Pilot to Co-Pilot

July 18th, 2012: DAY 1

I sit in front of the keyboard this morning staring at a blank page…. and I could not be more thrilled about it. I have started the process of writing the pilot episode to the new 1-hour drama series that I have been tossing around for a while. I have been working on the “idea” for this series for something in the neighborhood of 6-8 months without ever putting down the words FADE IN:.

Pilot to Co-Pilot

If you go back to the post I wrote about brainstorming (Ideas for Dummies: April 2010) you can get a broad view of the ridiculous process that I have to go through to come up with a DECENT idea. I put the word ‘decent’ in Italics because I am not of the opinion that any of my ideas are great (or even good) ones. They are simply passable when I begin the process. I start by writing down every character trait, funny dialogue line, scene, location, etc… which comes to my mind in a big notebook (this notebook is with me a majority of the time). This notebook has become distended and disgusting.

I try to read through the notebook (beginning to end) every weekend to see if anything is brewing in there. About 6 months ago, I started to see a kernel of an idea peaking through. I sketched it out on the newest page, but it was far from ready. As the weeks piled up, I continued to add to it as things popped in to my brain – never actually considering it a workable idea. Two weeks ago, the whole thing seemed to click at 2:00 am. Whatever piece was missing from the whole thing popped in to my brain in the middle of the night. It was so jarring, that it actually woke me up from a dead sleep.

I have spent the last week or so polishing the idea to the point where I was finally comfortable enough to share it with some people (including my wife, parents, and manager). The reviews have been pretty positive, with the exception being my parents who are still not sure that this writing thing is going to be a viable career. Here is an actual quote from my mother:

“I like it. I mean, it’s interesting. I don’t think I would watch it – but people seem to watch almost anything anymore.”

She is a very sweet lady. Seriously.

Motherly criticisms aside, the idea passed muster and I now sit in front of the blank page.

Step 1: OUTLINE THE SERIES

Breaking Bad – seriously try it.

Today, tomorrow, and Friday I will be outlining the series from POINT A to POINT B. What you want to create here is a story arc which can be morphed in to the Series Bible. This is the story arc that you will always reference back to when writing each episode. Is the story helping our character travel this arc? Know where you are going before you begin writing the character. If you don’t have a proper arc in mind from the beginning, then you risk your character’s motivations becoming skewed and indecipherable. And trust me, audiences can feel that. Did you see The Amazing Spiderman? Nobody but Uncle Ben had clear “wants” in the movie – and it suffered because of that.

I will keep everyone updated as this process continues. The goal now is to begin writing Page 1 by Monday (or sooner if the outlining goes well).

BY THE WAY: Watch Breaking Bad. I started that series about a week ago on the advice of some friends… and holy shit they were right. That is well written TV.

Batman and Back Pain

We (and I use this in the most inclusive context because we are all in this one together) are merely days away from Christopher Nolan’s Batman finale “The Dark Knight Rises”. I can honestly say that I haven’t been this OUCH…. this excited for a movie to be released since Prometheus.

ON A SIDE NOTE: Was anyone as disappointed with the story in Prometheus as I was? I don’t want to pile on – but Scott/Lindelof had this golden opportunity to blow the doors off the sci-fi world!

1) You have a great universe in which to play. Space travel? Check. Aliens? Check. Robots? Check. Far-off world? Check. These are the ingredients to a world where anything is possible. I get excited just thinking about the things you could do in here.

2) An Accepted ‘R-rating’. This (essentially) removes all barriers on language, content, OUCH… violence, terror, etc… You can literally do anything you want in this world without regard to your audience. You were given the green-light for an ‘R-rated’ horror film. You lucky ducks.

3) A built-in audience. The groundwork for this film was laid by some very successful films (and video games) which will ensure that you don’t have to sell them on your story/universe. It already exists in their minds and anything resembling that world will bring them out in droves.

This film had all the ingredients – they just needed to write the recipe. And I think they missed the mark. Besides being confusing (which it very-much was) the film cut all sorts of corners to reach the end-game (which I am still not entirely sure made any sense).

It looks to me as though they intended to tackle this huge issue of “why are we here?” and “who is responsible for making us?” – and all they did was leave us going: wait, what?

OUCH! Damn it!

