Letter 45: November 10, 2008
So I just spent three days in our State capital, Sacramento. It's an occasional writing gig I have, working on psychotherapy licensing exams for the State. This time we were rewriting exam questions to make them... something. Make them better, I suppose. I really ought to know.
Anyway: I've promised not to tell you much about how it's done, so let's just say the dynamics of writing by committee demands as much creativity as the actual writing does.
Yet it does seem to work. American television comedy seems to be written that way - all fun and energy. On the other hand, my own memory of the Comedy Writers' Room at BBC Radio in London is of a roomful of quiet, shy people. People who express their brightest inspirations on paper rather than at parties. And some research confirms that view of writers.
So what kind of people become American television comedy writers? I don't know. I can only think of two that I know personally, and they've both moved on to other careers. But just as a wild guess maybe you'd need to be an untypical writer, or maybe you'd have to work as hard all day on social aspects as on the product. No wonder they get tired and well-paid.
Where were we? Oh, Sacramento. Most folks tell me it's a beautiful city. A few people tell me not. I wouldn't know. After being there for quite a few days and nights over a period of years, I don't know the place at all. It's an airport, a conference room and a succession of hotels that (depressing thought) made the cheapest bids to the State to keep me alive and comfortable. Let's assume it's beautiful, shall we?
And I was going to spend those three evenings, alone in a cold dark half-developed outskirt, writing 15 pages of a current project. Did that happen? Not in the way I'd planned. Most of the time was spent playing with the hotel's Internet firewall to see if I could access services which, if accessed, would have been used to idle away even more time. But writing did get done. I re-outlined the project and it's better now. And I have more than 15 pages of it. And there it is: creative work often gets done in a different way from the way we planned. And does get done. I forgave myself for not doing one thing, when I saw that the other thing was done.
In summary, deadlines are good, often essential if we are going to achieve our goals. And play is good too. A superior human being would have worked first and played afterwards. And I like to tell other writers to do just that. But how many real human writers do it?
Enough comedy writers have described the reality of the writing life to prove to us that "procrastination" and productivity are not mutually exclusive. To repeat myself in different words, "procrastination" and productivity happen to the same person. As long as there's productivity, forget worrying about anything else. The writing gets done.
So something you can do today is to trust the deadline. As long as you know the work will get done, and will get done by the right time, there's no need to do it in any particular way.
Next week maybe I'll say the opposite, and that's ok with me - different advice works for different people, so just try things and see what works for you.
David
David Jung McGarva
+1 (818) 707 1871
Write me: david at todayiwrite dot com
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