Meet Krysana Maragh

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Krysana Maragh a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Krysana, thank you so much for making time for us today. Let’s jump right into a question so many in our community are looking for answers to – how to overcome creativity blocks, writer’s block, etc. We’d love to hear your thoughts or any advice you might have.

Art is supposed to be fun. It’s a simple concept but because my art is also my work that idea gets lost. The fun part arrives in short bursts and most of the process is laborious like any other job. When I’m forty pages deep and struggling to find an ending with a deadline looming and nothing’s coming out, I force myself to write something else. The last thing I want to do is take a break so instead I frame it as a “cheat day.” It satisfies the rebellion that’s brewing in me while maintaining the creative muscle. The problem isn’t that I can’t write, it’s usually that I’ve started to doubt if anything is good enough for the effort. So in writing a throw away short story or rehabbing an old script I give myself permission to fail because it doesn’t matter if those pages are bad. I indulge in self-expression and just write something fun. I usually find that creating the momentum is enough to build my confidence and get back on track for the story I am supposed to be completing. And sometimes, I stumble on a story that’s even better than what I was planning.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I am a screenwriter so most of what I do is planning arguments for people who don’t exist! I work in three phases: the idea, the story, the dialog. Ideas come and go all the time but the story phase is where it becomes a movie or a tv show. That’s where I string together all the pieces that excite me and puzzle together something that’s exciting to everyone. And then I spend a long time in dialog breathing life into fictional people to make them real. To me, it’s magic. I create worlds and populate them. It’s also therapy because on the page I can exercise all my fantasies and demons, my hopes and dreams, or remap my personal failures.

I specialize in young adult content specifically for a genre called Revenge of Suburban Black America. Growing up, I remember watching my favorite shows and wondering where all the black people were on Gossip Girl or Pretty Little Liars. I recognized the schools, the friend groups, the politics, but I was no where in the narrative. My writing is my opportunity to take my experiences and rewriting a more satisfying ending or exploring a personality with more consideration than we typically care to.

My pilot Meet Me @ The Mall is about an awkward 15 year old who risks everything she has to plan a sweet sixteen bigger and better than her arch-nemesis right when money is at its tightest in the great recession. In writing it, I get the chance to go back to 2008 and redefine that era with today’s context, examining the villain origin story that defined a generation. It won Funniest Achievement in a Teleplay at the Columbia University Film Festival and is currently in development.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

The concept of breaking into the film/tv industry is mystified (on purpose) but I firmly believe good stories can come from anyone. Having the fortitude to actually write it is the defining factor. That, with a time management framework, and a routine that serves you is all you need to create. Once you create something, you can submit it to festivals or apply for grants and fellowships and put your work into the world. But the foundation begins with cultivating your personal process.

The first step in my journey was fortifying the muscle to simply finish the story. Once I could commit to finishing a story, I was a writer. But pouring over one story isn’t enough to build a career. You need a portfolio of work and a sustainable writing cadence to create it. I outline a project road map for everything I write. It’s basically a syllabus that details how much work I need to complete at which time in order to maintain the pace. It includes break times, a window for reviewing notes, time to draft emails, submit to festivals, every necessary step to go from concept to reality. Finally, and probably most importantly, I had to develop a routine that feeds my confidence. Again, art is supposed to be fun but producing good work at a high volume can be draining. A lot of this business leads to rejection and criticism. Being able to build up my self-esteem and being a fan of my own work is the driving force that keeps me going. I am genuinely interested in what happens next, I want to know how my story ends. I want to see those characters make it. Sometimes I’m even shocked by my own cliffhangers! I have to cultivate fun or none of it matters.

My advice to anyone just getting started is to keep writing the next page without editing the previous one. I had a habit of returning to the beginning and ruminating on how to make it perfect which usually led to me starting over from scratch. That’s too big a hurdle to jump everyday and makes the process more daunting than it needs to be. Give yourself the credit of not starting from zero every time. Write the next page, the edits can wait. Make it to the end by any means necessary. After you finish, put it down. Celebrate completing a draft. Then start work on the revisions.

What do you do when you feel overwhelmed? Any advice or strategies?

Everything is due all at once, every day. Chipping away at the massive list of demands feels like I’m not getting anywhere MOST of the time. Once in a while I get to the end and clear my docket, but most of my journey is an ongoing Sisyphean task. To keep from getting overwhelmed, I ground myself in what’s directly in front of me. Once I’ve outlined a road map of what needs to get done, I put all of my trust in the version of me that planned it. So be honest with yourself and plan accordingly for what you can handle. Then I move one tiny task at a time. The trick is to zoom all the way in and contrary to popular opinion, avoid the big picture! It’s too much to look at. Maybe we can’t all run a marathon but most of us are capable of taking one single step.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.maraghmedia.com/
• Instagram: @Kryscrossed
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krysana-maragh
• Other: https://vimeo.com/maraghmedia

Image Credits

@Urbanworldff
@spicerstudios

Image featuring Aimony Erisnor, Kingsley Nwaogu