*Sorry guys. I hurt my back on Friday at work and it seriously killing me. As I sit in my chair, I periodically get this shooting pain in my back. It is so bad, it forces me to actually verbalize (and in our case, write out) the word “ouch”. I apologize for that.

I really do think that someone like Damon Lindelof should know better than to leave people questioning the story and implications his endings. I was a big fan of “Lost” but did not really enjoy the open-endedness (that’s a word, right?) of so many story lines in “Lost”. I know I am not alone in this sentiment – but it really left me feeling unresolved. If you want to take such drastic steps in to the direction of mystery and the unexplained OUCH, have the good grace to at least tie-up all your loose ends. You can’t punish people who have spent years of their lives following your characters around (and buying DVDs, t-shirts, books, etc…) by insulting their intelligence. Let me be clear, I have no problem with the ending of the show. You want to end it in some metaphorical afterlife (church or whatever) that’s for you to decide. But have the common decency to explain why Walt can make things appear, or what exactly the smoke monster is about, or why they were time travelers, or what the numbers mean. Any number of those were not properly ended or explained…..   and now I am frustrated again. I promised my wife I wouldn’t do this anymore.

(Look at this asshole, complaining about 100+ hours of free and entertaining television. WHAT A DICK!)

Fair.

Regardless – where was I going with this? Ah, yes. OUCH. “Dark Knight” is going to put a nice cap on a half-way decent summer movie slate. I will be there at midnight on Thursday to catch the opening and intend to spend most of the day Friday coming down from a euphoric Superhero-high.

ouch.

Inception, Deception, and Reception…

Christopher Nolan's newest baby.

There is something incredibly cool about seeing a new idea brought to life on-screen. I know that most writers, me included, feel like there really aren’t any original ideas anymore – that’s probably true. But every once in a while, a new and unique story comes around that changes the boundaries of what we thought was possible for a film.

I am pretty sure that “Inception” will be one of those films.

I think the first time I remember seeing a film that was really different was the first time I saw “The Usual Suspects”. This was a heist film and a who-done-it all wrapped up in to one, although at the same time it was none of those. I will never forget the moment when you see Verbal Kint’s walk slowly transform from a hobble in to the smooth and confident walk of a criminal who got away clean and clear. That was one of those moments where I knew that I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be able to make an audience feel the same way that I felt at that moment.

The second time I remember being blown away by an idea was when I first saw “The Matrix”. This was another film that told a story that had never really been told before. I think at one time or another, we had all wondered if maybe we were all just living in one giant dream and death was actually your awakening in to the real world. “The Matrix” explored that idea and ended up creating one of the most influential movies in recent memory.

The Matrix was an orginal film that influenced a lot of more recent films.

Now comes the Christopher Nolan movie “Inception”. The first film of Christopher’s that I saw was the film “Momento” which is a film that tells the story of a man with no ability to make new memories. Two narratives are told, one in color and forward while the other is done in black and white and reverse. I liked the movie well enough when I first saw it, but I was not particularly blown away by it. The next three Nolan films I saw were “Batman Begins”, “The Prestige”, and “Dark Knight”. The first two films are good films in their own right, but “Dark Knight” was a cut above almost anything I had ever seen before. It was such a deep and almost frightening script. I was absolutely blown away by “Dark Knight”. These collections of films by Christopher (and by association his brother Jonathan) have shown just how unique and interesting the Nolan’s can really be.

The newest Nolan release, “Inception” comes out on Friday and tells the story of two men who are hired to steal ideas from the dreams of other people. A form of corporate espionage in this tale, although I am sure you could use this technique to get any information out of someone for any purpose. 

(If you want a cool look at the prequel story to “Inception,” check out this link: http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/inception-comic.html You won’t be disappointed).

Roger "Verbal" Kint.

This film may be a turning point for Hollywood films. This is a summer blockbuster that seems as though it will be more cerebral than many of the films we are used to seeing in July. I don’t want you guys thinking that I am some sort of snob who thinks low brow cinema is beneath me. Far from it. I love action packed, huge budget, badly written, summer flicks. There is nothing like beating the heat by stepping in to an ice-cold theater and turning your mind off while you watch explosions and car chases, but occasionally I want something a little more nourishing. I think “Inception” may signify a shift in ideals.

I know I will be one of the first in line to see that film on Friday and I hope you will too.  And give that prequel a quick read – you will enjoy it.

