Alan Loeb interview

On the Writers Guild of America West website, screenwriter Alan Loeb tells Dylan Callaghan why giving up gambling saved his career.

Quitting gambling really did help me redirect a lot of my energy toward writing. I was writing, but the gambling habit was very intense and draining.

The other thing was kind of an epiphany. I always really wanted to sell things. If I'd finished a spec script, I'd need to sell it to have any money. That was scary and often the focus. When the script didn't sell, the depression would kick in and so on.

So I kinda changed that paradigm and said, “Okay, I'm not gonna worry if this script sells or not. The goal is to make each script I write better than the last. If I feel like I'm getting better with each script, then I'll be okay.” I held on to that and it was kind of an epiphany in a way.

Things We Lost In The Fire trailer