Take 57 - Showrunner Vaun Wilmott, Dominion, Jack Ryan

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Any of us who've been in it for long enough, our entire career has been littered with jobs that we didn't get, projects that we thought were gonna go for sure, dozens of unproduced scripts literature.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

All of us are running into both major and minor failures in Hollywood every single day.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

For every success, there is means, sometimes even years failure. This is one of the only businesses I can think of where failure is the default.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

That's the meaning we have to be able to persevere. Like everything in our business here is gonna be council.

SPEAKER_02 0:43

I was being told by my manager that it's yours to lose, and I promptly lost it. And I remember thinking like, well, that's it for me. I blew my one big shot. What I've realized from that moment is it's never one big shot. There will be other shots.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

Welcome back to Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss, and uh it's we're back again. Uh no, it's still not actually in Los Angeles. Noah, you're you're at the back end of what must have been an exhilarating but tiring couple of weeks down there in Hawaii.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Yep, I'm packing up my bags and about ready to head back to Los Angeles. I'm super excited to see my family. And it was it was great being on set, but it it really is takes a toll on you after a few weeks. And I hope that doesn't sound you know overly uh spoiled because it's a dream job, but it it it was a long, exhilarating, exciting, exhausting two weeks where I am very happy to see my boys and my wife uh uh later time.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

Yeah, I mean, I guess, you know, we've last week Patrick talked at great length about the sacrifices people have to make. Um I don't think people realize the sacrifices uh podcast hosts have to make as well. So while Noah's swanning around in Hawaii doing, you know, doing his job, I had to go to Chuck E. Cheese for his son's birthday party uh to fill in for him. So um we all have to make sacrifices. It's it's a tough industry.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

I I my son very much appreciated having uh the the the less handsome, less fatherly, less uh interesting version of me at the Chuck E. Cheese's birthday party. But uh no, that that's actually something this is the first time I've ever experienced was being away from uh what my child on his birthday. And it, you know, again, we we we got a little bit into it on the in the Patrick episode. Uh but I will um but yeah, about just the the the the the the feelings you get and the sadness you get when you're away from your family, and and this is the type of industry that we're in where sometimes you have to travel. And you know, and it's a dream, and and then there's some of the realities, which is you know, a lot of zoom calls.

SPEAKER_00 2:55

Yeah. You actually missed that. Chuck E. Cheese Pizza is weirdly better than I remember it from pre-pandemic. Maybe they've got new uh new chefs there. Anyway, um, so last week's episode was a really interesting one. I think Noah and I are always intrigued as the people who are listening to this podcast, and a lot of it, because Noah is uh very proficient at Twitter, and that's where this all started, in a way, and a lot of our guests come from there. There's always a part of me that thinks it's the people who follow Noah on Twitter who are our listeners, but Patrick's not as uh high profile on social media as some of the guests that we've had who've got you know 100,000 followers and so on. So, in fact, he's not on social media. So, you know, the episode didn't have great play on social media, as it were, but I had no correlation to the numbers. I'm delighted to see that actually we had one of our one of our best weeks in terms of numbers. So I don't know who you are who are listening to this podcast and where you're finding us, but it's obviously not just on Twitter, but please keep finding us because we rather enjoy you listening to us. And obviously, I don't think we've plugged the whole please don't forget to review us thing because it actually that definitely helps with the numbers, which makes it easier for us to justify getting more high-profile guests on. So thank you for your continued listening. Um, and thank you for those who listen to us who don't have to also put up with Noah's tweets.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

Uh and you know, uh, you know, that that all said, it's kind I've I definitely spent the last few days kind of mulling over the interview that's coming up with with Von Wilmot, who was, you know, equally willing to get into the weeds with us on some of these sort of complex issues of of some of the challenges we face, you know, while running a show, while while being in this industry. Uh, and I'm I'm really excited to have you guys listen to this one, yet another sort of uh, I think just another really good episode.

SPEAKER_00 4:52

Welcome back to Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss, a podcast about rejection, failure, and adversity in the entertainment industry. As ever, I am your English non-entertainment co-host, Dan Rutstein.