The Realistic Love Story

So in my last post I promised that this one would be a little juicier and I will not disappoint.

Probably my favorite recent love story film - although a little "Emo"

As you all know by now, I recently got out of a long-term relationship. We both moved from LA together and lived in a 1 bedroom apartment for about a year before we both decided that it was best to go another direction. The bastard of the situation is that we have this apartment lease, communal furniture, and an awesome dog. It’s never a clean break when you have that much baggage, but I thought we actually did fairly well with it. She kept the apartment (which I still pay half the rent for while we try to sublease it), I got the dog, and we split the furniture – fair all the way around.

With all this baggage in tow, I took myself off the dating market for a while to concentrate on writing. I spent the last few months writing as much as possible and reacquainting myself with single life (which by the way is very underrated). Then along came this girl. 

For the purposes of this post, we will give her a pseudonym – how about Nicki? The Nicki that is short for Nicole – not the Nicki that lives in your hometown and boosts cars for a living.

So along came Nicki. Nicki and I have been in similar social circles for a while, but never really had much more than small conversations in a group setting. I thought she was gorgeous and very cool – but was not the type of girl who would be in to me. It never crossed my mind that anything would come of it.

The ultimate "Emo" love story - decent though.

Last week, Nicki had a birthday party and invited me (along with our normal social circle) to come. It was at one of those crowded dance bars and I figured it would be a good time and I would get the chance to just have a good time with some friends – it went better than that. Nicki and I hit it off and went with a couple other people to a another bar that stays open until 5 am (Chicago is awesome that way). We went from dancing, to early morning breakfast, to my house. You know the rest of the story.

Now, I don’t want you guys to think that I am bragging. How douche baggy would that make me sound? There is a point to all this – just keep reading.

Nicki and I made plans to hangout again next weekend – sounds like a happy ending, right? Not exactly. That baggage always seems to creep back in when you least want it to. The ex called me and asked to meet for lunch on Sunday (lunch is the least committal meal I suppose). We got together and had a very nice time. We reminisced about our earlier times and she suggested that we consider getting back together. Now I have a conundrum, I like Nicki a lot but I also have these strong feelings for the ex.

MOVIE ENDING #1 – The happy movie ending is to get back together with the ex and spur the feelings of darling Nicki. Then after one date I would inevitably remember why the ex and I broke up in the first place and I would rush back out to profess my love to Nicki – only now she doesn’t think she can ever forgive me. I would then have to participate in some sort of 1980’s era ski competition to win her affection and we would live happily ever after.

 MOVIE ENDING #2 – I decide to try to make a relationship with Nicki which will ultimately fail, all the while thinking about the ex. The ex moves on and marries someone else while I trudge through life moving from terrible relationship to terrible relationship. Twenty years down the road she and I meet again on the observation deck of the Sears Tower and we instantly fall in love. The problem? She is now married with three beautiful kids and I am a successful writer only in town for a couple of days. Damn the bad timing.

God damn, these two are just so likeable together.

This is my problem – I get movie endings. I run through the classic endings from “You’ve Got Mail” to “Sleepless in Seattle” (apparently I can only think of Tom Hanks films) and can see how each one applies to my life but none seem appropriate. I could write ten different endings to my current conundrum with Nicki and the ex, but can’t seem to make a decision in the real world. While all my ideas seem like great stories, none of them see realistic – and isn’t that what writing is about? The realistic? Why does it seem like the best love stories are often the improbable ones. You never really see a film about the couple that has three kids and has been together for thirty years. They are not thrilled with life, but they are in love and wouldn’t want it any other way. That’s a realistic love story.

Although realistic love stories don’t seem to help my problem at all. So what is a person to do? I suppose I should just plug my nose and take the plunge.

I’ll let you know what I decide and how it goes. Advice is welcome.

I am a Real Bucket.

Most likely the funniest thing on television

What kind of guy starts a blog, posts a few times and then abandons it for months? A real bucket of shit – that kind of guy. I am a real bucket of shit.

I started this blog to chronicle my progression from pathetic dreamer to professional writer. I was using it as an outlet for all my real thoughts and feelings about my writing, the business in general, and my success and failures in pursuing a real career. Then after four posts I got busy and completely neglected my loyal readership. I am truly sorry for that. I can’t say that it won’t happen again – but I will sure as hell try to stay up on this as best I can.

