Getting a project going, moving, done and completed

This story was taken from the book, “Conversations at the American Film Institute with the Great Moviemakers.”

I got this from Robert McKee who was talking about the actor Charlton Heston.

 “Heston said getting his first acting job came down to luck. After a theater production he had auditioned for fizzled and a directing job ended, his wife suggested Heston go to auditions for a production of "Antony and Cleopatra." Heston went over to the office and found it crowded. People who had connections in the theater industry auditioned first. Finally, Heston was the only one left. A staff member asked his name. "I said, 'Charlton Heston. Maynard Morris of MCA sent me up,'" Heston remembered. "I'd never been inside MCA and never met Maynard Morris. She said, 'Well, we're a little ahead, I guess we can see you'... Don't ever say luck doesn't count."

Again, let me be clear just as Robert was being. I'm not condoning lying or cheating to get ahead anymore than he was. That being said, I can tell you what the director Stanley Kramer once told me during a seminar series in talking about how he first got started in film.

He got his first film made through sheer guts. Since he couldn't get together the three pillars of filmmaking, what you need to produce a film, he told the bank that he had he actors and the studio. Then he told the studio he had the bank and the actors. And obviously he then told the actors he had the bank and the studio. And so he got his first film produced.

However that may not work so easily now a days. With instant media and such ease of checking into things now, it still may work if you handle it right. It's not so much in lying about things to get the ball rolling (though maybe sometimes). It's more about your attitude. About what you are projecting to those you need to be projecting it to.

It is about getting things done. Pushing through the impossible to the plausible on into the completed.

Never say die, they say. Never give up. It is those who stick with the process to the bitter end who survive to win.

If you have a dream, don't just dream it, but dream it big, with passion and bring others into that dream. Do things and get things done. Show people you can do those things. Infect them with your passion for your project, your business, your dreams.

You'll be surprised what you can accomplish if you just act like you should be doing what you're doing and then, do it.

Isn't it all about the journey and not the destination?

Isn't it all about the journey and not simply the destination?

If nothing else it just makes sense, because we spend so much more time getting somewhere, than being somewhere. If you see what I mean. And if that's so, then why, WHY, do I work so hard to achieve a destination, just to...get there, to be there?

Why do I work so hard on things I don't want to work on, simply in order to achieve a destination?

I do things that I find difficult, things that force me to learn new things. Though I do love to learn, I find myself learning about things I really couldn't care less about. Like, marketing, since I'm a writer, when I really just want to write. But then understanding marketing, understanding your audience can actually enhance sales. Does it really enhance the quality of your writing, though?

Maybe. Maybe, not.

I don't really know why, why I do that.

I mean if it's all about the journey, if Life is about the moments and not the end point, the achievements, then why do it?

What am I doing, why am I doing this to myself?

Perhaps it's just that I'm looking at it all wrong? Perhaps, I'm simply incorrect?

So, what IS correct then? What SHOULD I be doing? Where AM I going and WHY am I going there?

I suspect it is because if life is really all about the journey, then that journey will select your destination for you, anyway. If you select the right journey, then you are selecting the destination you want to begin with. You just need desperately to want it, you need to be passionate about it.

Otherwise, why bother? Right?

I suspect that when you feel like you ARE trying to live the journey and yet, you feel you are only working on the destination, then IF you TRULY are working on the journey, what may be happening, what hopefully IS happening, is that you are "changing cars", "changing modes of transportation".

Look. If you go on a journey for a vacation, the entire thing is really about the journey. Even if you get to your destination and you only then begin that journey, then you are still on the journey. You do however have to realize that the journey in getting to the destination, where the journey is to begin, really is also a journey.

If you don't realize that, or see that this is indeed the case, then you are cutting half (or at the very least, a third) of the overall experience completely out of your available bank of possibilities.

Experience happens. It just, happens. You can't stop and start it, it is always just, occurring, all around you.

So why not enjoy it? Why not utilize that journey-that-isn't-the-journey before the destination, when the journey is actually only then supposed to begin?

Let's say you agree and decide to do that and yet, you realize that you are still dealing with the journey as if only the destination mattered.

Why is that? I mean, why do that?

I submit to you that this is the changing of cars, of modes of transportation.

When you go on that vacation, say you take a boat to Italy, you get your things packed at home. Then, let's say you take a taxi to the boat. You then load onto the boat, across a bridge, up a gangplank, whatever; you board the boat.

Then you ride the boat for days to your destination. You eventually depart the boat and head to your hotel. You unpack.

Finally, you are beginning your journey at your destination.

In taking that initial taxi to the boat, you are wondering to yourself, did I forget anything, do I have my tickets, wallet, credit cards, whatever? Because I don't want to get on that boat and have it drop its connections with the land and only then realize, I am going to be lost without that thing that I needed or wanted to bring along.

On that taxi ride I might ignore the driver. I might ignore the garbage truck we pass on the street, I might ignore the truck load of incredible oddities that drives by us. The beautiful park with the strange little parade will go unnoticed. The child who looks up at an adult on the sidewalk, the one who is being a complete ass who gets a childlike look that says it all about what an ass that adult is being. A look I might click to see a video of it on YouTube, or would even pay to see as it's just so damn funny. And I could have seen in in real life...for real...really.

The world is filled with these marvelous and amazing moments of life lessons and entertainment, with educational moments, with creative, with cathartic and artistic moments.

All these things you can miss, if you don't remember that when the journey to the destination begins, your destination is already there on the way to the journey's destination's journey.

So in the end and after all, it really is all about the journey. Right?


Now, to completely change the subject....
There is a signed horror book giveaway on the Horror Writers Association's Selfies site. There will be a lot of authors offering a free signed book.

Like Peter Straub's "A Dark Matter", for one.

And my own, "Death of Heaven", for another.

Best of luck! Cheers!