Justin Sloan - Creative Writing Career: Becoming a Writer of Movies, Video Games, and Book

When Justin approached me to be interviewed for and write the foreword to his book, the first question I asked myself was: "why does the world need another writing career advice book?" I realized the answer was threefold:

1) All careers in all industries are constantly shifting so new advice must be distributed that keeps up with the changing times.

2) Telling aspirants and newbies how right our perspectives on writing craft and business are is a major source of entertainment for writers and don't we have as much right to amusement as anyone else?

3) And finally, most importantly, while most career advice books are edited by someone who broke in a million years ago, Justin was coming at this from the fresh perspective of assembling advice from people who had been useful during his very recent breaking-in process.

New writers are faced with a sea of choices when it comes to writing career advice guides, and the fact that Justin was putting together a book that would take his readers through what he had just gone through seemed like a very good idea. Justin is also bringing his military background to bear with his Veterans Writing Project interviews in Part Six and in his next book devoted to helping ex-military who want to break into the entertainment industry, and I am very supportive of any effort to help ex-servicemembers find their next careers.

Justins fresh perspective practically guarantees his book being pragmatic and sensibly optimistic, rather than the usual bitter and cynical advice books from more seasoned and beleaguered writers. While it's important to know what the perils and pitfalls of a writing career are, when you're getting started out it's equally useful to hear about things that actually can work, and be encouraged that there is the possibility of a professional career in writing if you approach it sensibly and practically.

Pragmatism and hard work are indeed the key to writing success. I am friends with a number of very successful, A-list screenwriters and they all are pragmatists with a strong work ethic starry-eyed dreamers and indulgent artistes don't survive in the commercial writing business (there are rare exceptions, but if you're one of those you're not reading this book, anyway).

Pairing Justins own insights with interviews also seemed like a great way to broaden and balance the book by including the perspectives of people with different experience and expertise. So I decided to contribute this foreword and an interview because Justins book provides a fresh perspective and an up-to-date practical approach to building a professional writing career put together by someone who just did that, successfully.

And he did so using the tools of our times: politely and professionally reaching-out to people in the business via e-mail and social networking sites, blogging for exposure, and ultimately taking a job writing in one of the most contemporary of writing media video games.

In fact, Justin and I "met" online, through LinkedIn. He found me because of my blog at www.bugaj.com and my Pixars 22 Rules of Story, Analyzed eBook, and approached me very politely for advice about a writing career. Having gone from tech artist to screenwriter at Pixar was a monumentally difficult achievement, but that alone would not have qualified me to give anyone any career advice (it's too unique a situation). But since I'd also gone through the UCLA professional program, optioned a few indie features into development hell, and accumulated a massive enough collection of rejections and failed "sure things" to be considered a "real writer," I decided I wouldn't be harming anyone by giving them a wee bit of career advice. So we corresponded.

Because Justin was intelligent and pleasant to deal with online, when I was hiring writers and saw his resume and samples come through, those got read immediately. You can cynically call every producer, publisher and executive's preference for hiring people they know cronyism or cliquishness if you like, but this is a relationship business because creation is too difficult, personal and time consuming to try to do it with incompatible people. Being a good person to work with is as essential as being a good writer.

So Justin's insights into how to present and comport yourself in order to break-in have been recently successful, and how you "sell yourself" is one of the most crucial aspects of breaking into the industry. The only possibly more important aspect is how great your stories are. Maybe more important, but then again many publishers and producers would much rather work with a pleasant hack than a petulant genius so if you can learn to be a pleasant genius, success!

In other words, professionalism, politeness and honesty are utterly essential to this process, and since I hired Justin, I know that he has those qualities, and I know his book will inspire them in its readers both by instruction and example.

As for the craft side, Justin (and several of the writers he interviews in this book) proved their knowledge and skill to me in the form of samples, interview responses, and lectures. I was glad to see how many writers I know and have worked with were willing to share their knowledge with the community. They're all good people you can learn from.