SPEAKER_01 5:03

And I am your industry co-host, Noah Ebbslin. Today I'm excited to introduce TV writer, showrunner, and show creator Von Wilmot. Von started his career as an actor doing guest spots on both Beverly Hills 90210 and Star Trek The Next Generation. He then worked as a writer on Sons of Anarchy before creating Dominion in 2014. After that ended, he worked as an EP and showrunner of Prison Break, as well as on the staff of Star Trek Discovery before becoming the executive producer and showrunner of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan. Welcome, Fun.

SPEAKER_03 5:36

Thank you. Excited to be here.

SPEAKER_00 5:38

So for our regular listeners, when we've had somebody who was an actor who becomes a writer and then a showrunner, I always ask like a sort of lazy-ish question about how bad an actor were you. But I'm not going to quite phrase it like that, but I guess I'm always interested in people who stopped doing one thing and then became very successful in another. Can you just talk about sort of what made you stop being an actor and made you start wanting to do this other side and then how you feel about that career decision?

SPEAKER_03 6:07

You know, I kind of grew up wanting to be an actor. I always had that dream. It was always in the back of my mind. I loved actors, I loved storytelling, I loved, you know, I was as taken by any, you know, as anyone in terms of Harrison Ford and all the big stars. So I had stars in my eyes. And so I went to school in Santa Barbara and political science major, like totally unrelated. And I decided just to move down LA and give it a shot. And um I did it for three years. I did a couple things, you know, 902-0 and Star Trek, but I I found it to be a mental mindfield. I, for me, the the being the product and and kind of the rejection and and having to tell people you were an actor, I found it to be really, really difficult. I enjoyed acting, um, but the kind of the process of being an actor, I you know, my my sensitive self couldn't couldn't handle it. So I I gave it up. And and I had always, you know, writing was always also in the back of my mind. So that that was an easy kind of trade-off.

SPEAKER_00 7:21

Because we've we've had actors on the show who've talked about the immediacy, you know, you you pour your heart out in an audition, you're crying and you're doing whatever, and they're like, no, thank you. We don't we don't like that, and you feel very empty afterwards. But obviously, it's not like you've moved from being an actor to being a lawyer. You've been moved from being an actor to being a writer, where even though you've had a successful career, you've had plenty of presumably rejection along the way. So, what made you think that the sort of actor rejection would be worse than the writer rejection? Or did you think there would be less writer rejection?

SPEAKER_03 7:53

I think I, yeah, I think that I was a little um naive in thinking that there was a sense of protection in that you write this thing and then it goes out in the world, and that's the thing that gets rejected, even though it's totally you. Um, but I, you know, there was that, but also I think um it just suited me more. You know, I was driving around LA as like I was selling shampoo, I was working for Paul Mitchell and Redkin and all these big shampoo companies, and I was going to auditions, and it it it takes kind of a there's a there's a sense as an actor that you have to be able to kind of sustain yourself mentally and emotionally until you make it um and making it seem so far away. Writing didn't feel as far away to me. It felt closer, felt like I could reach up and grab it. Not easier, but that it wasn't such a lottery ticket. I felt like I had a little more control.

SPEAKER_01 9:02

Looking in from the outside, you went and and and I'm gonna say this uh with love, but you you know, your credits are annoying in the best way, meaning that you have this amazing Sons of Anarchy credit, which I love. Uh I love that show. I love a number of the shows you've worked on. And then you you you looks like you create a show, you create dominion and become um, you know, maybe second in command on that show, I'm guessing, before kind of making your way to the top in showrunner. And what was that like going from staff to boss that quickly? And was there anxiety involved? Like, I mean, we've talked about this where showrunners are thrust into this managerial position that they're not quite ready for, or some thrive and they this was what they were born to do, and now they're doing it. So, talk a little bit about that transition when you are now the boss, you have your own show, like the anxiety, the fears, the struggles, and maybe some of the successes.

