Of Course You Want To Book It!

Owning your want so you can stay focused on your character's want.

Apr 23, 2026

I want you to break a BIG “good little actor” rule in your next audition.

Want it.

I mean REALLY WANT it.

Let yourself feel how much you want to book this part.

Ooooh! Feels a little scary and reckless, right?

I know. Do it anyway. 😉

“But, Amy, I shouldn’t think about booking…”

Your “good little actor” brain is telling you, “Don’t think about booking. Just have fun with it. Book the room. You can’t expect to book every job, so just do the audition and let it go.”

But, let’s be real. There’s a part that lives inside every actor that whispers seductively…

“If I’m a talented enough actor, I should book everything.”

And so we WANT to book everything. That desire lives inside us no matter how much we try to deny it.

So let’s try something completely against the rules.

F—ING. WANT. IT.

Let yourself feel that deep desire to book the role.

Acknowledge and explore YOUR want…just like you do with your character’s want.

When we resist and suppress our desire to book, we trap all that energy inside us, and it takes even more energy to resist those genuine feelings.

When we fully acknowledge OUR want, we free up that desire energy AND all the energy we were subconsciously using to resist that want.

When we acknowledge how cool it would be to book this part and play this character, we amp up our commitment to a whole new level.

Take the role.

Claim the role.

Don’t subconsciously turn the role down before you’ve even auditioned by saying stuff like, “I probably wont get it.”

Yeah, we all know “you can’t book every job.”

Who cares?

The line is tired and it hold us back.

We can OWN every audition.

Ownership comes from letting yourself want it — acknowledging your desire to play this character in this project working with these people.

Acknowledging Your Want Sets You Free

Once you acknowledge YOUR want, you are free to move on to focusing on your character’s want.

Additionally, you can stay focused more cleanly on your character’s want because you will spot the difference between focusing on your want vs focusing on your character’s want.

You will feel the difference in your body and notice the difference in your thoughts.

You’re “in your head” thinking things like…

• I want to remember my lines.

• I want to get this scene right.

• I want to book this job.

All valid things to want as an actor.

But when it’s game time, your focus needs to shift.

You need to get out of YOUR head and into the character.

• I want him to stay in the car.

• I want to take this couple’s wedding cake order.

• I want to give the FBI agents the information.

Your character is never thinking, Am I getting this scene right? What’s my next line? Am I being “too big” in this moment?

Your character is fully focused on their want.

As an actor, that’s where your focus needs to be during your audition.

The mindful way to do that is to acknowledge BOTH your desire to book and your character’s desire to get whatever they want, so that you can cleanly shift between the two and stay with your character’s want.

Just like in mindfulness meditation where we practice focusing on our breath and then noticing when we’ve lost that focus and gently returning to that focus, so it can be with our auditions, too.

I want to him to stay in the car — Oh, I’m thinking about getting this scene right — Okay, let’s keep him in the car.

Simple. Gentle. Just keep practicing.

Practice Acknowledging YOUR Want

Next week we’re going to do a practice to help you acknowledge your want to book and keep your focus on your character’s want.

For this week, I just want you to start embracing this idea of letting yourself want to be great in your auditions.

• Let yourself want to book.

• Let yourself want to present good work to casting.

• Let yourself want to do a good job with the audition.

You’re allowed to want whatever you want.

So just practice acknowledging that you want to book.

Quick Note: “I don’t want to get my hopes up.”

Really quick, because we’re gonna do a full episode on it later, let’s just acknowledge the phrase that might be holding you back from fully embracing your want.

“I don’t want to get my hopes up.”

I hear you. Disappointment SUCKS.

However, as soon as I hear someone say, “I don’t want to get my hopes up” I know that their hopes are already up. They WANT whatever they want and that phrase is a red flag of resisting that want — because no one wants to feel the disappointment of not getting what they want. It hurts.

Again, we’re gonna get into this WAY more later, but I just wanted to acknowledge that phrase might be making the idea of letting yourself want to book feel really uncomfortable.

And I want you to try it anyway. Just play with it.

You got this. ❤️