Musings

A Writers’ Life in 2018: Novel Writing, Freelancing, First Episode of Television

December 3, 2018 by Amy Suto Leave a Comment

It’s December! You know what that means: a lengthy reflection on the year that’s passed, with all the ups and downs and status on my impending carpal tunnel!

Amy’s Best Posts of 2018

Before I dive into the shape of this year and what I’ve been up to, here are some of my top posts of 2018. You can always look in my Most Popular Posts section for an overview of the content I care about.

I didn’t blog a ton this year, because it’s been a crazy year of beginnings, endings, and adapting to new jobs and writing projects.

It was a year of learning new skills (like how to make money as a freelance writer on Upwork) and engaging with my creativity and self-reflection on a deeper level than I’ve done in the past.

Wins and Co-Writing My First Episode of Television

One of the biggest wins of 2018 is getting the opportunity to work in the writers’ rooms of one of my favorite shows, and being able to co-write an episode. (I’m! So! Excited!)

As a policy, I don’t blog about the writers’ rooms I’m a part of in detail because I want to protect the safe space that is that bubble of creativity and its inhabitants. But I will say that everyone who works on CONDOR is a talented writer and truly amazing person. From the top down, it’s a great, supportive environment I wish every writers’ room had. This is the second room I’ve worked in that I feel this way, and I’m very lucky to have had such positive experiences so far.

Other wins this year include:

Being commissioned by an art magazine to write a short story collection (which will be my first set of published prose!)
Learning how to do freelance work when I’m on hiatus in order to pay bills.
Trying new forms of storytelling (like immersive theater and narrative podcasting!) and learning more about these mediums.
Wrote 3 pilots (2 of which were co-written with my writing partner Eric Reese and placed in several competitions and made it into the second round at AFF), a spec episode, several short stories, a small book of poetry, a podcast episode, and am in the home stretch of a novel.
Learning how to be better and mindfulness and de-stressing in a big way.

It’s been a record year of accomplishments, but I think my biggest win was really retooling my mindset and where I’m coming from and being grateful for everything I have and the incredible people in my life.

Oh, and doing Scary Things and having Hard Conversations.

Doing Scary Things in 2018

“A person’s success in life can be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.”
Tim Ferriss

I started 2018 in a low place. I was at the wrong job, in the wrong relationship (with a good person who just wasn’t the right match), and I wasn’t confronting either of those things. It took two months of slow realization of these facts and the decision to make tough changes and have tough conversations to move on to a transformational summer.

In this industry, especially as a woman, it’s easy to fall into a pattern of not wanting to upset people and remain agreeable no matter what. To not cause waves, to just accumulate allies and fear of creating any enemies.

And yes, that ‘quitting my job’ conversation in March went badly. Even though I ended up leaving for something that would benefit my career and was a no-brainer to take, I felt awful about the decision, despite being the right one to make.

I was a nervous wreck before that hard conversation. But both me and the people I was working for were better off because I left — an unhappy employee isn’t going to become happy overnight just because they decide to or are implored to stick it out — and that hard conversation was beneficial for everybody despite being a negative experience.

Same in my personal relationships. I’ve had some hard conversations that have been tough in the moment but ended up better in the long run. Some went better than others. I’m still learning.

That’s the trick, though: it’s these hard or uncomfortable conversations that make us grow. As writers, it’s important that we learn how to be vulnerable, how to communicate, how to be honestly introspective.

Without getting too much in the personal, here, I’ll just say that the rollercoaster from March to now was something that led to adventures, connections, and realizations that have changed me as a person and a writer. It’s because of these hard conversations and decisions that I’m here, and I’m better for it.

There’s a reason why openness to experience is one of the indicators of a creative person: it’s almost impossible to foster creativity if you’re living within the confines of your comfort zone.

If you’re a writer, I challenge you to keep finding ways to have new experiences, meet new people, and explore new ideas.

Onwards to 2019

It’s important for us writers to keep pushing the boundaries of our work in order to write and live authentically.

So, in 2019, I want to continue sharing my stories in new formats (plays! more short stories! narrative podcast!) as well as continuing to write for television so that I can one day run my own show. I’m also going to start sharing some of my short fiction on here more often as well instead of letting it just hang out on my hard drive until I can find a place for it.