SPEAKER_03 9:55

Yeah, let me let me preface that answering that with um that on my resume and on IMDB, it looks like that, right? It looks like I just went really quickly to the top. The reality is, is it took me a long time to succeed. I started writing in '98. I created Dominion in 2013. So I had literally probably 12 years, maybe 13 years, of real, like, you know, getting little bits here and there. I'd sell something or I'd get an option or whatever, but it it was not fast for me. So one of the things that happened for me was I sold Dominion and I had really struggled. And in the struggle, I had really learned how to write, how to be fast, how to make decisions, how to make creative choices. All of the struggle had actually prepared me to make that jump. And so what happened was I sold Dominion and they gave me what is normally what the deal that you get, which is you get a co-EP first, and then you usually have built into your deal that if it goes well or whatever, second season, you'll jump up to EP, maybe showrunner. That that was kind of the first deal I made. And but I got very lucky, and I had a boss in Mark Stern at Sci-Fi who really believed in me. Um, the script was really, really well received. It got greenlit, and we were gonna film it in South Africa, and they were like, We're not gonna bring a showrunner in over you, we're gonna send you down there with a line producer and with the director and everybody, and you're just gonna produce it. And so we did, and that was terrifying, you know. I I remember doing the table read, and I had never done a table read. I had done a table read for an episode of Sons of Anarchy, but other than that, I hadn't done it. So I hadn't heard my words in actors' mouths, and to hear that, I literally walked out. I called my wife, and I was like, I can't do this. Like, I am terrible. This is terrible. And she had to kind of talk me off a ledge and say, you know, you know, they don't the actors don't always show up. And you know, you got to kind of just take it with a grain of salt. So I got through it. It was incredibly exhilarating and exciting and also terrifying and stressful. Um, the pilot turned out really, really well. And Mark Stern basically said, if this goes to series, I'm gonna bump you up to EP and you're gonna be a co-showrunner right out of the game. And so that's I got very lucky and I just had an amazing situation that I for will forever be grateful for to be trusted with that kind of responsibility and to have that shot. Um, and so then it went to series and they did, they teamed me up with a couple uh guys, uh writing team who were co-showrunners. And then in the second season, I was uh the sole showrunner.

SPEAKER_01 13:12

That's so interesting. And I want to make a comment and then it's gonna follow up by a question. But this has been coming up a lot, and it's also been coming up on social media. In our podcast, a lot of our guests are like, no, that it looks like something happened quickly and it didn't. It was years, it was five years, 10 years, 15, 20 years. I put my my I put the work in, right? And then a lot of people on social media are like, I want to succeed in one or two years. It's crazy, it's not happening for me yet. And they don't realize that we've all, when we come to this business, it's like this is a 10, 20 year journey. This isn't something that happens really quickly. And your story just sort of reinforces that. But I want to ask you something that we've been circling a little bit, which is sort of the idea of imposter syndrome. We, and this is based on you know my own experience as well as yours, where you get rejected a lot in those first 12 years, right? You didn't make it because your script was good, but it wasn't good enough. There was all these things, and you're constantly being told no, no, no, no, no. And then you're told yes. And you're told yes in a way that opens up all of these doors, and suddenly they're in love with your writing and in love with the product. But deep down, you're still maybe hearing some of those no's in your head. And how do you, you know, and I'm just kind of wondering what the nature we so many of us have imposter syndrome about imposter syndrome, about overcoming imposter syndrome if you had it, and and what it takes to just put quality work on the table and trust your own gut in that process when you were the, you know, that now the showrunner of Dominion.

