A Small Victory Worth Celebrating: Semifinalist at Cleveland Arthouse Film Awards

Sometimes in the screenwriting journey, you need to pause and acknowledge the wins. Even the "small" ones that don't come with a trophy or a check.

My teen supernatural horror screenplay, Before We Were Afraid, has been selected as a semifinalist in the Cleveland Arthouse Film Awards, and while it might not sound like winning a Nicholl Fellowship, here's why I'm celebrating anyway.

The Numbers Tell a Story

Let's put this in perspective. Reddit's screenwriting community has more than 1.7 million members. Stage 32, the film industry's networking platform, boasts a similar number. Facebook's "Screenwriter Network" has more than 67,000 members. And that's just three corners of the internet where writers gather.

Now factor in all the other screenwriting groups, forums, workshops, MFA programs, and screenwriters working in isolation around the world. We're talking about millions of people writing scripts at any given moment.

Millions.

When you zoom out and see the full scope of competition (not just in one contest, but across the entire landscape of screenwriters trying to break through), any recognition starts to feel a little more significant.

Why This Matters

Making it to the semifinal round means my screenplay stood out among hundreds, possibly thousands, of submissions. It means a reader/readers engaged with my story. It means the characters I created, the dialogue I obsessed over, the supernatural mythology I built, and the scares I crafted landed... on point.

In a sea of millions of voices all trying to be heard, mine got a little louder today.

The Long Game

Screenwriting isn't a sprint. It's not even a marathon. It's more like a series of marathons strung together with rejection letters and rewrites. Every semifinal placement, every quarterfinal advancement, every "we really enjoyed this but..." email is a data point that says: keep going.

So yes, I'm giving myself a pat on the back. We're celebrating this semifinalist badge. And I'm getting back to work on my current screenplay, an anthology of love stories in different phases set in San Miguel de Allende in the days running up to Dia de Muertos.

Because in a crowd of millions, even being noticed for a moment is worth something.

Image generated by AI.