I am a regular train commuter. Once seated, I immediately take out my laptop, get my earplugs out to listen to very loud music, and start working inside this blessed ‘quiet time’ (a bit of a paradox, I admit). This ritual is not for my paying-the-bills job. No, it is only for my passion work: writing my latest screenplay.
I immediately engross myself into my characters’ lives, listening to their words, watching them act and react. You know the feeling? Nothing much exists then, beyond the screen of your brain…
Except that this time, I felt something off. A presence. Over my shoulder.
I looked up, annoyed. What the…?
A young lady was standing there, eyes wide, cheeks blushed, clearly shy but irresistibly driven to talk to… me?
‘Are… are you a screenwriter?’
I blinked, astounded by the question.
***
A lot can happen in just one blink. Memories flash.
Back in late 2024, when I decided to attend Chris Jones’ Talent Campus at the Ealing Studios.
Chris is indeed a cunning character.
A director himself, he knows firsthand all the roles in the TV and cinema industry, including the ones where everything begins: with the screenwriters.
Strange folks, these ones.
Introverts with a desire to share. Writing magic, hoping for it: to be discovered without having to set a foot away from their pencils, typewriters, keyboards (tick the box of your generation – all of them are acceptable too).
When I read Talent Campus’ program, I was mainly interested in the speakers: people who deliver insiders messages and tips; the ones you’ll have to mull over for maybe, later, someday, take whatever small step ahead your inner barriers will permit.
But here is where Chris is cunning: this is a trap. His most important lesson in Talent Campus lies entirely elsewhere, at a level writers of all kind recoil from in sheer horror: the oh-so-scarry networking phase.
Why? Because it has not only to do with the dreaded others. It has mainly to do with self-confidence.
You have to be bold to walk a room to meet total strangers, expecting them to be friendly, to actually become friends (Spoiler alert: Talent Campers have since become a group of colleagues and friends). Is it not worse than glass-walking? Even fire-walking? Having a saucer-size velvet black spider gently crawling over your open palms? (Personally, my instinct would have been to smash the critter — but that would have spoiled the show, wouldn’t it?)
If you find the strength to face external fears, why not the inner ones? The infamous “impostor syndrome” is not so much about how people may see you, as the way you allow your own reptilian brain to think about yourself. About what you want to be. Truly. Not only bragging about it inside, but showing it outside.
Broken glass, 1600 °C ambers, tarantulas… OK. But these are once-in-a-lifetime experiments. What happens in real circumstances… when you have a blink of an eye moment to fight your self-deprecative instinct and react?
***
‘Are… are you a screenwriter?’
The young lady expected an answer. So did the other passengers around, their ears pricked up by her question.
I blinked.
And then I replied: ‘Yes, I am.’
