Mystery Meet
I had a meeting today. A mystery meeting. I didn't know what it was going to be about.
I'd gotten a voicemail from an executive last week to set up a meeting for this week, so I'd set it up myself with the executive's assistant - but I'd forgotten to ask what it was about. My manager didn't know either, but he said it had to be good, since they wouldn't have asked to meet with me if it wasn't.
I was driving to the meeting when I was hit with a completely illogical yet unshakeable fear - that I'd done something wrong in my past and this meeting was held as a sting so the proper authorities could more easily arrest me. Stupid, huh? And yet I spent the whole drive thinking what it was I'd done. Was it an angry ex-girlfriend? Did I forget to pay off a college loan? Did I have some past schoolyard enemy who was coming to extract revenge? Was it some sort of new sneaky way to summon me for jury duty?
That would work, by the way. To get people in L.A. to show up for jury duty, send them something like - "A high powered movie executive want to talk to you about buying your screenplay. Come see him at 9 a.m. at the courthouse. Be prepared to wait all day. Don't be late. Bring your driver's license."
Then I knew what it was. It had to be the meeting that I'd been dreading - the one where I'm told that they've discovered I have no talent, that I'm just a fraud and a sham, and that effective immediately I was to report back to my previous 8 to 5 day job. I get that irrational fear every other day or so. No matter how busy I am or how happy, I still sometimes wonder if it's all a big hoax. I've been told by successful veteran writers that this fear never goes away, so I've got that to look forward to.
Finally, after a half hour of traffic, I got to the meeting. The anti-climactic ending? They wanted to ask me if I was interested in writing for them. I said yes. They said great. We're going to talk again soon.
Mystery solved. Not a very surprising ending to the mystery, but at least this mystery had a happy ending.
I'd gotten a voicemail from an executive last week to set up a meeting for this week, so I'd set it up myself with the executive's assistant - but I'd forgotten to ask what it was about. My manager didn't know either, but he said it had to be good, since they wouldn't have asked to meet with me if it wasn't.
I was driving to the meeting when I was hit with a completely illogical yet unshakeable fear - that I'd done something wrong in my past and this meeting was held as a sting so the proper authorities could more easily arrest me. Stupid, huh? And yet I spent the whole drive thinking what it was I'd done. Was it an angry ex-girlfriend? Did I forget to pay off a college loan? Did I have some past schoolyard enemy who was coming to extract revenge? Was it some sort of new sneaky way to summon me for jury duty?
That would work, by the way. To get people in L.A. to show up for jury duty, send them something like - "A high powered movie executive want to talk to you about buying your screenplay. Come see him at 9 a.m. at the courthouse. Be prepared to wait all day. Don't be late. Bring your driver's license."
Then I knew what it was. It had to be the meeting that I'd been dreading - the one where I'm told that they've discovered I have no talent, that I'm just a fraud and a sham, and that effective immediately I was to report back to my previous 8 to 5 day job. I get that irrational fear every other day or so. No matter how busy I am or how happy, I still sometimes wonder if it's all a big hoax. I've been told by successful veteran writers that this fear never goes away, so I've got that to look forward to.
Finally, after a half hour of traffic, I got to the meeting. The anti-climactic ending? They wanted to ask me if I was interested in writing for them. I said yes. They said great. We're going to talk again soon.
Mystery solved. Not a very surprising ending to the mystery, but at least this mystery had a happy ending.
posted by Eugene at 9:53 PM
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