I was born and raised in sunny Los Angeles, CA. From a young age, my dream was to be a writer. Videos games, movies, TV, novels. My passion was always to tell stories.

I wanted to be an actor as well, but I never really put any work into that as a youth. My efforts went towards writing.

Today, at 32 years old, I am a produced screenwriter and actor. But the funny thing is I don’t live in LA and have never done a single project related to anything having to do with Hollywood.

You Don’t Ask to be a Joe. You Get Asked.

That’s a cheesy quote from the movie G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009), but it’s extremely relevant to the discussion of Hollywood. The greatest mistake you can make as a writer, or really just film industry hopeful, in 2022 is that you can “break into” Hollywood. The fact is that you can't.

You either get invited into Hollywood or you buy your way in. There is no breaking in anymore. There's simply no room. What you should do is work towards making things outside of Hollywood and hope they get noticed. Once your name carries some prestige, someone will invite you in. Honestly, if more people thought like this, more people would be farther along in their careers.

There is a ton of demand for writers outside of Hollywood in various spaces. Most of those spaces aren’t glamorous or high up on the list of dream destinations, but that’s the entire point. You go where the work is not where the dreams are. Dream locations have a lot of competition. The quickest way to success is to avoid the competition altogether.

So stop trying to break into Hollywood and instead focus on just getting some paid work. Dreams come later.

Set Goals Rather than Dreams

A lot of people have dreams and love to talk about them. Big, beautiful, totally unattainable dreams. Few writers I meet seem to talk much about their goals. There’s a world of difference between a goal and a dream. In my opinion, the best way to think about it is like this - You make goals happen. Someone else makes dreams happen.

My dream is to write a Star Wars movie. There’s nothing I can do to make that happen. I could sit down and write the best Star Wars script ever to have been written. Yet, I still wouldn’t be any closer to writing a produced Star Wars movie.

Why? Because Disney owns the rights to Star Wars and isn’t going to let some unknown writer based in Taiwan with no IMDB credits write a Star Wars movie. And if by some act of God they did, it still wouldn’t have anything to do with anything I did. It would mean Kathleen Kennedy, Jon Favreau, or some other Disney executive went out of their way to do something for me that I absolutely have no right to say I deserve. That’s what makes it a dream. I have no control over it. So instead of focusing on that, I focus on things I actually can make happen without a miracle. Those are my goals.

My current goal is to get a credit on IMDB without having to game the system to add the credit myself. I have written, acted in, produced, and directed multiple things. Most of which are commercials.

So, the next logical step in my career path is to get credit for a production worth putting on IMDB. That’s a low bar, and that’s the entire reason it’s a goal and not a dream. It’s something I can actively work towards today to make happen that is in no way ridiculous to shoot for considering where I currently am in my career.

Stop worrying about your dreams and focus on the things you can control: your goals.

Your Day Job Matters

The classic story of the depressed writer or actor working as a waiter while waiting for their big break is a sad one, because it shows a lack of self-worth. There’s nothing wrong with working in food service. I was a bar cook for two years. Not because I was waiting for my big break. I was just working to pay rent during a time when I didn’t have many options. If you enjoy waiting tables, tending a bar, or whatever other service job, then do that. But if you’re only doing a job while you wait for your big break, you’re both devaluing yourself and wasting a lot of your time.

The job you do while trying to get into the job you want as a writer, actor, or what have you shouldn’t be an afterthought. If anything, it should be seen as a failsafe. Building a career to fallback on when your dream of being the next Shane Black falls through is not being pessimistic. It’s being realistic. But more importantly than that, your day job may very well be the gateway into the big break you’ve been waiting for. No, I’m not talking about being a coffee boy for a producer and one day he finds a copy of your script on your desk, decides to read it, and loves it. I’m talking about much more realistic and reproducible results that anyone can pursue in non-entertainment fields.

The fact is that there are tons of jobs out there for people with a passion or even just fleeting interest in writing or acting. They’re just in places you wouldn’t think to look. And because of a market bias towards America, there's a ton of demand for English writers outside of America. If you're willing to move to somewhere new, I suggest instead of moving to Hollywood that you move to a country where English isn't the native language.

Furthermore, I'd say stop trying to break into filmmaking and look for production opportunities in other fields.