That being said, I am back and better than ever!

For the past month, I have been working diligently on a spec script for the Disney/ABC Television Writing Fellowship. This program is one of the more lucrative writing fellowships that I could find. If accepted, Disney will help move you to Los Angeles (I’m originally from LA, but now live in Chicago) and then pay you $50,000 over the course of a year to learn how to write under their mentor program. That is a pretty sweet deal if you are trying to break in to the business.

To apply for this program, you need to provide a resume (with some kind of applicable experience being a plus), an autobiography, a statement of interest, and a spec script of a comedy or drama that is currently in production. Sounds simple enough, right? Although being new to the business of writing – I had no resume, autobiography, statement of interest, or spec script good enough to submit. I had my work cut out for me.

My initial thought on a spec script was to write for a show that I really enjoyed. Here is the short list of scripted shows I watch and

It's like a live action adaptation of the "Cathy" comic strip. ACCCK!

enjoy: Entourage, Lost, Party Down, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Community, Modern Family, and The Simpsons. I also enjoy or have enjoyed Seinfeld, Friends, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Jericho, and Undeclared – although they are not currently producing new episodes. I know a lot of people are wondering why I didn’t include 30 Rock, The Office, and Parks and Recreation – they are stale and have run their course.

Of the shows I enjoy, most of them are not ideal candidates for a spec script submission. Most of them are either too crude, appeal to a limited audience, or have generally weak writing which may make it difficult to emulate properly. The one show that stuck out in my mind as worthy would be Modern Family.

Modern Family is a unique ensemble piece that ABC has put together. It follows three branches of a large (and not to put to fine a point on it) modern family. It includes a patriarch who is married to a young Columbian hottie with an oddly mature son, the patriarch’s uptight daughter who is married to a good-natured and clueless husband and their three children, and the patriarch’s gay son who is dating a fantastic bear of a gay man and their adopted, Vietnamese, infant daughter. Wow, that is a mouthful. The beauty of this series is in its ability to run three concurrent stories that all intermingle at the end of each show. It’s a simple formula that really allows the writers to go in a bunch of different directions. Yep, this is the right show.

I developed a work schedule that forced me to write a minimum of five pages a day. Five pages, regardless of how good I thought they were, needed to be written everyday. This then allowed me two weeks to revise the crap out of it. My revision process involved multiple rewrites, a live table read with some improvisers that I know, a joke pitching session, and finally a read from my parents. If you want honest feedback about a piece of writing, give it to your parents. My parents are perfectly happy with my day job and think my professional writing aspirations are a pipe dream – so their criticisms on a piece of writing are going to be as brutal as possible. They actually liked it very much.

I completed my script (it’s entitled: Modern Family – Music of the Night), drafted a resume more tooled towards a professional writing job, wrote a very humbling autobiography, and put together the best statement of interest that I could. I submitted the entire package on June 25th and now I will play the waiting game. Of course they won’t alert the winners until sometime in November and they only contact you if you have won. So that entire month I will be checking emails and phone messages constantly…just in case.

Good shit.

I know this post wasn’t a fun one but I wanted you guys to know the reason I haven’t posted in two months. Don’t worry, the next one is about a pretty lazy that I met the other night. Expect that later in the week.

By the way, watched The Sandlot and Goodfellas today. Great fucking day.

Dialogue is…um…tough

Dialogue is, for lack of a more refined statement, a mother fucker.

Dialogue is crucial to a film. Although we consider film to be a very visual medium, which it is, dialogue can make or break a film. How many movies have you seen where the dialogue was very formulaic? Or maybe the main character used a bunch of hackneyed catchphrases? (See: The Fast and Furious) These little mistakes can rip you out of an otherwise entertaining and engaging film.

This is an affliction that I know all too much about – cliché dialogue.

Too fast, too furious? Really.

I seem to have no problem getting words out on to the paper. The problem is that once those words are on the page – they aren’t always very good. I blame it, in part, on the fact that I was raised on comic books, video games, and Indiana Jones films. These creations strive for cliché catchphrases and live for formulaic dialogue. It’s been ingrained into my head and I spit it back out without even noticing it.