SPEAKER_03 14:35

Um I would say that imposter syndrome never goes away. And if anyone tells you they don't have it, they're probably lying. And there might be some people that say, yeah, I'm confident all the time, and everything I do is great. Um, for me, it never goes away. Every time I sit down to do anything, either break a new story or write an episode or get a pitch ready or whatever it is, I feel like I'm starting over. I feel like I don't have that 15 years of being a veteran, right? Of really like struggling and having to hone my skills and my craft to the point where I could make something happen. Uh for me, creativity um is always mixed with fear. And and probably the more scared I am of something, the more likely that I'll force myself to step up. Um, but it it never goes away. You know, you you you project confidence and you have to go into rooms and you have to say, I'm the guy, and and and I can do this, and I have a vision for the story. You you do have to own that, but but there is that side of you that is a constant work in progress. And and I say to I say to my wife a lot, I say, like, I'm no good at this. Like it happened last week. I texted her as I was writing something, and I literally said, like, I suck. And it's it's hard to, you know, you I have these fantasies of all these other writers that are like so confident, right? They're just like, oh my stuff is dynamite, everything I do is amazing, it's gold. But for me, it uh it's just it's just part of the journey.

SPEAKER_00 16:31

Interestingly, actually, whenever Noah writes something, he normally texts me and says, My stuff is dynamite. I'm really good at writing. Um, despite being nearly 60 episodes into this podcast, all of which have been recorded during a pandemic, one thing I don't think we've really touched on. We've talked about the pandemic being difficult in terms of production being stopped and how hard it is to sell things. One thing we haven't really talked about is is the phenomenon of Zoom writing rooms. And one thing we definitely have talked about is how hard being a showrunner is, how hard leading is, particularly in an industry where no one really trains you how to lead, they just make you a leader. And obviously, a version of that happened to you. You have just been running a room over Zoom that's recently finished. Given how hard showrunning is, how do you approach showrunning in a Zoom room and the challenges of obviously the creative side, but also actually the leadership part where you can't put your arm around someone's shoulder and you can't read the room from a leadership point of view in terms of how people are feeling in a normal way? Like how what's that extra layer been like for you trying to run a room properly?

SPEAKER_03 17:43

You know, it it's it's there's a couple things to it. One is it's it's good for people in terms of they don't have that hour from you. A couple of my writers on Jack Ryan, normally they would be two hours of driving a day. So there's those positives. Also, they're at home, you know, they're able to do some stuff that they can normally not do. Um, I think the the hard part is that Zoom is tiring. You cannot do the full days that you normally would do. It does, it does drain you in a way that being in a room together does not. And so, you know, you you you shorten the window that you actually do. I was always, you know, we were always under the gun on Jack Ryan. So I would try to kind of push as far as I could, but sometimes you get to a point where you're just looking at everybody, you can see that they're just they're gone. In terms of the personal side that you don't get, I would just call people individually and just connect personally so that I could see where they're at, see what was going on with them, make sure that we were connected. Because again, when you're in an office together, you have that camaraderie and that ability to actually connect that you're not getting on Zoom. So I would just make sure and do that on the side. Um, but you know, you make it work. We didn't have a choice. And you know, for me, and I I think for the room, we all always felt really grateful that during a pandemic, you know, a lot of people were out of work and we were blessed enough to be working and getting, you know, having jobs and getting paid. And and so even though it's not optimal or it's not as optimal as a room is when you're all together, it was, you know, it was we made it work and it was it was just as effective in terms of uh we got everything done and we got it done well and and on time.

SPEAKER_00 19:39

So this isn't the sort of question we're normally asked on this podcast. So but what what food item do you miss the most from rooms? I know I I've never I've I love food, so I feel like I should be a writer because it seems that it's a preoccupation you all seem to have a lot of the time. So what would you be eating, and what do you miss most about the eating part of the rooms?

SPEAKER_03 19:59

You know, the most insane kitchen I have ever seen was on Star Trek. And you would walk into this kitchen, and I kid you not, there would be just tables with giant jars of like MMs and the small mini peanut butter cups, and just but then in the freezer there were dove bars, and those were amazing. And I would say that was my go-to, not every day because they're dove bars, but that was my favorite thing. The dove bars on Star Trek.

