Finish something

It's the holidays. Most of us will be taking some time off to visit family, drink eggnog, and get our Christmas cheer on. But we're writers, so we're also all thinking "Woohoo! Free time to write stuff."

Here's my challenge, to myself and to anyone else who wants to take me up on it:

Before you go back to work in January, finish something.

Choose any piece of work you want. If you feel brave, tackle an entire script you've been rolling around in your head. For the meek (who cannot resist the persistent call of eggnog and Christmas TV) finish that last act you've been avoiding.

Personally, I aim to write a first draft of my new pilot. Right now it's in the 'treatline' stage (half-treatment, half-outline), so I've got my work cut out for me.

What's your challenge going to be? Post it in my comments section along with progress reports during the holiday and I promise to provide moral support.

PS. If you're dying to buy me a Christmas present, the Christmas Story Leg Lamp Head Knocker is high on my list.

Yabba dabba do!

I wonder if these guys realize how funny this is.



Judging by the music, I'd say they do.

Knowing when to say when

I've been avoiding blogging because I didn't want to be a downer. Writing has been a chore lately. I've been torturing myself with my new BBC-bound pilot, dragging myself to the computer at infrequent intervals, forcing myself to try work out the kinks, even though it just ain't working.

Which brings us to today's topic. How do you know when it's time to abandon a project?

I wish I could actually answer this question for you. It's not an easy one. Take, for example, my current pilot. I know I love the idea. I know the themes are solid, there's a lot of story there,the 'what is it' is clear and enticing, and I have the personal experience to give it that extra oomph. I'm still very committed to the idea, but, as my writer's group will attest, I just can't make it work. And the more I can't make it work, the less I want to think about it. And the less I want to think about it, the less I want to write, the less I want to be a writer.

Yeah, I guess should have said 'uncle' quite a while ago. I left it too long, let one project infect my soul until I almost wanted to give up trying to be a TV writer altogether.

On the other hand, I have a few friends (you know who you are) who hardly ever finish anything. I've read their 90% completed pilots and thought "Man, this is gonna be great when it's done!". I've told them as much. But I can think of at least 4 pilots of 4 great writers that are still only 90% done. Meanwhile, those writers have gone on to start other projects, sometimes lots of other projects, and left their cookies a little under-baked. And you just can't serve under-baked cookies to guests, the same way you can't show unfinished pilots to potential employers.

Plus, it's a lot easier to start a script than it is to finish one.

(Nostalgic aside: This makes me think of one of my favorite Buffy scenes where Buffy compares her relationship with Angel to baking cookies. The metaphor quickly turns a lot dirtier than Buffy intended. Man, I miss that show. Perhaps it's time for a rewatch, since the current season of television has encouraged me to read a lot of books.)

So where is that line between slightly under-baking your delicious cookies and recognizing that the batter is yucky and you ought to just…

This metaphor ain't working.

I wish I had a magic answer. Like, you must put in at least x number of hours before you decide to leave a project behind. But there isn't one. I guess the best way to know if you're an early-abandoner or a bash-it-until-it-bleeds-er is to look at your pile of finished scripts and compare it to your pile of ideas you've started writing.

Lots of nascent scripts and very few finished ones? You have earlyabandoneritis. Take some antiabandotics.

Do you just have one script you've been bashing away at now for, like, forever, and nothing in your finished pile? It's time to put that baby to bed and start something new. You can always pick it up again in a few months if you really want to.

(Incidentally, this story has a happy ending for me, this time at least. As soon as I trashed that one pilot and started a new one, I magically felt like writing again. And I got more done in a couple of hours than I've done on that other project in a couple of months. Sigh.)