This is from Linda Seger’s “Making a good script great” (which I just finished and highly recommend).
Paul Haggis has been writing since the early 1970s. He is the only writer to win the best picture Oscar winner two years in a row, and to be nominated for an Academy award three years in a row.
The genres of his scripts are varied, from sitcoms to a boxing movie, to war pictures to action adventure.
It took Haggis three years, two months, and 10 days to sell his first script.
Haggis “I tell new writers to write your passion. Don’t listen to your agents. Don’t listen to your friends who tell you that the studio or the actor is looking for this or that thing. They don’t know what they want. I wasted years and years chasing things like that.
“I didn’t succeed until very late in my career when I decided to write Crash and Million Dollar Baby because those stories is deeply affected and troubled me. And they took four years to sell but they sold and they got made. I think I’ve only succeeded when I’ve done things I was really passionate about."
Tadaa
Absolutely! I couldn't agree more with his advice. Thanks for sharing it.
Haggis came out of London, ON Canada, where I'm writing from. I've referred to that factoid a few times in queries when I thought it might make a difference. (I do the same thing for Ryan Gosling, another London boy, when I've pitched stuff that he'd be good in.) Gotta latch onto those coat-tails if they're there!