How I Made YOUR Dreams MY Reality in Taiwan

When I look back at my dreams of being a writer and actor as a kid, I realize that I always thought of myself in Hollywood because I lived in LA. But I never really cared about Hollywood in and of itself. I simply wanted the opportunity to be involved in productions. I left LA when I was 18 to attend college in Philadelphia and never looked back.

I learned screenwriting at the University of Pennsylvania. I wrote three features in college and even won second place in a local screenwriting competition with my first feature. An African American with an Ivy League education and a contest winning script out of the gate seemed like guaranteed success. Anyone in the film industry today knows that’s not the case. My time at UPENN would have probably been better served networking than actually learning the craft if we’re being honest about how Hollywood works today. When I graduated, I ended up moving to Taiwan rather than back to LA. Best decision I ever made for my career.

When I first moved to Taiwan, I knew no one in the country and didn’t speak a word of Mandarin. To be honest, I’ve lived here almost a decade and I still don’t speak fluent Mandarin. I was an English teacher. I taught English for two years. During this time, I started writing a blog for fun. It was about gaming.

One day, I was contacted by a keyboard startup asking if I’d like to interview them for my blog at a local tech convention. I’d never been invited to do such a thing before, so I leapt at the chance. While at the convention, I ended up checking out a booth that had some cool designer computers on display. As an African American living in Taiwan, I stand out quite a bit, as do all other non-Asian immigrants. A Caucasian guy from New Jersey that worked for the company spotted me and initiated a conversation. It turned out that he was the head writer at the company and was looking to hire more writers. I told him I was a tech blogger and had studied writing, history, and technology focused sociology in college. He asked me to send him a resume. I was offered a job less than a month later.

Note that I had no previous paid work experience in gaming hardware or marketing. I was just enthusiastic about the subject and had a background in writing. At this job, I was given the opportunity to write product marketing assets for countless products and campaigns. I wrote websites, packaging, product sheets, videos, and many other types of marketing tools. Though they may not know my name, millions of people around the world have seen my writing translated into more than 20 different languages. If that’s not a writer’s dream, then I don’t know what is.

During the five years I worked at this company, I was given the ability to write, produce, direct, and act in multiple commercials. Because this wasn’t a production company. It was a computer company. And not a company like Apple that wants to spend millions in marketing. They wanted to do everything in house for as little as possible and were happy to let someone with a degree in Cinema Studies take the helm. So, I got firsthand experience in shoestring filmmaking. They even let me make a 5-minute horror parody short I pitched with full creative control. I was able to make the whole thing for under $1,500 USD.

All this experience ultimately led to more opportunities. The commercials I did for that company helped me develop an acting resume and reel. I was able to use that to get cast in more commercials as a freelance actor for other companies. I still do this regularly. More importantly than that, my time at that company helped me to build connections within the tech and gaming industry. Just over a year ago, I was scouted by a company that needed an experienced native English screenwriter with a background in tech. A hard role to fill in Taiwan that I just happen to be perfect for.

The Jobs are Out There

I was hired to write an animated series for a PC gaming hardware company based in Taiwan. As this is a brand marketing initiative, their priorities are much different than a normal production company. This allows me a large amount of creative control that I almost certainly wouldn’t have in a normal production scenario. They’re also not using the same standards of success that a regular production would have. And they aren’t just doing an anime. They plan to do novels, comic books, and even a game. And they want me to be the narrative lead for all of it.

To be clear, I’m not being paid nearly as much as a Hollywood based writer might be for this same level and volume of writing, but I am getting my writing produced and being paid for it. More importantly, I’m paid enough to pay my bills on time. In my opinion, that’s the dream. Writing stories you want to write and being able to pay your bills by doing so.

The point I’m making is that I'm a produced writer and actor and was able to achieve that without financing my own projects; and not because I’m necessarily more talented than anyone else. I was just willing to look at alternative ways to develop my career. All of that started by doing the exact opposite of the norm and leaving LA.

So, stop trying to "break into" Hollywood. There’s a host of writing, acting, producing, and directing opportunities out there just waiting for someone who hasn’t won a screenwriting contest or shot their own viral indie film out of pocket to take advantage of. You just need to stop looking for them in the same highly competitive places.