After three or four read throughs of my current project, (reading out loud really helps me find the giant pieces of crap) I realized that I needed help. How could a person who had conversated frequently (yes, I know “conversated” is not a real word) and incessantly, be so bad at writing dialogue? What I needed was a way to learn how to create dialogue that is both realistic and seemingly unplanned.

Hmmmmm…unplanned…impromptu…improvisational? When you want improv – you go to the source ImprovOlympic.

A little background on ImprovOlympic (IO): IO is a theatre that specializes in improvised comedy. They teach a form of comedy known as a “Harold” which is a name given to long form improvised comedy. The players start with nothing more than a one or two word suggestion and proceed to perform a three act show with no script or time to prep. When done well – improv is genius. When done badly – improv can still be genius. It’s all about natural reactions and connections. 

I decided to learn how to do improv. What better way to learn realistic and impromptu dialogue than to take classes at one of the most storied improvisational theaters in the country? So I have signed up for classes. Taking the leap and learning a craft. 

$260 dollars to learn how to pretend better – wow, things are really starting to happen.

Follow me on twitter @wannabeword.

Breaking Point…Break

A key piece of advice I have heard is that you should write about the 1%.

Writing about the 1% means that you should write about the most interesting, most depressing, most frightening, or

100% Adrenaline

 most exciting times of your life. Your breaking point if you will. Nobody is interested in a film about the day you woke up, ate breakfast, went to work, watched reruns of the office, and then went to bed. That’s everyone’s life. We want to know about the day you woke up to Patrick Swayze banging on your door to go sky diving (Point Break) or the day that the empire showed up and murdered your Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru (Pride and Prejudice). This is the 1%.

Another way of looking at this 1% is to consider it the moment when your character is pushed in to action. Almost every great story has an inciting incident that pushes your character out of their comfort zone and in to action. Ghostbusters? The college where they are employed cuts funding to the Parapsychology department, forcing our heroes out in to the real world. The Godfather? Michael’s father is the victim of an attempted assassination and his brother Sonny is killed, leaving the family without a rudder. The Hangover? The guys get obliterated and wake up to find their buddy is missing and scheduled to get married in 24 hours. The inciting incident is your 1%.

Why is this the topic of today’s post? Because I recently had a 1% moment.

About 1 year ago I moved to my current city with a girlfriend (of 1 year). I know it was a little crazy to move together after dating only 1 year, but we got along amazingly and both needed a change of scenery. Things coasted pretty spectacularly for about 9 months before I started to notice cracks in the venire. We started to fight with a little more frequency and we started hanging out with separate crowds. Pretty soon it got to the point where it was more like having a roommate than a girlfriend.

Finally all the resentment and arguing built up to a head and we had a “perhaps we should spend some time apart” moment. You know the moment. You aren’t really mad at each other, you just feel like things (at least for the time being) have run their course. This was where we were.

“Bohdi, this is your fucking wakeup call, man. I’m an F-B-I agent!” (Point Break, again)

I had allowed myself to get too comfortable – a constant fear of mine. A hesitation. This is where I got just happy enough with the job and the girlfriend to think that I could live this life without much trouble. I never wanted to be in the position where I got comfortable like that. It wouldn’t be fair to me or to her. So we ended things and I moved out with the dog and the air mattress.

“Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true.” (Point Break, a third time)

This is my inciting incident. I have now found my kick in the ass that is going to force me to get out of the house, get back in shape, make some new friends, and get this writing thing off the ground. This is the moment where I can either cuddle with the dog on the air mattress and bitch about how I miss the girl or I can metaphorically change my dirty shirt and grab the bull by the testicles. Kinda gross but applicable.

I’m sure this push out of my comfort zone will figure in to my writing heavily, but you can be sure that I will use it as motivation.

“Look at it! It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity, man! Let me go out there and let me get one wave, just one wave before you take me in. I mean, come on man, where I am I gonna go? Cliffs on both sides! I’m not gonna paddle my way to New Zealand! Come on, compadre. Come on!” (Point Break, final time)

Ideas for Dummies

Let’s review from the last post shall we:

1) I hate my job – it bores me to tears.

2) I decided I wanted to be a screenwriter even though I have very little experience in it and no connections at all.

3) I needed a kick in the ass to push me in the right direction.

