Continuing on with the What's Your Story? feature I started a few weeks ago… I posted a call for your individual stories as artists in this business, whatever your trade is. Whether stories of triumph, tragedy, lessons learned, regrets, etc. Read that post HERE.

A few of you responded in the comments section, and others emailed me directly, as I requested.

As I said I would, I'll post those that I received via email, although I won't post every single one. 

The 3rd submission comes from LA-based Jason Gilmore. 

Here's his story, verbatim:

I moved to Los Angeles nearly 13 years ago, a year removed from film school at the University of Pittsburgh, armed with a few screenplays that I thought Hollywood would be eager to produce.

One of my biggest inspirations had been the black film revolution of the early 1990s, but sadly, that era had ended and I was arriving at the dawn of a period in which Hollywood would be as reluctant to produce black films as they ever had been. Nevertheless, I soldiered on, and eventually wrote, directed and produced a handful of shorts, which found their way into a handful of film festivals.

The most recent, a controversial educational reform short called IEP, will air on national television later this year.

To keep the ball in play, I also wrote more scripts and covered music, sports, film and politics for a host of magazines, newspapers and websites. I also wrote a coming-of-age novel, Somewhere Between Here and There, that I will self-publish later this year.

Each short I filmed was its own lesson on fundraising, craft and perseverance and, thankfully, also allowed me to acquire a trusted group of actors and crew that I hope to employ every time I'm employed.

My most recently written feature script, an ensemble drama called All the Children Are Insane, is very close to being financed through private investors. Myself and my producing partner, Will Clevinger, have had numerous ups & downs over the last year trying to bring this project to life and we're genuinely in the home stretch.

Balancing your life and dreams in a difficult industry teaches you why you really want to do this. I have a ton of film school friends and people I met since I moved to L.A. that gave up a long time ago. But I'm not going anywhere because this is what I was created to do. Cliched, but this is truly a marathon and not a sprint. And I'm still running.

Jason Gilmore