This is a guest post from Bo Eason, former safety for the NFL’s Houston Oilers and star of the international hit one man show

Runt Of The Litter, directed by Larry Moss and currently in development as a motion picture.  Since retiring from the NFL Bo has taken his tenacity on the field and applied it to his acting career.  He divides his time between family, motivational speaking, international tours of his show and a prolific writing career that has attracted the interest of people like Frank Darabont (Shawshank  Redemption) and Leonardo Dicaprio.  Find out more about Bo Eason here.

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Decision Time. Today you can decide to take your acting career into your own hands.

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If you make that decision you will never have to:

-Wait for the phone to ring.
-Try to score a powerful agent.
- Meet movie stars that can give you a break.

“If you build it, they will come“.

When I was a kid I played football. The only thing that I ever wanted from football was to WIN. I figured out very early on that running with the ball and scoring touchdowns had nothing to do with winning football games. If you want to win at football,  you have to control the game.  If you want to control the game you have to play defense. Because if the other team can’t score, they can’t win. Then, I notice there is one position on the defense that single-handedly decides the outcome of every single football game…that position is called Safety. The Safety is the last line of defense. If you get past the Safety, you score. If you score, you win. If you can’t get past me, you lose. The Safety decides who wins and who loses. It’s a DECISION.

Since winning was the most important thing to me, I spent 20 years mastering the position of Safety. In 1984 I became the 1st Safety chosen in the NFL Draft.

After my football career was over, I applied the same exact mindset to my acting career. I thought, how can I control this acting game so that I can win? It didn’t take long to figure out that the “Key to the Kingdom” in the entertainment world was the script.  So, I started writing. Writing my own material was the only way to control this game.

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I know what you’re thinking…you’re wrong!

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Actors make great writers. You might not think you’re a writer, I didn’t either. But, all of us actors are great storytellers, it’s the only reason we’re in this business. We love story.

Make the DECISION to start telling your story today. I will promise you one thing…you will never be a victim to the industry again. You will have complete control of your career.

I wrote a play 12 years ago. Guess who gets to play the starring role? ME! That’s right, I’ve employed myself for 12 years straight. One thousand performances and numerous movie deals later, I don’t have to wait for that phone to ring again.

Remember how we began our story? With the  high end Agents and Movie Stars? They all came calling after I wrote my show because they know that a good story is the “Key to the Kingdom”. They want good story. It’s the only way they can survive in this business. If you’re holding the “Key” they’ve got to come to you.

“If you build it, they will come“.

-Bo Eason

www.boeason.com

This is a guest post from TJ Dawe, a successful Vancouver based writer/performer/director who’s toured solo shows at more than eighty comedy and theatre festivals in the last decade and a bit. He’s got six published plays, a humour book, and his directing credits include The One Man Star Wars Trilogy, which played Off-Broadway in New York for five months. He alsoblogs, tweets, podcasts, and has stuff on youtube.

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The Shawshank Redemption flopped in the theatres. Later people started renting it, talking about it, buying the DVD. Now it’s ranked number one on the internet movie database’s user poll of every movie ever made, surpassing the next contender (The Godfather) by almost 100, 000 votes. Why has everyone become passionate about this flop? Here’s my take: because it’s an analogy for being stuck in a day job.

I don’t know anyone who’s spent time in prison for a murder they didn’t commit, but the vast majority of my artist friends toil in soul killing day jobs to make ends meet. How do you muster the energy to create after getting home from an exhausting day doing something you hate?

In the two decades of his incarceration Andy Dufresne (played by Tim Robbins) builds a library, teaches prisoners to read, and digs an escape tunnel – outside of the accounting work he does for the warden and guards. I grew up with the notion that artists work in the throes of divine inspiration. That can definitely happen. But Robertson Davies (Fifth Business, What’s Bred in the Bone) started each new novel by writing a series of notes, outlining the story, the characters, and everything he’d need to research. This took three years. In the meantime he edited and wrote for a newspaper, helped raise three daughters, and later, taught and administrated a graduate college. Philip Glass (Soundtrack for The Hours, Kundun) drove a cab and repaired appliances, working on his compositions every morning. Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club, Choke) repaired diesel trucks and went to a novel writing workshop one evening a week.

Spending a little time each day on a project gets your mind working on it no matter what else you’re doing. In spare moments a problem might unlock itself. Maybe something you see or a random utterance from an overheard conversation will make a light bulb click. Can you find an hour a day for your art? Half an hour? It might not sound like much, but it adds up if you keep at it. Don’t have the time? How much time do you spend on Facebook?

When Dufresne escapes, the other prisoners don’t have a clue. He hadn’t shared his plan with even his closest friends. A lot of people talk about how they’re working on a screenplay, or how their band is gonna be huge. Be careful of this. If someone’s genuinely making their career happen, great. But talking about all the things you’re going to do can be a substitute for doing the actual work.

Dufresne’s tunneling takes nineteen years. The long slow climb isn’t as sexy as overnight success. We don’t see it much in biopics.

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But doing something each day can give focus and purpose to your entire existence. Any day job is more endurable when there’s even a possible exit into something better somewhere down the line. And those nineteen years are going to pass anyway. If there’s an injection of passion in your every day, your life will be better whether you make it or not. And you just might wind up on a beach in Mexico, sharing margaritas with Morgan Freeman.

-TJ Dawe

Share, Tweet, discuss, comment and Facebook this post – we can all use a margarita now and then!  Day jobs don’t have to be life jobs.  The choice is yours.