JMalrix

Evenin’ Goofies,

I feel like I need to take a moment and talk to y’all about something that’s been sitting on my mind lately.

There is a crap-ton of money in the entertainment industry.

Not a little bit. Not a modest amount. The entertainment media apparatus is flowing with so much capital that executives literally have to scrounge up content just so they can pour the resulting swill right down our gullets.

Haven’t you noticed how bad the writing has gotten lately? Have you looked at half the shows getting greenlit and wondered, “How on earth did this make it out of a pitch room?”

If you’re a writer sitting at home looking at your own work, questioning your talent because you haven’t “made it” yet, let me tell you something right now: You are not a bad writer. You are just unlucky.

I have friends who sit in professional writers’ rooms, and honestly? Those rooms can suck. Writers in those spaces are often paid absurd amounts of money to literally repackage the exact same tropes over and over, month after month, year after year.

And yet, the “dumb money” keeps flowing.

The major studios have so much cash flushing through their systems that they could probably buy all the self-published content on Amazon three times over—and still have enough left in the budget to pump out mindless slop, slap a shiny coat of paint on it, and market it as the next “new and edgy” drama or comedy.

So why aren’t you rich from your writing yet? Why aren’t your books or screenplays being optioned for millions?

Because the game is unfair. It’s entirely about who you know, luck, timing, and whether some Hollywood yokel happened to glance at your work on a Tuesday and decide to attach arbitrary meaning to it. It has very little to do with raw merit, and everything to do with access.

And honestly? This exact reality is why I keep my day job.

Look, besides the fact that I’m actually a pretty good engineer, I know for a fact that engineering reliably pays the bills. It gives me stability. Do I hope one of my stories blows up one day? Of course I do! I’d love that. But because I have my career, I don’t need it to.

And that difference is everything.

Having that financial baseline means nobody in a suit gets to tell me how to alter my characters, tone down my plotlines, or rewrite my endings to fit a corporate spreadsheet. I love my stories, and I love the absolute creative control I have over them. I get to write exactly what I want, on my terms, for the incredible people who genuinely support my work.

So what am I really saying here? Am I telling you to give up?

Absolutely not.

Just keep writing. Keep dreaming. Keep producing.

Write from your soul. Write the stories that make you feel alive. Don’t waste your precious creative energy obsessing over where it will go, who will buy it, or what the industry will think of it. The market is fickle, money is stupid, and the gatekeepers don’t actually know what good writing is anyway.

You never know when the light will hit your work, but until then, holding onto your creative freedom is its own massive victory.

Love y’all, keep creating, and don’t forget to brush your teeth.

From the heart of your favorite goof,

JMalrix