SPEAKER_01 20:34

We we had chocolate-covered bananas, the one from Trader Joe's, and that was my kryptonite on the colony room. Oh I'm gonna I'm gonna get back to traditional failure questions in one question, one second, but I do just want to ask you a brief follow-up question about the Zoom room. Hopefully, we'll be in a choice soon, we'll be in a situation soon where we can showrunners can choose. Oh, in-person, Zoom, hybrid. Where do you think you're going with this as far as like, you know, obviously, you know, maybe there's some some pitfalls to working through a Zoom room, but the commute, you can maybe hire someone from New York or hire someone you you might not get before. What are you what are your thoughts on on where you're going to go with this uh, you know, in the future?

SPEAKER_03 21:10

I think rooms that I set up with setup going in the future would be probably hybrids. I think it's important, especially like for instance, you could easily do a month of hardcore story break for the season, whatever season you're doing, right? And then you could easily move into a zoom. There, you know, you that could be one model that you follow. Another model could be Tuesday through Thursday in the room, Monday and Fridays uh Zoom. I think for me it'll be hybrid. I'm not sure that that you ever really need to be fully 10 hours a day, five days a week in the room again. And I'm sure there's showrunners that will. Um, but I, you know, we just did this room for almost two years. On Zoom, like a year and a half, it works and it can work. But I do, I do, I do feel like for the break in terms of what the season is, the long arcs, the character journeys, the big turns. If if you're in a room together and you've got your boards, I did miss the boards. So if you had that for the beginning session of the room, and then transfer into a Zoom, you could that would really be great.

SPEAKER_01 22:31

I I think that seems to be the consensus, some kind of weird hybrid that doesn't fully exist yet. Okay, back into traditional failure questions. We had uh Mickey Fisher on our podcast way back, and Mickey talked about going from creating his first show, extant, uh, and then taking a step back and realizing that he wasn't ready to lead a show. And he actually wanted to work as beneath a couple other people to learn more because he realized when he was doing it there was so much he didn't know and he had skipped the staffing process. So on Prison Break, on a few shows in a row, you're the top guy. And then I noticed that you're you become probably the number two on a show. And what does that feel like when you go from making all the decisions to making not all of the decisions? And I think for some people it's in a way freeing. It's like, it's like I don't have to be that guy, and there's things I can learn from somebody else. And for other people, it's like, well, I was here and now I actually have to take orders and it's hard. And it's such, you know, it's only in our business that we kind of we we morph in and out of roles so easily. And how was that transition for you? And then back to the top uh job in in Jack Ryan.

SPEAKER_03 23:37

You know, for me, I mean, uh A, it's the job. So it was Star Trek. So, you know, for me, I'm a Trekie and and I grew up, it's one of the reasons why I do what I do is Star Trek. So so that was that was that it was the job, but also it does there, I gotta say, it's you know, when you don't have to be the top guy or girl, the man or woman, and you're able to kind of just go in and be a person who's senior and and able to really be creatively additive and help out and run the room and handle production or whatever you're doing as as that second-tier person, but there is a sense of it's a little more pure in terms of the creativity because you're not having to be the heat shield, right? For all that intensity that's coming after you. So it's kind of joyous, you know. You're you're you're just kind of enjoying the creative process. And if you love the show, um it's a great place to be. And it didn't, it doesn't for me, um it's not about ego, it's it's really about art, art and being creative. And you know, so that was a great opportunity, and and I love doing it.

SPEAKER_01 24:54

It's funny. I I've never known anyone to strive to be the number two on a show, but the way you phrase it and the way that I see a lot of people working, that if you do it right, it can be an amazing job where you again, you're not you don't have a lot of the bureaucracy, this other headaches, and you are completely guiding the ship in many ways uh on behalf of somebody else. And you can see people like to stay there. Like this might be like, you know, eventually they're gonna get bumped up. But for a lot of people, I can see that the number two is actually maybe one of the best jobs uh secretly in Hollywood.

SPEAKER_03 25:22

It is because you really are, you know, if you're really being utilized by your showrunner and trusted, you really are like co-creating the show as in that position. So it's really it can be really creatively satisfying without the the intensity that comes with like being the showrunner. I mean, it's just it's intense.

