UNITED STATES—It is that question that we are all asked in early childhood. What do you want to be or do when you grow up? I remember when that question was first posed to me, it was surgeon. Don’t ask me where that notion or idea came from, but it was something I thought I would be doing for the longest time. I think somewhere in sixth grade that changed after I discovered how much schooling it would take, and I thought I would be a teacher or lawyer.
While I still think I love teaching, it waned a bit when you realize the different type of students you will have to deal with, and then my focus completely turned to attorney, particularly a district attorney/prosecutor. I felt by getting into law I could make a difference as it pertained to crime in the region where I grew up and perhaps make an amends to things that happen to me as it pertains to a crime that was never solved. In some odd sense, I was seeking justice.
However, there was an internal battle with the prosecutor and filmmaker as I was nearing the end of my high school career. That is where it totally hit me. What is the one job you could do the rest of your life, even if you didn’t get paid and you’d be happy no matter what? It was a film. I had the oddest fascination with cinema at an earlier age, particularly horror films. Like what four or five-year-old begs his mother to see a movie about a boogeyman wearing a mask that stalks babysitters at that age? Long story short, I got my wish, but my eyes were covered the entire time, so I don’t even recall watching that movie.
I think it was just a bond I had with my dad as a kid with those flicks, as much as my mom didn’t want me to watch. After my parents got divorced, there was a large chunk in my life that I didn’t watch them, at last five to six years or longer, by chance it came back to me and it just felt like the universe was telling me: this is your destiny, and I know it sounds cheesy, but you know when you’re good at something. I had a gift to write, and creative writing at that. The ideas would come in my head, and I placed them on paper, I wrote my first short story, and in the tenth grade I came up with an idea to reinterpret or reinvent, the 1984 classic “A Nightmare on Elm Street.”
Until this day I still have that idea as a guarded secret, and I knew going into college I wanted to be a filmmaker and that is what I studied as a minor with English as my major. It was me having the best of both worlds, writing and creative juices at the same time. I recall when I was writing my first script as challenging as it was the exhilaration I could not put into words. I had just saw “Batman Begins” and something clicked, and in like two to three days I completed my entire script because I had found my writing groove, and I refused to stop until I was finished.
I few years later I would write my second full-length script, and that one was more of a struggle because I had notions of the story, but it wasn’t as cohesive as I wanted it to be. I struggled with that one, but I’m glad I did because it opened my eyes to the fight I have when it is something I want. I haven’t written a script since because unfortunately life and the stressors that come with it just took over my life, but I told myself at the start of the New Year I wouldn’t make the excuse anymore, and I have made inroads to write more during my spare time.
Especially a drama that I think has slices of my life and feels like the drama of all dramas. It might be the most honest, realistic and devastating story that I have cooked up in my brain. I can never shake what my English teacher told me in high school. “You’re a good writer, but what you wrote is boring.” He shared I had to intertwine my real life with the story I was telling, and I have never forgotten that sense and I try to implement into my storytelling as much as I can.
People tell me I’m a great orator all the time and I hate it, because I don’t believe it, but apparently it’s true, and I have learned to hone into that skill and use it to my advantage.
