We all struggle with impostor syndrome. It's difficult to love something that doesn't love you back. If you're not among the lucky (and extremely talented!) few who get to make a living at writing, you've got to make peace with that and either keep going or give it up. Writing is torture enough without beating yourself up. So I generally don't.

There are all sorts of aphorisms out there: writing is something one is "born" to do, it's in the blood, it's not just a passion but a compulsion, a basic need for a "true" writer, like food and air. I don't think it's any of these things, but I wouldn't tell anybody they were wrong if that's what they think. Whatever gets you through.

Writing is a problem that needs to be solved. You're working on a story, and you have an idea of how it could be, how it should be, but you can't quite get it there, so you try expanding this subplot, or reimagining that character, and you write and write and think about it while you're doing the laundry or in half-sleep two hours before you need to wake up, and you finally step back and see what you've got, and sometimes it's better, hopefully most times, but even though it's better, sometimes you've created another set of problems in solving the first set. So back you go.

I really like Walter Mosley's answer to the question: how do you know when the thing is done? He does pass after pass, fixing everything he can along the way each time. When he does a pass and can't find a fix even though there are still problems, the thing is done. That's about as accurate a description of writing as I've read. Mosley is a master. Read Mosley.

I love the problem-solving work of creating a story. So I've been doing that most of my life. I've been paid to write but have also done all sorts of other things to pay the rent, retail jobs, bookkeeping, coding. I had a brief detour in music and made a little money at that. But I came back to writing eventually. Narrative fiction at first. But I'd always loved movies and wanted to try my hand at screenwriting, so wrote a script and sent it to Hollywood. Some accident of encouragement made me move to Los Angeles 20 years ago. I decided to stay and give filmmaking a go.

I've done almost every job there is in the film business, from screenwriting to set design to prop building to line producing to directing and producing to editing, vfx, sound design, and finally sales as a sales agent for a company I founded, Prolific Pictures. I don't do everything well. But I don't do everything badly. I don't like aphorisms but I'd say there is such a thing as a jack of all trades, master of SOME. I think every indie producer probably fits that description.

But my core is writing. Recently I began self-publishing novellas based on a near-future, hard-boiled, neo-noir, detective mystery story world I call Peaceable Kingdom.

Below are some things I've written. Some are quite old from my fiction days just out of grad school. Most are film-related. Hope you enjoy something here!