SPEAKER_00 25:46

So dare I say it was quite heartwarming to hear you say sort of you part of the reason you want you wanted to be on Star Trek was because you just loved it and that was something you wanted to do. So I get as somebody who is a big fan of a big piece of IP like that, when you're working on there, what is it like? Does it end up being you know all the things you imagined it would be? Or is there a part of you, once you sort of you're behind the scenes on it, you lose some of that sort of naivety and fun that you have as a fan? You know, what is it what's the what feeling do you take away from getting what sort of is a dream to work on a show like that?

SPEAKER_03 26:29

You know, I think it's a little bit of both. I think I was kind I marveled at at being there, and and you know, there was a there was a lady, an incredibly talented lady on there that that was the Star Trek kind of guru who knew everything about every season of every episode. And so kind of sitting with her and being able to experience that history of Star Trek was amazing. Like that's something I'll always remember. And then, you know, it it's never quite the same as you think it's gonna be. You hit roadblocks in in production or creatively or whatever, or the showrunners want to go a different way than an idea that the room's excited about, or whatever. And those are the those struggles. But for me, I just came away. I mean, I it's never diminished for me in terms of Star Trek and loving that. It's you know, Kirk and Spock and and all that were like a touchstone for me. And one of the kind of the career milestones I had was when Dominion was airing, it was very, very popular on Twitter. It was a huge show on Twitter in terms of like involvement. And Shatner used to live tweet the show every week, and for me, that was like forget about it. That was that was one of the best things that's ever happened to me creatively and and in my career because it was like a dream come true.

SPEAKER_00 27:50

Amazing. It's funny the effect he has on people. Weirdly, when I was a diplomat, one of my colleagues somehow got into a whole Twitter thing with William Shatner. So he was he got very excited about knowing a diplomat on Twitter. I wish it had been me. And he was recruiting this file. And and this guy became sort of famous in the diplomatic service for having some kind of engagement with William Shatner. I think there's just something about him that makes everyone smile, particularly the way he uses social media.

SPEAKER_03 28:20

It's so true. There's just something about Captain Kerr. There's just one of those characters, right? That you never forget.

SPEAKER_00 28:30

So, given where you are in your career, you've worked on dream shows, you've worked on some great shows as a normal writer, obviously, you've you've run things, you've created things. What are you looking for next? Do you just want to create a show that goes for many years? Do you want to work on an existing piece of IP, either as a number one or number two? Do you want to have a crack at films? Like, where are you next? Now you've got enough achievement that you don't have to worry about some of the things you need to do to get up the ladder. You've got a bit of a choice now. What would you choose to be successful at now?

SPEAKER_03 29:06

You know what I'm really excited about is, you know, when you work on a show like Jack Ryan and Prison Break, you tend to be you tend to be working with archetypes, right? Like Jack Ryan is a hero, right? So so there's certain limitations of of what you could do with that hero because he's the hero and he drives story and he's the center. And so it's it's a certain kind of storytelling. For me, what I would like to do now, what I'm feeling um artistically, is I want to do something with more complex emotions, whether it be fear, horror, or love, or uh the things that I'm kind of building right now and thinking on and focusing on tend to be not that I mean, my my writing is always going to be kind of propulsive, and I just that those are the stories I gravitate towards. But I am when I'm really thinking about what I want to do next, it is it's more kind of emotion character based in terms of the storytelling. I'm always looking for the IP that I love. You know, a couple years ago, Glenn Mazar and I took out Elric, which is both of our like, you know, we've loved it since we were kids. And we took it out literally two months after The Witcher premiered. And Elric looks a lot like The Witcher. So it kind of killed it. But that that's an example of a property that came along that I could there's I could not off my right arm to do that. And and those properties, you know, I'm looking for them all the time. Um, but I am looking to dig in more on the complex kind of emotional side of character.

