We recently connected with CJ Walley and have shared our conversation below.
Hi CJ, we’re so appreciative of you taking the time to share your nuggets of wisdom with our community. One of the topics we think is most important for folks looking to level up their lives is building up their self-confidence and self-esteem. Can you share how you developed your confidence?
Generally speaking, due to being bullied a lot when younger, I have always suffered with low self-esteem, so to enter into such an ego-centric world, full of seemingly confident people, was intimidating to say the least, and I questioned if I had what it takes to work in film.
The early years were tough because, oddly enough, that’s where the criticism of my work was at its most brutal and opinionated. It didn’t matter if the feedback was free or paid for, peer or professional; it all cut deep and had me concluding that I was a hack.
I kept telling myself that big success would be my validation. That it would prove everyone wrong. I was looking in the wrong place and hoping for a miracle.
What changed things and steered me down the right path were two key things. Firstly, I did a lot of reading about other creatives, and I quickly learned that they weren’t the unstoppable machines I thought they were. They were just as neurotic as me, and they’d spent years being knocked down until they found an audience that appreciated them. What they did have, however, was conviction in their art. They knew what they wanted to create and were unapologetic about that, knowing it was what drove them. That led to me writing short scripts that were 100% in my voice, and those short scripts quickly got picked up, one after the other and the other, until I had about twenty scripts in filmmaker’s hands.
That genuine validation from people who wanted to get up in the morning and strive to turn my words into reality easily trumped the opinions of people on the Internet, and that energy went straight back into my feature scripts, which turned out the be the best I’d write. I never looked back after that.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I’m a screenwriter, which means I’m the guy who writes the scripts that movies are made from. I’ve always been a big film fan, so I’ve always found the concept of film enchanting. It’s an unusual job. I don’t know of anyone else in my city who does it professionally, and people are always surprised and curious when they find out what I do.
I’ve been lucky enough to have five films I’ve written go into production now, and even more fortunate to have had a few go to #8 on Netflix, #4 on Amazon Prime, and #1 on Hulu.
I love creating pulpy thrillers, mostly with female leads, featuring strong themes, brutal action, witty dialogue, and twisting scenes that have characters vying for power or falling for one another. I’m also the author of Turn & Burn: The Scriptwriter’s Guide to Writing Better Screenplays Faster, a free online resource I’ve since expanded into a book.
I’m also here to help change the industry for the better. Frustrated by the costs and cliques that screenwriters and filmmakers face when trying to share or source material, I started the free script-hosting website Script Revolution.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Passion, patience, and humility are the three qualities I feel are essential. You have to have a passion for the craft that gives you the motivation to put in the work. You need patience because this is a near-impossible industry to break into, and, especially in the early years, you can barely move the needle. Having humility keeps you away from the glitz and glamour that too many get sucked into due to their egos, and causes them to lose track of what really matters.
Passion is fuelled by a genuine love of storytelling and filmmaking. It pays to lean into what you tonally. If you like pulpy thrillers, write the best pulpy thrillers you can, and want to see on the screen. It’s too easy to write what you think others want to see, and turn this into a chore in the process. That passion, because it consumes you and causes you to love what you are doing, gives you that much-needed patience, because you have something to fill that void. Humility is the hard one to find, especially in a world known for fame and fortune, and success works against you. Again, the art is where the answer lies. We have to be slaves to it.
Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?
I’ve been lucky enough to form a long-term working relationship with director-producer Shane Stanley. Shane connecting with me was my big break-in moment. He’s been involved in film since he was in a crib and has a few healthy ways of looking at things. He has this saying during production, “it’s only a film”, which seems dismissive at first, but reminds us just how crazy and overwhelmed we can get over something that should be fun. He also lives by the rule “if you aren’t pissing someone off, you’re doing something wrong”, which is so true in the world of art, where the stronger your artistic voice, the more you will polarise people.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.cjwalley.com
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cjwalley
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