Also — I want to thank you all for reading my posts and sending me emails. I love hearing from readers, and it’s nice to know all the yelling I’m doing into the void actually does have an impact on you all. So thank you, and don’t be a stranger!

What about you? What are your writing goals for this year? Share below in the comments, or get at me on Twitter!

Day in the Life of a Freelance Writer

July 27, 2018 by Amy Suto 4 Comments

san francisco cliffs — *cliffs outside of San Fran*

Hello friends! I’m back from doing some travel (San Fran for work, Tahoe for play) and also just moved into a new apartment with my best friend who also happens to cook the best Italian food you’ve ever tasted.

I thought I’d share a little bit about what my days are like as I’m in a weird hiatus period for the TV show I work on, which is more and more the norm for those of us who work on shows with short orders that don’t fit into the traditional, 22-episode broadcast television season.

When I’m not working in a writers’ room, I work on my own projects and moonlight as a ghostwriter. My bread and butter is ghostwriting people’s memoirs and helping them find the right words to tell their stories. I work for fascinating clients I can’t really talk about here, but they include accomplished lawyers, former professional athletes, and people dealing with great loss and tragedy and finding strength through their experiences.

Oh, and I also write blog posts and short stories and op-eds for various companies and publications, so I keep busy. What’s nice is that I only take on work I believe in, and every writing project I’m working on I love. I also get to make my own schedule, which is so important.

Here’s a day-in-the-life of what it’s like being a freelance writer/ghostwriter:

//7am: coffee & planning the day

I have a Google home, so as soon as I wake up I tell it “good morning” and it turns on all my lights, my coffeemaker in the kitchen, and starts playing the news. (Creepy or efficient? Probably both but the faster I can get caffeinated the better my morning is.) It takes about 30 seconds of hearing about how much of a mess the world is in to get me to get out of bed and stumbling toward the coffee that’s waiting for me in the kitchen.

Coffee in hand, I immediately get to work plotting out my day. I use a BestSelf journal to track habits, record what I’m grateful for, and set my intentions and goals for the day. I’ve been using these for the past six months and love the pen-and-paper organization. I always have a mess of projects, to-do list items, habits, and other responsibilities I need to hold myself accountable to get done. It’s important to me to get everything I have to do on paper and out of my head so I can clear up brainspace for the work I have to do. [Read more…]

Writers’ Life: How Your Examined Life Informs The Stories You Tell

June 20, 2018 by Amy Suto 2 Comments

Just like you are what you eat, you write what you live. While I believe that write what you know is a narrow way to approach the vast expanse of stories you could be telling, I do believe that our own experiences create a prism through which we see the world and write about it.

We can’t — and shouldn’t! — spend every hour of our days writing. But the hours we don’t spend writing still show up on the page.

Our examined lives shape our stories

In my writing group, I recently dismantled the seven page outline I had written for my pilot — and rewrote it from scratch, with another character as the protagonist. This is in part because of the badass ladies of my writing group had helped me get to the point where I realized this was the best move, and in part because of what’s been going on in my own life lately. My hero went from the reclusive male protagonist to the live-wire of a woman whose life was a mess but is grappling with her priorities and how she approaches the world. I realized that my male hero was safe to write from: he was a reluctant hero, someone thrown into the story. However, the female character — as vulnerable and messy as she is — is the one who is actually moving the plot forward and putting everything on the line.

After going through a breakup, I realized that I was running from my feelings and the messiness of them — I had also been running from the messy character who was clearly my way into the story all along. So, I got vulnerable, and asked myself why I had relegated her to supporting cast for so long, and realized her story was the most dramatic, even if it was harder to tell.

I say “examined lives” because an unexamined life (aside from not being worth living, according to Socrates) doesn’t provide these kinds of revelations. As artists, we have to question everything. That’s when epiphanies happen: as things click into place after we’ve been moving the pieces around and trying to make sense of it all. [Read more…]

Writing 100 Pages and Second Seasons, #Scriptchat, & Passing the FBI Fitness Test

August 1, 2015 by Amy Suto 1 Comment

It’s been a landmark summer filled with unexpected writing opportunities, a rollercoaster post-production process for CON, and lots of having to explain why my walls are covered in newspaper clippings, red string, and far too many color-coded notecards.

