We recently connected with David Acuff and have shared our conversation below.

David, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

I’m a huge believer in the power of the classroom! I went to film school for Directing and Editing. I’ve taken no less than seven screenwriting classes along the way. I’ve taken a voiceover class and two stand-up comedy classes. Here’s the thing, what that does is it shortens the trial and error, banging your head against a wall time significantly. Yes, you can go out and teach yourself how to make movies or tell jokes on stage. And it might take ten years of stumbling and bumbling and failing forward. Or you can take some classes and shortcut that learning curve by studying under someone who has done the work and condensed it into learnable/teachable steps.

Don’t get me wrong, you will still have some stumbling bumbling time to figure things out once you’ve got the classroom stuff behind you, but you’re not starting at ground zero. And if you choose your class wisely, you could have a teacher that is still heavily networked in the industry that can help you make some initial connections.

In 2012 I decided I was tired of all my brilliant (ha!) screenplays collecting dust on the shelf. So I was going to start turning my ideas into novels so I could have a completed, sellable project out on the market. I started writing an epic sci-fi novel that year and it just released in May of 2024. Yeah, I know. That took way too long! Who do I think I am taking 12 years to write a novel… George R. R. Martin?!

The thing is by the time I published “Battle Tides” this year, it was my 7th novel. My first was in 2019 when I turned a short sci-fi story into a book and released it on Amazon. Then I converted two of my scripts into books and released those. Each time I was practicing a concept Elon Musk calls “iterating faster”. The idea that you’re going to fail at things, anyway, so you want to fail quickly and iterate on the idea to make it better and then move forward growing and learning and progressing.

From the short story I learned how to format books and covers for Amazon. I hired a woman as an editor and learned how to dialogue back and forth on grammar and syntax and content development. I hired a concept designer to do the book cover and learned how to work with another artist on a mutually agreeable (and kickass) final product. I used him again on the “Battle Tides” cover because his work was so cool. I was iterating. I was learning to tell a story in third person limited perspective narrative. I was learning not to “head hop”. I was learning what fonts I liked. What margins looked good to me. When to do chapter breaks. None of those hard lessons were wasted. All of those skills along the way, I rolled into my masterpiece, “Battle Tides” which is an Amazon Best Seller and who the prestigious Kirkus Reviews called, “An inventive, fast-paced Sci Fi thriller.”

That’s a huge win. And it’s been an uphill climb. And the adventure continues as I learn about Marketing and distribution and advertising.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I won a little writing award, like second place or something, for a short fiction story I wrote in junior high. That tiny little nothing-trophy is now huge and important as I look back on my writing journey. It was one of the first times that someone else read my fiction and said, “hey dude, not too shabby.” I’m paraphrasing of course.

I always loved movies and tv and quoting masterpieces like “Princess Bride” or “Robinhood: Prince of Thieves” and when I went to college I started down the filmmaking path. It was by necessity because if you’re a writer, and you write a short film, it’s hard to get someone else to make it. Mostly because, as I’ve said, I sucked in the beginning. My dialogue sucked. My characters hated me for writing them so one-dimensionally. Plots so thin that if they had tried to slap me I’d have gotten a paper cut.

So i had to learn directing in order to have my own writing produced. I had to learn editing to complete the process and have a finished product. And then the Producing and Editing became my bread and butter. Corporate videos, wedding videos, dance recitals, you name it. Tedious, sure, but that paid work allowed me to not starve while I worked on my scripts and comic book ideas and stories.

Last year after 8 years I was laid off from Disney in a huge company restructuring. Bad Mickey. But I took that opportunity (and severance pay) to build my own company BravoBay Books and Media. An LLC that I can run all of my freelance producing-editing through, as well as all of my book publishing. I’ve even helped a few friends get their own books off to market now with great results.

You don’t just magically launch a publishing empire all at once. It takes time. Lots of growing pains and lessons along the way. So I balance the highly paid video editing and producing with the lowly paid novel writing and publishing. And one day the two will flip-flop. And that’s my #1 goal.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

It’s not that I wish I knew these things earlier, it’s that they simply didn’t exist. Having Wix and GoDaddy to be able to create click-and-drag websites to establish a digital presence is fantastic. Using Instagram and Tiktok and YouTube to create fun marketing videos and comedy snippets to grow and maintain an audience is leverage that didn’t exist to writers and authors 10 or 15 years ago.

And now with the power of A.I. I’m able to do grammar and spell checks on Grammarly, I’m able to use ChatGPT to create loglines and synopses and even Press Releases. Not from scratch, mind you. It’s horrible for that. But it’s good as synthesizing pre-existing content in new ways. So if I upload a 3 page treatment of my story, and a synopsis of my BravoBay company, and a biography on David Acuff, it can easily spit out story taglines, copy for the book’s back cover and Public Relations content.

I’ve used Midjourney to help fashion images that I bring into Photoshop to create book covers. And there are a bunch of stock video and music libraries like Pond5 where I can grab elements I need to make exciting book trailers. These are all powerful resources that allow a small business entity to cast a very large shadow!

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

I love this question because it goes hand in hand with the building resilience question. Adversity will come. Bad adversity like getting laid off from a full time job. Good adversity like having kids which takes your focus (as it should) from some of your creative endeavors.

I didn’t have a say-so in my dad’s Air Force career. Our family moved every couple of years into a new house or a new town or a new state. I got very good at starting over from scratch in a new school, meeting new people and figuring out their new rules and cliques. You just learn to roll with it. Adapt. It defines your whole life, this ability to quickly change gears and adapt to new stimuli.

When I left a full-time job in 2009 to launch my own production company and then a recession hit and I had to take a job teaching to make ends meet. That was a pivot. When there was no work in Raleigh, NC I took a job in Charlotte, NC and had to move cities to follow the money, that was a pivot. Going through a divorce was a huge pivot, financially and emotionally. Moving to Los Angeles was a pivot. Getting a dream job at Disney was a fun upgrade and pivot. Then when they laid me off last year that was a pivot.

Okay so this huge deal didn’t go through… what next? Okay so the entire Production industry in L.A. is on strike for eight months… what next? Okay there’s a pandemic for two years… what next? I mean you have to be an emotional weeble-wobble and realize you’re gonna get knocked over but we don’t fall down. We keep moving. Innovating. Iterating. Discovering new technologies and new people connections. Trying new things. Adding new skill sets atop old ones.

When I got into voiceover work it’s because audiobooks and narrative podcasts are in huge demand. So if you have the ability to do VO in your own home, that’s a great asset. Not just for your own novels but other people’s as well. As that gloomy philosopher Ross Gellar advised us all many years ago, “Pivot!”

Contact Info:

• Website: https://davidacuff.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidacuff
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/davidacuff/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dacuff/
• Twitter: https://x.com/DavidAcuff
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/sdavidacuff
• Other: https://bravobaybooks.com/

Image Credits

All Images Copyright S. David Acuff