# Independent

We were in a position that many of our screenwriter friends were envious of … but we were miserable.

But to actually direct—something scripted no less—felt like a sham. People went to school for that. Or they had climbed the proverbial ladder to earn it.

Rewrite hell, I’ve come to understand, isn’t what someone does to you, but what you do to yourself as a writer.

As indie creators, we have neither the past notoriety, the platform, or the money to rely on classic marketing styles, so we have to get more creative.

If you’re going to make this into a short, why not just write 85 more pages and make it a micro-budget feature?

Learning to trust and welcome other people's help is just another thing you'll pick up as you all struggle forward together ... You’ll all be afraid together, and you’ll all improve together along the journey.

"Our philosophy is you can't know the light without first knowing the dark."

It’s funny the power of saying it out loud had: “We’re going to make a feature film.” And the more we said it, the more we dared to take the next baby step. And the next.

“'Just try not to die' is my standard advice for anyone helming a first feature. I nearly did, and I wouldn't recommend it."

Festival directors and programmers are just as passionate and dedicated to films as the filmmakers themselves. But filmmakers primarily regard them as key gatekeepers in the journey of seeking and building an audience.

Remember that your reel isn’t the full conversation—it’s the start of one.

It felt selfish and tone deaf to be scratching out a screenplay of all things while the world was falling apart.

I didn’t talk about that because I was terrified that any artistic input that I might say … would end up diverting the course of this script one or two degrees from its true North and then it ends up in a deal that doesn’t get done.

We need stories, and we need stories like yours. And you must believe and trust in that to get people to donate.

Despite myself being an anxious asexual woman, I wasn’t a known entity in either of my other two segment communities yet. So, I started to do research.