heavyweight pantheon," says Palumbo. The sentiment that you're only as good as your last Oscar, says Levy, and the expectations can be tremendous: "How do you top that? For most people, you can't." Levy suggests clients look to past winners and losers to see how they conducted themselves. "This is uncharted territory for most people, but if you look at who has been in that situation, they all have similar struggles, so the commonality in that is helpful." In fact, says Palumbo: "I think it's better to be nominated than to win. When you force the town to up your fee because you've won an Oscar, the expectation is, the next project better be great, or we're being taken advantage of. You're setting yourself up for failure."

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