During those two years, we met approximately everyone in Hollywood. Again and again we got our hopes up, only to be let down.

Around the two-year mark, I attended a gallery opening, and ran into a woman I’d worked with on the 50 Cent documentary. We had the inevitable, excruciating “What are you up to?” conversation, while sipping cheap wine and pretending to enjoy performance art. I told her the latest on my pilot, and she actually laughed in my face.

“You’re still working on that? Give it up, honey.”

I gripped my plastic cup of merlot, gritted my teeth, and made a mental vow to prove her wrong.

One month later, a game changing opportunity came along, thanks to our agent’s 9-year-old daughter.

Jessica was a girl with a dream: to have a birthday party with real, live ponies. Her father possessed the financial means to make this dream a reality, and in the process, make Jessica’s party the elementary school social event of the season. Every third grader in Brentwood wanted an invite, including the son of a development executive at one of the networks we wanted to pitch. In a shining example of Hollywood power-parenting, our agent leveraged an invite for a reading of my pilot script. One week and several pony rides later, the executive emailed our agent: She’d read the pilot, and felt it could potentially work for her network, depending on who was attached to the project.

Armed with the interest of an actual buyer, our agent went back out to potential production partners. Enter one of the largest animation studios in Hollywood; the studio head read my script, and absolutely loved it. What had taken two years until this point, now came together in less than a month. The studio quickly brought in an animation showrunner (a.k.a. the Shonda Rhimes of cartoons) to attach to the project. With all the pieces in place, our agent scheduled a marathon of pitches at our target networks.

It was then that I realized I had no idea what the fuck I was doing.

I had never pitched a television show in my life. Doubt came rushing in; I was in over my head. But let me tell you something — if you don’t know how to swim, drowning is a great motivator. During the week leading up to our big L.A. trip, I wrote up my verbal pitch and practiced delivering it over and over again: in my bedroom, on the sidewalk in front of strangers who likely assumed I was schizophrenic, and finally, in a coach seat on my direct flight to Los Angeles.