wanted: fresh, new ideas

So you wanna be a writer, is what I hear from the jaded agent.
Well, yeah, actually. If I may be so bold, I am a writer. Been writing for years. Decades, even. What is it you need? Sitcom bibles? Completed pilots? Feature scripts, feature treatments, treatments about features and features featuring treatments. I’ve also got armloads of poetry, essays and collected ideas, plus a particularly engaging essay about the fat around my belly. But where has all this gotten me? Nowhere.
People may say I haven’t tried. Oh, but they are so wrong. I check the wga.com east website. I check the wga.com west website. Sometimes twice daily. There’s a listing of agents willing to accept material from new writers. I click on it in desperate hopes.
The list has been disabled. Surprise, surprise.
WGA.com/west doesn’t even have an agent listing.
Good luck with that strike, by the way. They say Karma’s a muhfukka.

I also spent a pretty penny on the Hollywood Directory. This thing was supposed to lay at my size 7s all the “legitimate” agents in the biz. Agents who, as it happens, are gagging for fresh, new material. I called sixty-seven agents. I was hung up on six-four times and yelled at twice. One agent showed promise, though. He actually took my name, email and home address. Why the address, I wondered? I soon found out the reason when three days later, I received a rejection letter from said agent- before my query had left my desk.
Friends, Hollywood is a tough nut to crack. I’m black, but I don’t write “urban” movies. Sometimes my characters are black, sometimes they’re Japanese. Sometimes they’re half black and half Japanese and possessed by demons. What is it I write about? I’m all over the place, really. A true renaissance woman. I write family horror. I write teen religious noir. I write about old people getting laid.
One fine day, I’m going to crack that nut. And when I do, I’ll avail myself to all those young, frustrated writers who have new and fresh ideas. If they’re really good, I’ll offer them a job. We’ll always need more fresh, new ideas for on “McGyver: The Movie”.