Why I’m Waiting for the Next Pandemic to Write My Screenplay
By: Brittany Migs
Date of Rejection: October 2020
I know, I know, this pandemic was supposed to be everyone’s King Lear moment, but hear me out: I’m waiting for the next pandemic.
I have plenty of good reasons, the first being, I was wildly unprepared. If someone had simply warned me that there would be a life-altering, global pandemic on its way, I would have surely gotten an outline or at least a character map together in preparation. Save The Cat! had been sitting on my nightstand for months and I totally would have read it if I knew what was to come. Given the abrupt nature of this virus and the quarantine that followed, I was unable to gather what I needed, and for that I refuse to apologize. How was I to know?
As soon as Covid-19 hit, I was sent scrambling. I frantically looked through my notes app where I keep my stash of soon-to-be award-winning screenplay ideas. I saw something that said “coming of age, Lady Bird but different, gay??” and tried to run with that for the first month or so of lockdown. It was an incredible premise but due to the state of things, I couldn’t get so much as a logline out. You see, the stress and uncertainty of the virus (on top of having to bake all of that bread) had sent me into a tizzy - which is precisely why the next pandemic will be perfect. I will know exactly what to do as soon as lockdown begins. I won’t be caught with my tail between my legs next time, no sirree.
In preparation for the next pandemic, I put my notes app and the phone attached to it into a locked trunk filled with non-perishables and a first aid kit. I have an Airbnb up in Vermont on a permanent hold so that as soon as I hear the rumblings of another earth-shattering virus, I can scurry right up there and get to work. I’m not sure why I would even attempt to write a screenplay right now when I have the perfect conditions for a writer’s retreat waiting for me during the next deadly virus.
Furthermore, so many people wrote their screenplays this pandemic. Can you say ‘saturated market’? I would much rather be the first writer of the next pandemic than the nine-thousandth writer of this one. I will probably be heralded as a trailblazer then. They’ll call me, “The Shakespeare of SARS-CoV-95,” or whatever name we settle on for the next virus. It would almost surely be considered gauche to take a crack at a screenplay right now. I mean, writing a screenplay in your first pandemic? That's like falling in love on your first trip to Paris–so cliché!
The conditions to write a screenplay need to be just right or you could end up with one of those Star Wars prequels or a kooky rom-com. Do you remember the 1999 film, Simply Irresistible, where Sarah Michelle Gellar gets dating help from her dead mother who has been reincarnated as a magical crab? That’s the kind of screenplay I could end up with if I started writing now. If only that writer had waited for the right pandemic.
I know what you must be thinking: I have no ideas and lack motivation. But that is just wholly untrue. I have tons of ideas ripe for the plucking (remember that notes app) and I’m very motivated to write a screenplay, which is why I’m being so proactive in preparing to do so. I even bought a second copy of Save The Cat! for my nightstand. Scientists believe this could be the first of four or five “once in a lifetime” pandemics I'll see and I'm not going to burn up all of my good ideas during the first one like some neophyte.
Also, I got really into needlepoint and that ate up a bunch of my free time. Gotta run, “Love Island” is on.