As you can tell by the title, this is my story. There is actionable advice here, I promise, but I need to go back a few years because where I failed is just as important as where I succeeded. So let me start back in college…

The second script I ever sold was to a studio with an A-List actor attached through his producing deal on the lot. The lots were full of producer deals back then. My agent actually hated this script and told me to put it on a shelf somewhere and pretend it didn’t exist.

My belief is the WGA is here just for this very purpose. To protect writers when powerful forces try to impose something unethical on us because we are not powerful enough individually to fight back.