Playwright Maria Zelinskaya about career and impostor syndrome

IN RUBRIC "BUSINESS" We acquaint readers with women of different professions and hobbies that we like or are simply interested in. This time, Maria Zelinskaya, a playwright, scriptwriter, master of screenwriting at the Moscow School of New Cinema, became our heroine, a play based on a play by which Humanitas Engineering can be seen at the Moscow Art Theater. A.P. Chekhov.

I'm a playwright. Now I can already say this, although nine years ago I did not have the right to this title. I lived in the basement of a Rostov-style two-room apartment after my mother died, and thought that life would end there. But my vocation saved me. I liked the definition I once read: "Calling is what calls you to do this or that business." Having nothing - education, experience, knowledge - I began to write plays for the theater.

One thing prevented me - I thought that I was not talented. A mother pregnant with me often turned to higher forces and asked for a normal healthy child — not a genius, not a talented person, just a healthy one. In my youth, I was not a fan of this story, because I heard the following in it: "You are not a genius. You will never become talented." Only now I understand how my mother was right. Talent and genius - a pleasant application to a person, but without him, he, too, can take place in the profession. In order to become a professional, you need a whole set of completely different qualities: efficiency (ability to work without getting tired and with joy in your heart), purposefulness (ability to set big goals and go to them), willpower (ability not to give up and rise after a fall) , falling in love (treating a profession as a dear person), inflexibility (the ability to walk despite any “weather conditions”), infantilism (the ability to hammer head through all the doors without thinking about failure) and self-discipline (daily work).

It is believed that to become a master in any field, you need ten thousand hours of practice. As a rule, they are equal to ten years in the profession. This is important to understand, so as not to get upset at first failures. You become more confident in yourself and go from the “novice” stage to the “first degree specialist” in about six months of daily exercises. If you want to find a short way to mastery, you will get to an even longer one. This is how the world works. We all travel the same distance.

Rewards out of pity

Once I fell in love with a theater actor and wanted him to notice me. She became the editor of a theater journal, since she graduated from journalism and from the age of sixteen she worked in journalism, but then she decided to go all-in and started writing a play. My first play was monstrous, and for another four years I was a graphomaniac. I think that any author needs to write a certain number of sheets before pure, unclogged lines go. This is how to open the tap after the water has been turned off: water must flow for some time for rust to escape. The first five or seven pieces should be pulled out and forgotten about them. This is normal.

Then came to me Teatr.doc. My play was noticed, I got to the festival of young drama "Lyubimovka", where it should have been read for the audience. At that time, the read format was new and unknown. It appeared because modern plays did not fall into the big repertory theaters, but it was necessary to somehow support the authors - and the plays were not staged (this is expensive and risky), but read by professional actors. During the reading, my ears were burning with shame. After the analysis was - terrible and merciless. A more experienced colleague, not knowing that I heard him, said: "Zelinskaya is not a playwright." I went to the exit to escape, but someone grabbed my hand and said: "Good play, well done." These words were insincere, but the one who said this had incredible charm, and I stayed.

It was a playwright Vadim Levanov. He became my teacher. Vadim lived in Tolyatti, I am in Rostov. We talked for hours on the phone, and I realized how important it is to find a teacher, a good practice, and to begin, without hesitation and fear of being incompetent, ask him questions. Vadim opened my profession. I understood the mechanisms and learned the main rule: not to invent heroes, not to lie in facts, but to be attentive to life and describe a contemporary. They began to invite me to other festivals, and then they called me to the “Debut” award, and right there I was nominated for the “Person of the Year” award in the “Art” nomination of the “Dog” magazine. I won both awards.

Nevertheless, it was a disaster. They showed me through the main channels, they interviewed me, but I was terrified. The play, for which they gave me an award, was devoted to the last months of my psychoanalyst mother’s life, who was ill with cancer. We had a difficult relationship with her, and when she was gone, I realized that I needed to apologize. I wrote an apology in the form of a play. I was afraid of the condemnation and hatred that she would cause, I was sure that these awards were pity for me, but no entrance to the profession. In addition, I felt that I had already written all the most important things that were in me and could not do anything else.

