Never Limit Yourself as a Writer

I remember a few years back watching the Queen of Soul on televisionAretha Franklin standing in for Pavarotti who was ill. I knew that Aretha could sing anything from gospel to pop, disco to jazz, but watching and hearing her perform opera (an Italian opera) was quite a surprise.

Of course she knocked it out of the ball park and received a standing ovation. But what else did I expect. I mean it is the Queen of Soul.

I recently thought about this when someone approached me about writing a proposal for a reality television series.

Immediately I said to myself, I can't. After all, I'm not a big watcher of the genre. Sure, I've watched a little of American Idol, The Apprentice and FAME, only because I'm a big fan of Debbie Allen and I've taken a class or two on the subject, but my experience is writing for film and television.

I didn't tell the person I wouldn't do it, but said I needed time to think about it. After a few weeks of deliberating, I decided yes. But I was gripped by fear. How was I going to write something I've never written before?

But then I thought that I would handle this like any other assignment. I would do my research. So I scanned the Internet and libraries and even spoke to a few writers. Unfortunately, I came up empty. I could not find anything on writing for Reality Television. That's why it's called Reality. They don't want their audience to think that it is anything but reality.

Then a week later while I'm still getting over the fact that I made a promise that I might not be able to keep, another person approached me about writing for the same genre. Two weeks later I received a call from someone else.

Even though I believe that when you're shown something 3 times, you should act on it, I still believed I couldn't do it.

It took someone talking to me about suggesting to one of the persons who approached me to find someone with more skills and the crazy thing was I was agreeing with them.

But then I had to stop and say wait a minute. I'm a writer. That definitely does not mean that I can write any and everything, but I sure can try before I tell myself or let anyone else say that I can't.

Seven years ago, I started out just having a passion for writing. In less that 3, I was published as a freelance writer and writing press releases. Five years later, I was hired as a ghost writer for a celebrity for a non-fiction book and 6 years later, I co-wrote a film with two established writers.

When you are approached by someone who is interested in hiring you as a writer, be honest about your limitations, but be very clear about the skills you do have.

I discovered that writing a reality treatment, outline or proposal is the same as writing one for television. You need to understand your key elements; target audience, premise, format, the end result, outcome and/or rewards.

So never limit yourself or let anyone else limit your abilities. Before we could walk, we had to crawl. Before we... well you get the picture.