SPEAKER_01 31:01

You you texted, um, sorry, you you mentioned that you texted your wife about staying up at night saying I can't write. What else sort of keeps you up at night these days about about the industry? Now, granted, you can write, obviously, you have a history of writing, but like, is there things about the way the industry is moving, going that, that, that, that's, that scares you in this new phase of you know, maybe having to find something, do something, reinvent? Like, where are you emotionally in your headspace about like what's coming next in your in in in regards to sure you're very excited, but also in reg mostly in regards to your fears?

SPEAKER_03 31:35

You know, I think because I stay in a state of like nothing is owed and and it's not easy, nothing is kind of given to you. I don't because I stay in that space, I don't count on anything. I it's almost like I'm always starting over, right? Like every time you end a job, you go through a couple months or a month of like, where am I? What am I doing? I'm always in that space. So that is kind of an ongoing thing for me. The things that keep me up at night, um, there aren't a lot because to be honest, I feel like there could not be a better time to be a writer, especially certainly in TV. Um the amount of production that's going on all over the world is is more than it's ever been. Um so I think it's a really, really exciting time to be a writer. Um, but I have my my ongoing daily struggles, right? Just my own, my own things that I worry about and that I fight through, that I push through. Those never go away. But I wouldn't say that I have a existential larger worry because I feel like the industry is changing fast, but it it only seems to be expanded.

SPEAKER_00 33:02

So like so many of our guests, when we get to the final question, you've already sort of touched on giving bits of advice to people through this, but this is the specific advice question, which is if you could give a single piece of advice to somebody looking to enter the industry, what what would it be?

SPEAKER_03 33:20

You know, because I do live in this constant state, as as as Noah said, of like this imposter system, this is this imposter um worry, right? One thing that I did that I advise every writer to do is keep a file of every single glowing thing that's ever been said to you about your writing. It could be a passing comment about your writing, a letter you got from someone who responded strongly to it. Keep it in a file so that when you have those moments that where you're doubting yourself or you're feeling like I can't do this, it's not gonna happen, it's never gonna happen for me. I go to that file and then I just take a spin through the past. And now where I'm at, I'm my file is like 17 years of it. So now I can spin through comments and moments where of positive either feedback or praise or just little bits of support that happened to me 15 years ago. And interestingly, by doing that, it writes my ship. It like it brings me back out of my kind of doubt because I'm like, oh, I did do that. Because I think, and this is a really important thing for all writers, is very, very hard to own your success. It's very, very hard to make it a part of you. And I struggle with that. People, I'm sure people look at me and they go, Oh, he's done this and this and this. He's yeah, he owns that. Yeah, it that is the most difficult thing is owning what you've actually accomplished and what you've actually succeeded at. And when you have a file like that, it allows you to access that and be reminded of it.

SPEAKER_01 35:16

Fantastic. We've had a lot of guests on here, a lot of people giving advice. That's the first time we got that advice, and it's really really meaningful. I'm like, I need to make a file, I need to write this stuff. Man, all the stuff I deleted. I'm I'm kicking myself, but that's really great advice. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 35:31

That's brilliant. Well, though, no, you could probably just put yours on a post-it note. I knew that was coming, like a stamp, probably. Yeah. For Wilmot, thank you very much for being part of our podcast.

SPEAKER_03 35:42

Thank you. This was lovely. Thanks for having me, guys.

SPEAKER_01 35:49

And that's a wrap on this episode of Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss. As always, we want to thank James Launch for the amazing theme music.

SPEAKER_00 35:57

Do you before we sort of thank our wives and stuff, do you think anyone actually listens this far, or do they stop when the music comes back in?

SPEAKER_01 36:03

I think they normally stop after you mention your second and third podcast. That'd be my guess. Well, I haven't mentioned them yet, though, have I? Uh, if you do want to reach out with us to us for criticisms, complaints, or praise, uh, you can either reach out to us through the website or I am at NEBslin on Twitter. And Dan, do you have an account?

SPEAKER_00 36:23

Not that anyone really cares about. So if you've got complaints about the show, go to NEBslin and feel free to air those. If you have praise or you want to pay us in some way for something, come to at Dan Rutstein. And have a great day.