It All Starts With the Writer

The actress reads a book or screenplay and says, “I want to do this.”

William Goldman, screenwriter of “All the President’s Men,” “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” and author of “Adventures in the Screen Trade”

We applaud her vision.

The editor discovers a manuscript and publishes it.

We salute his taste.

The director, the producer, the financier find a hot property and scoop it up.

We give ’em an award.

I’m not saying these artists don’t deserve their plaudits.

All I’m saying is

It all begins with the writer.

The fun starts with you and me.

Everybody else waits downstream.

Everyone else comes late to the party.

Others may interpret. They may mount, they may discover, they may finance, underwrite, refine, support, reconfigure. They may “bring to life.”

But the material they work with had its genesis with you and me.

At the moment of conception there are only two entities in the room—you and your Muse.

William Goldman said famously in Adventures in the Screen Trade

Nobody knows anything.

Lemme propose an amendment.

Before the writer, nobody has anything.

I wrote in The Artist’s Journey that the artist enters the void with nothing and comes back with something.

A machine can’t do that.

A supercomputer packed with the most powerful AI can’t do that.

In all of creation, only two creatures can do that.

Gods.

And you and I.

Keep this in mind, brothers and sisters, when some agent or manager or producer disrespects writers or the writing process.

Before the writer, nobody’s got nothing.