Hey, Stage 32 Fam!
This week I’ve been challenging myself… to challenge myself more.My husband and I started listening to Adam Grant’s Think Again on Audible, and it has turned into an unexpected creative reset button. We’ll listen for a bit, then pause whenever one of us wants to dig deeper into a concept — sometimes it’s one line or a whole chapter.
The book examines the critical art of rethinking:
Learning to question your own opinions,
Inviting yourself to stay curious rather than certain,
And building the kind of intellectual and emotional flexibility that lets you update your beliefs instead of clinging to them.
What’s struck me most is how hard it actually is to stop and reconsider anything: big opinions, small preferences, creative decisions, or long-held assumptions. Our brains are wired for certainty and efficiency, not uncomfortable self-examination. But the more we practice that pause…the better we get.
And honestly? It’s been freeing. I’ve found myself rethinking things I didn’t even realize I had cemented into place.
Now I want to hear from you:
What’s ONE thing you challenged yourself to rethink or reconsider in your creative life this week?
And what are you doing (or hoping to do) this week that challenges you to grow?
Let’s celebrate the wins, the reframes, and the steps forward, big or small!
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Hey, Ashley Renee Smith! Congratulations on challenging yourself! I’ve been challenging myself with scenes in the script I'm rewriting for November Write Club. I thought the scenes should go one way, but the new ways are better.
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Great post, as usual, Ash! I'm almost 40, and I've learned to rethink my relationship with not being understood. I used to think being called weird or strange was a curse. It's only a curse to those with less self esteem than I have. Because when people put you down, they are not commenting on what they think of you; they are telling you what they think of themselves by projecting. When I applied that train of thought in my life, my life changed for the better in all areas.
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This week I've been challenging myself to look outside the box and actively resist falling into the tropes of "this is how it's always been done."
In development, there's a gravitational pull toward repeating what's worked before: same pitch formats, same packaging approaches, same paths to market. But I'm forcing myself to ask: Why do we do it this way? Is there a better way no one's tried yet?
It's uncomfortable. It requires questioning systems I helped build. But if we only replicate what's already been done, we're not innovating—we're just maintaining the status quo.
The challenge is staying curious enough to experiment, even when the proven path feels safer.
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Geoffroy Faugerolas - " if we only replicate what's already been done, we're not innovating—we're just maintaining the status quo." - I could not love this more. 100% agree. How do we innovate? How do we get better? How do we grow? Why would you want the status quo? This week I've been digging into systems that have been around for a long time and figuring out how they're not serving the same that they used to and figuring out how to make them better. Like Geoff said, Innovation is key.
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This week I challenged myself to lock in and hit 60 pages for BoFS, and I hit 61 pages last night :D so that's my NWC goal met. Naturally the goalpost has to be moved, so why not try for 70 this week? I'm definitely feeling vindicated for focusing on world-building at the start because it's a huge reason I'm making such rapid progress.
That being said, now that the series has officially graduated into a planned hexalogy, I guess the new challenge is two-fold (and not contained to this week):
1) how the hell do I pitch it to the right people and get it made lol, since I took the initiative and decided for myself to write the series rather than wait for anyone's permission to do so, and
2) do I keep it a rich, world-builder's delight feature hexalogy, or consider reworking it into a TV series and potentially make it even richer?
I got my work cut out for me no matter what lol
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I'm impressed! You're productive. Email me and the team at success@stage32.com and we'll help you out with 1) and 2).
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Learning how to translate a client's needs for AI development beyond my own. Much like any other creative process, however the "How" is different this time, since the creative / editing process for AI is a different flavor than other video / film / animation I have worked on on the past.
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Randall Scott White Navigating that new creative "how" is exactly where growth happens. Wishing you the best as you bridge that gap and discover this new creative workflow
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This week, I started rethinking and reconsidering a relationship I'd let fall by the wayside previously, so I emailed this "lost" contact and we were able to connect again. Even though they were initially upset and felt I had been more at fault in letting our relationship fade, we were able to rekindle the magic and spark future collaborations together. Film and TV is an industry and business that runs on relationships. It's never the wrong time to check in with someone and make an effort to reconnect old collaborations that you enjoyed!
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This week I challenged myself to reach back out to a few people in my network I hadn’t connected with in a while - the kind of outreach you delay because you assume too much time has passed to be relevant.
As it turns out, the pause was only in my head. The conversations were warm, energizing, and reminded me how much creative momentum comes from simply showing up with intention.
