# Read

Having been told my entire life I feel too much, I am now in love with working in a medium that defies a lie we tell ourselves to avoid transformation.

"My dad gave me solemn advice: when the going gets tough, just do the next right thing right.”

WME had just sent out my novel on wide submission. I’d had a call with the book-to-film department that morning about potential adaptations . . . It really did seem like it was my moment—I was closer than I’d ever been to breaking through.

Raise your hand if you’ve ever been personally victimized by "The Hero’s Journey." Now that every screenwriter’s hand is up ...

When you start writing, your first instinct is to want to write for other people—but you quickly learn that it's not always sustainable to do so.

Years ago, I met my true love here. I was six, he was six. Now I’m fifteen, and so is he. He waits for me on these chilly winter mornings. His lips are cold, they melt when they touch mine.

"It feels like a play." Of all the notes I got in the beginning of my screenwriting master’s program, this one hurt the most.

For years, the rich and the powerful have been the unseen gatekeepers of art and culture, using the concept of “exposure” as an exploitative currency. And for the first time in human history, that paradigm has changed.

It's okay to take the time to find and seek—both yourself and the story you hope to tell.

I didn’t become a full-time writer because it would support me financially—I did it so I could finally feel alive.

I suddenly found myself getting more feedback than I could handle. Seven voices all telling me different things. Seven voices full of conviction, where I had none. I tried to please everyone. Spoiler alert: I failed.

After I finished a draft, I emerged from my cocoon of grief, wiped the ice chips off my body, and wasn’t prone to crying in the middle of the street anymore. I left it all on the page.

The “in-between” can be a lonely place—growing up Black in the capital of the Confederacy can make it even lonelier.

I don't often have hot takes, but when I do, it’s that “The Writing Process” poster in my fifth-grade classroom ruined me.

I have no reason to be scared of anything, ever. 2018 could have been a death punch to me as a comedian. That kind of beating is almost unheard of as a stand-up comic. But I proved to myself that I can rise up to the biggest occasions.