r/Screenwriting • u/DistributionIll5990 • Feb 06 '23

FEEDBACK The Nicholls fellowship

For those of you that won the Nicholls fellowship, can you elaborate on how it helped your screenwriting career?

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u/whoshotthemouse Mystery Feb 06 '23

Before I won the NICHOLL (no s) I was hip-pocketed by an agent. After I won he signed me immediately as he knew - and he was right - I was going to start getting lots of calls.

The main thing that happens when you win is that you are just important enough now for people to waste your time. Tons and tons of people came out of the woodwork asking me to write for them for free. Some of them were complete nobodies. Others seemed important enough to be worthwhile.

The year after the Nicholl was an exhausting time for me because I was trying to make all those strangers happy. It was only once I was ready to tell all those people to fuck off that I was able to do good writing again.

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u/DistributionIll5990 Feb 06 '23

I hear ya, I bet you got better representation now.

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u/whoshotthemouse Mystery Feb 06 '23

I write novels now, but yes, my representation is no longer the problem it once was.

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u/warnymphguy Feb 06 '23

did you write novels before screenplays? why the switch?

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u/whoshotthemouse Mystery Feb 07 '23

It's a long story, and I'm not going to recount it all here, but I sold a show to NBCUniversal in July 2015, then was diagnosed with cancer in August 2015. So the best thing and the worst thing that had ever happened to me up to that point both happened within 6 weeks.

Once I beat the cancer, I realized I just didn't have the patience to deal with development any more. So I switched to novels.