It dovetailed with something I listened to recently on the Mel Robbins podcast where she interviewed Shona Rhimes - "The Secret to Stopping Fear & Creating the Future You Want with Shonda Rhimes." One of the ideas that hit me hardest was how saying “yes” isn’t about overcommitting; it’s about opening the door to rethinking your own limits. Shonda talks about how doing the things you fear has a way of dissolving the fear itself. That felt especially germane this week as I pushed myself past the hesitation of reaching out.
So my creative “rethink” right now is this:
If curiosity is the engine, connection is the fuel.
And both require that little moment of courage before you hit send, pitch, share, or try something new. Worth a listen!!
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Banafsheh Esmailzadeh Huge congratulations on hitting 61 pages! That foundational work always pays off in the long run. It sounds like the world and story have the expansive, serialized depth that is absolutely perfect for television
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This is an awesome post and thread. Adding one of my great inspirations... I was extremely fortunate to spend a lot of time with Walter Isaacson when we were developing Albert Einstein's life for TV. Walter wrote the bestselling biography on Einsetin that was our source material and he's also written quintessential biographies of DaVinci, Ben Franklin, Steve Jobs and on a slew of other prolific and innovative people. I asked Walter if there was one quality that they all shared - one trait that spikes in his subjects. And he didn't flinch - he said it was "an insatiatble curiosity". It wasn't IQ or talent or drive... it was curiosity. They were all actively curious people in their moment to moment life. I have tried, imperfectly, to be as curious as I can be ever since that conversation. Try new things. Learn new things. Teach new things. Accpt new challenges. And that often leads to new systems or processes or efficiencies. The act of being curious leads to a lot of cool other opportunities to try new things or try things in a new way. Thank you for this post, Ashley Renee Smith. Let's all stay curious!
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Thank you, Geoffroy Faugerolas and Sam Rivera, the series has been highly rewarding to work on, especially since I rewrote the hell out of the first two entries (RoP in particular is almost unrecognisable from its first draft). It's got several lifeblood engines as I call them (Greek mythology, outer space, Christianity, and whatever else I think is cool lol) going, and they're all so rich that it's lots of fun choosing what connects to what. When pitching it, the most common complaints I got were that the budget would be astronomical (definitely true for BoFS in particular, admittedly ^^;), as well as not having a singular protagonist (I always wrote it with an ensemble cast in mind where functionally everyone is the protagonist of his own story within the wider world), the plot not also being singular, and the world-building even being too generous lol. Learning what I have learned while on Stage32, and having been flirting with the idea of turning it into a[n animated] TV series, I think I might finally commit to it when I've written all the scripts as features. Just need at least one professional partner who's not afraid to make an epic dream happen~
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Ashley Renee Smith It seems like everyday can be a challenge! No but really, I've been trying to challenge myself creatively by learning and immersing myself back to student like activities and habit such as cutting out doomscrolling and using that time to read informational/educational ideas/concepts. Another part is trying to consume good media so I've been really loving new music which can strike up that creative juice in me!
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Sam Rivera I've been getting into TED Talks lately and I want to try Masterclass. Some of my all-time favorite creatives teach courses with Masterclass and they cover all kinds of subjects. I want to watch Danny Elfman's course on composing for film.
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Hi Ashley! Congrats on challenging yourself! I've been challenging myself by writing out a draft of an email I hope to send to a synagogue to find out if there are people in the community who might be interested in forming a comedy troupe. I feel nervous about reaching out, but I also feel it's important to try to form a community. I also plan to do lots of songwriting in the next two months. I've also signed up for a film challenge just to keep myself motivated.
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I am trying to work on three projects at once lol. One for a class, one is a polish, and the other is in Act I. I just love to suffer :)
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I’ve been challenging myself with networking! I tend to be rather shy, so talking to people and asking for help isn’t my strong suit- but I’m working on it!
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That’s awesome. I hope you overcome all those challenges.
As for me, I’m juggling many at once—I need to improve my English, learn screenwriting, write The Silent PFC War, and manage my time between my creative journey and my school work. It’s exhausting, but my ideas are worth it.
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I’ve been challenging myself to write daily. and to write in all the pockets nooks and crannies of the day, wherever and whenever inspiration finds me. make excuses to write, instead of making excuses not to.
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That’s a good instinctChevahn Brown
I’ve forgotten many strong ideas out of pure laziness.
We really must write down every single idea the moment it appears, even if it doesn’t feel powerful at first—because it can grow into a full three-dimensional world of madness and wonder.