Jumping in to screenwriting with little idea how it actually works can be tough. Like the do-it-yourselfer on a weekend project, I bought a few books to help me out. These purchases included: “Save the Cat” – a great book that gives you a straightforward and entertaining approach to screenwriting. “How to Write and Sell for the Screen”  – exactly what the title implies although it is written by a guy with only one written credit (which I had never seen before). So you really have to take his advice with a grain of salt. “Screenwriting for Dummies” – the good people at the “for Dummies” corporation did it again. This book broke things down in to simple terms with examples and even included a demo of several different types of screenwriting software. All this for only $14.95? Touche Dummies. 

My advice? While reading these books write as much as you. Pour out any ideas on to paper or in to a notebook and flesh out little outlines of even the dumbest ideas. The point is to get as much creativity out of your head and on to a paper where you can start working them over. Go for the kidneys. 

You got a gator in your shitter

As I started the phase I like to call “idea diarrhea” – two things became abundantly clear: 1) I have a ton of ideas but only 25% of them are any good; and 2) when you are strapped for ideas, you can hop on to cnn.com and read articles. When available, articles from CNN affiliates in the south can provide you with some of the most interesting and improbable ideas. A baby fights off an alligator in the bathroom? The south. A vat of moonshine makes the brewer go blind, leading to his lifelong mission to perfect the art of moonshining? The south. You get the idea.

The whole purpose of this exercise is to get as many ideas as you can out of your head and on to paper where you can work with them. Ideally you can think of it this way: 100 crappy ideas can be whittled down to roughly 25 passable ideas – 25 passable ideas can be worked down to 10 decent ideas – 10 decent ideas can be distilled in to 2 good ideas – and 2 good ideas can be coin-flipped in to one screenplay idea. Remember that this idea is going to take up anywhere from 3 months to 1 year of your life…so it needs to be high quality and you need to like it.

Remember that these don’t all have to be “ideas” in the traditional sense. I tend to lump them all under that category but these include: funny stories, dumb anecdotes, interesting people, stereotypical characters, quirky lines, half-baked skits, memorable scenery, and odd social scenarios. All of these little pieces of life can feed in to your final screenplay.

I have compiled nearly 250 ideas in my little notebook. I would say 248 of them are pretty crappy bits and pieces of potentially good ideas and the other 2 are just alright. Being as un-creative as I am, 250 ideas may not even lead to 1 that would work for a screen play – but these will all eventually work their way in to something I bet.

Be sure to write down everything – you never know when it might be helpful.

Three weeks in  to my career as a screenwriter and I am already giving advice to other people. What kind of stuck up prick am I? You don’t have to take my advice or even listen to it – but please continue to check back in on this blog and follow me on twitter @ Wannabeword.

I needed a plan…

Most of the world's most critical decisions are made while peeing.

There comes a time in everyman’s life when he must take a serious look at his life and it’s priorities.  A time when he must decide whether his drab 9-5 job is something that could be tolerable until retirement or whether he should slap his boss, put his dick all over the copier, and reach for the stars. I stumbled on to this point about two months ago.

I can honestly say that I have disliked my job since the very beginning.  The problem?  It paid enough for me to live semi-comfortably and allowed me to do only small amounts of work and somehow still excel.  It should have been ideal, but I still found myself glaring at the alarm clock every morning and dreading the minute I would have to slap on a tie and brave the morning commute.  Was I challenged by the job?  Clearly not.  Did I like the people I worked with?  Absolutely not.  Will I still be doing this job in another 12 months? Hopefully not.  This all hit me at once (while I was standing at the work urinal oddly enough) and I decided that a drastic career change was in order.

It was at that paticular urinal that I made the decision to be a professional writer.  Not one of those pompous writers who over uses metaphors and asks people to seek the deeper meaning in their worthless pile of prose, but a screenwriter…or possibly a television writer!

With this newfound goal – I had purpose, but as my old coach used to tell me: “purpose without a plan is like pizza without a crust”.  I have no idea what that means but I do know that my coach had a severe weight problem.  I also know that I need a plan and perhaps a swift kick in the ass to get me going.

This blog will chronicle my progression from average clock puncher to blockbuster scribe*.

* If I sound like a an obnoxious asshole who is way too confident, it’s because in all honesty a career change like this is absolutely frightening.  I have always had this theory that if you can’t actually be confident you need to exude confidence.  My coach never told me that – perhaps if he did I might still be playing today.

** Follow me on Twitter at WannabeWord