I have 99 problems and all of them are trying to keep these notecards from falling off my wall

Jen (my writing partner) and I are also training to pass the FBI fitness test– and not because we want to join the FBI, but because we want the bragging rights for our Twitter bios. Yeah, we’re cool.

Writing Projects

This summer I wrote a play, two thirty minute episodes of a miniseries (season two of CON!), a short film for a production company, a short web series to go along with our CON marketing campaign, and some short portfolio items. The page count total is somewhere around 100, which was my goal for the summer. [Read more…]

INTJ: One of The Rarest, Loneliest Personality Types [Introverts and Writing]

May 18, 2015 by Amy Suto 19 Comments

I hadn’t put much stock in personality types up until now. I treated them like the kinds of useless personality quizzes you find in the shiny pages of equally-useless magazines like Seventeen.

But when I started reading more about INTJs, I began to realize that the kind of isolation I sometimes felt (and felt unable to express) even when surrounded by people I cared about had roots in my personality type.

16 Personalities says this about INTJs:

It’s lonely at the top, and being one of the rarest and most strategically capable personality types, INTJs know this all too well. INTJs form just two percent of the population, and women of this personality type are especially rare, forming just 0.8% of the population – it is often a challenge for them to find like-minded individuals who are able to keep up with their relentless intellectualism and chess-like maneuvering. People with the INTJ personality type are imaginative yet decisive, ambitious yet private, amazingly curious, but they do not squander their energy. -16 Personalities, “INTJ”

I’ve always been involved in different social groups. In high school I was co-captain of my JV basketball team, secretary of student government, and spent my time making films with friends. At USC, I’ve led different teams of people on various film projects and I’ve been extraordinarily lucky to be able to surround myself with inspiring individuals. On the surface, my life seems unaffected by my INTJ type.

But why are INTJs also perceived as distant? Why can we master career goals in a heartbeat but struggle when it comes to personal relationships? How do INTJs approach writing, and is introversion an advantage?

The INTJ Conflict: Rationalism Vs. Emotion

I’ll be honest: even simply admitting feeling lonely or sad in any context feels like an act of extreme weakness. (Even now I’m expecting my future self to smite me as I type for posting anything remotely personal on the internet of all places.)

Fiction is one thing: writing about con artists who rely on anything besides their feelings to get by is easy since it’s make-believe.

Sort of.

There’s a reason the characters I’m drawn to are lone wolves, architects of grand plans, protective of their feelings since they see emotions as a liability. That’s why I write about spies and con artists and warriors and thieves: these are all people who prize rationalism over emotion to stay alive.

It’s not life or death for me, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find me telling you about past heartbreak or rejection. For the USC screenwriting program, we had to write an essay about our most emotional moment. I wrote about taking care of sick kittens through the Arizona Humane Society’s Foster Kitten program, which I did for three years in high school. I wrote about how one morning I went to go give one of my favorite three-week-old kittens her medicine and found her, cold and lifeless, in her little bed I had made for her. I cried when I wrote that, and never showed it to anyone other than the anonymous decision-makers who decided to let me into the screenwriting program.

It’s a rational decision to keep things from people: I don’t tell people my problems because it’s better to deal with them myself instead of burdening others, which can make me seem distant.

INTJs and Love

When you break things down by logic, they make sense. I can create solutions and navigate tricky situations to get my shows on the air and projects approved, but when it comes down to discussing matters of the heart? Forget it. Human nature doesn’t break down like career goals or steps to solve a problem. I’ll over-analyze the situation to pieces until I’ve given up and moved on, returning to my work.

All roads lead back to my work, and sometimes, it’s hard to see that any other path.

[You guys should also read: Hollywood and the Cost of Ambition]

I’m lucky to be with someone who understands and accepts this about me — and who is as much of a workaholic as I am.
[Read more…]

Writing 100 Pages and Second Seasons, #Scriptchat, & Passing the FBI Fitness Test

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