But fear after success is normal; we must move on in spite of it. The following months I spent at a loss: I did not know what to write about. And then a terrible thing happened. Like my mother, Vadim Levanov fell ill and died; this was the second terrible loss. And I remembered the story that my mother told me as a child. My dad, when I was born, drew an alien on a huge sheet and hung it by my bed. Mom was afraid of the stranger and said: "This alien was like a living one. Dad painted pictures as if they were alive." And I wrote the play "Like Living".

The play immediately decided to put in the theater. The director was my eldest girlfriend, and my internal critic concluded: she puts my play, because we know her. At the premiere, I was not happy, but the impostor's syndrome progressed.

Hurray, I'm a playwright

I began to talk with colleagues about where to go to learn from the playwright. Everyone rushed to discourage me, they say, they only spoil the authors in literary universities, so I decided to study on my own. I got all sorts of books about drama, I constantly read and outlined, emphasized and thought out tasks for myself. But I could not engage in self-education all day, I had another job. I knew that if I wanted to enter the profession, I had to give up everything else. I quit. I came home and thought: "Hurray, now I am a playwright!" The next morning, the realization came: I have no money, I have no orders, I have no ideas at all.

Fortunately, the Rostov playwright Sergei Medvedev called me. He asked if I wanted to write a TV series about journalists. I, of course, wanted to. I came to the meeting with Sergey and director Viktor Shamirov. I was twenty, Sergey and Victor - over forty. Already at the first meeting it became clear that the language of the theater and the language of cinema are two different things. Yes, I got a dream job, but I had to do what I had no idea about. We started the series from scratch, it was twenty episodes. Victor suggested: “Bring ideas if they are interesting, be the author of these series,” and immediately approved five of my ideas. That means I had five episodes in my hands! Wow!

But "wow" quickly disappeared from my life. It was necessary to paint the structure of the series, and what it is, I did not know. I began to bring very long texts, Victor was angry: "Masha, there are three points in history. Bring me three sentences: the beginning, the middle, the end. This is a first grader who can." I came to him in the morning, he said that my three points were bullshit. I came to dinner - he tore the paper. She came in the evening - he was silent in a rage. I roared for hours, sitting in my room. I did not sleep at night to bring three points and get a portion of humiliation. I felt like a nonentity, could not cope and let people down.

One morning, I just did not go to Victor. But an hour later the telephones began to ring, and after two the director knocked on the door and said that I had five minutes to pack. Victor didn't scold me that morning. He himself came up with three points and waited to let me paint them. When we finished the last episode, the humiliation consumed me.

But it was good. I received the first money for my work in the profession. There was no question of where to put them: I studied the dramaturgy, but the scriptwriting skill turned out to be too difficult - I had to go to Moscow. I decided to enter the Moscow school of new cinema. Secretly, I was hoping to win a grant and get on the budget - by that time several of my plays had been staged in the theater and printed in various editions, I had a little name.

On the budget did not take me. I was ready to study for half a year, for which I had money, and to be expelled. Six months later, I began to collect the suitcase. On the last day of my study, our artistic director Dmitry Mamulia approached me. He read my play and suggested that I write a full meter with him. I left, praying that he would not know that I had been expelled, and did not change my mind. We talked on Skype and in two weeks wrote a full meter script - I learned a lot in school, the script turned out to be good. And then Dmitry asked why I did not go to school. I had to admit. He laughed and said: "Masha, why should you study? Let us teach with me? You will be very helpful."

How to war

I was afraid to teach. At the entrance exams, I even asked my senior colleagues to be around. Fear drove me to an accelerated study of literature. I read, listened, watched, went to master classes, came home and read again, listened and watched. I was preparing as if my life depended on it.

I loved the profession, I had the experience, but the lectures were bad. The impostor syndrome has escalated. I sat in front of the students shrank, my voice trembled. When arguing with me, the world collapsed. I pounded myself. But I had a method that helped me become an author: to speak from myself, to talk about what I know. So, I had to help students learn about themselves so that they could write about it. With those who trusted me, the method began to work. The rest of me exhausted, and I exhausted them.

