For a living I write stuff that I know is gonna sell to a studio and make a lot of money at the multiplex.

You write a spec, and you pour your heart and soul and life into a spec, and you think that spec is the movie that's going to sell and get made... I've never heard of anybody that happened to. What happens is, you write a spec, people get it, they see your writing, they see you're good, they bring you into their office and they say, "Boy, that spec was really good - we'll never make that in a million years. We have rights to the board game of Monopoly. What do you think about a Monopoly movie?".

Probably your first agent is going to be some guy who also handles dog acts.

You need to know that going in, and you also need to be able to write all the time. So when somebody looks at you across the table and says, "What do you think about a movie where Miley Cyrus switches souls with a basset hound?" You need to be able to sit there and figure out how to make that possibly shootable.

For a living I write stuff that I know is gonna sell to a studio and make a lot of money at the multiplex.

You have to be willing to throw [writing] stuff away and replace it.

Not taking criticism of your writing personally is an enormous step towards surviving the studio system.