Then there was a minor conflict, I came home, lay down on the bed and said to myself: "I can no longer." I cried from the accumulated tension and realized that I would not return to teaching. I called Dmitry and said that I could no longer argue, prove, I was weak, he was mistaken in me. This is the end. Laughter sounded again in the receiver: "Masha, if you have problems with the course, you need to dial a new one." Later I learned that more experienced colleagues also have defeats. “The course turned out to be unsuccessful, people did not become a team, we did not understand each other,” they said.

Dmitry went to my students who were furious at my absence and offered an alternative: some of the guys who love me start anew with a new set, and some go to another teacher. I went to the selection of new students like a war. The interview was tough. I did not want to repeat the failure and weed out the haters, arguers, who were not happy that I was almost the same age. I described in detail the essence of my method - the combination of drama and psychoanalysis - and did not choose those to whom it does not suit.

Before starting the training, they called me from the main theater of the country and said that they want to put on the play "Humanitas Engineering". In the Moscow Art Theater Chekhov, where Chekhov and Stanislavsky worked! I could not believe it. Immediately two more directors called, I won several more awards and contests, I was interested in the play in other cities. In addition, I was offered to write another series and a full meter, so I came to the new students calm. I was waiting for people chosen by me. And - lo and behold! - they liked my method. They wanted to explore themselves and tell me and each other something very personal. I continued to develop my methodology, and since I was writing for film and television in parallel, the students received only practically verified information. Each of them bounced off the "three points" from the teeth. A month ago they had graduation. Leading producers of channels and film companies met with my writers and took them to the projects. They began to win in contests, two received the first million for the script.

Return tv

Now I have many opportunities open to me. They began to fight for me as a teacher. But I am a screenwriter, and during teaching I was half-hearted. I knew that I had to go all-in again - and decided to refuse all schools. And projects poured at me: now I have five scenarios of serials and films that I write in parallel. My working day starts in the morning and ends in the morning. The projects that have been offered to me are again a way out of the zone that I have already studied. A fear has returned to me, which indicates that growth will come after him.

Recently, with the editor, we began to develop an animated film. I came up with the structure, passed it and got the answer: "The producer broke us to pieces and to dust." It turned out that there was no animation in the application. A marvelous new world has opened up to me: the three-act and other tools that we use in the cinema do not matter, another thing is important here - an attraction (for example, the sea and islands come to life, as in Moana) and a measure of convention (as in Puzzle, where the feelings of a person are animated). I continue to learn new things and work out my ten thousand hours. Because I have a dream.

I want to return television to a contemporary. I'm twenty-nine, I have no children, but they will. And, when they grow up, our television should already be good. Our country has very good scriptwriters. I admire colleagues. We can write scripts and love our profession. Producers appear who are ready to punch through new content and create a modern format. Soon, very soon everything will be. It is only necessary not to surrender, not to give up and endure. Until the television, which we deserve.

After five thousand hours of work as a screenwriter, I understood several important things. First, the screenwriter doesn't need to be too smart. Smart writers write bad scripts. Drama of the senses - this is what you need to learn. When I write, the mind often takes over, and I turn into a designer or mechanic, and something most important disappears. So I went and dyed my hair pink. It helps me to work better.

Secondly, to be a strong author, you need to fill your life with events: go to interesting places, get acquainted with new phenomena and people, learn about the world and yourself. Jonathan Franzen said this best of all: “To write the next book, you have to change as a person. Who you are now wrote the best book you could have. And you will not move forward unless you become different. If, otherwise speaking, you will not work on the story of your own life. That is, on your autobiography. "

The most difficult part of the work of the screenwriter is to find an emotional connection with the material. In America, there are even special coache therapists for this. They help to connect the characters and events in the script with the personal experience of the author, to find an analogy. This is the most important thing to start writing. You walk through a dark city, you see a creature that does not even look like a person, but it has unique clear eyes. And you feel that this creature is interesting to you, you need to help him. You spend time with him, shearing him, put on clean clothes. Finally, he starts talking to you. And soon tells his story. Once - and in your head a hero was born. At the very beginning it is always something incomprehensible, you do not see his face and you do not know anything about him. But you start to think about it every day. And he looms. And then he gets used to you and starts telling stories. You just have to write it down.