This journal documents the author's experiences as a television writer. To read the story from its inception, go to the beginning.

November 14, 2001

The truth is out there
Those who claim to have been abducted by aliens often talk about lost time: periods of life experience bereft of recollection. No waking memories, no vestigial remembrance of unconsciousness. One minute farmer Bob is biting into a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and the next he is in his corn patch, stripped to the waist, and totally unaware that two weeks have passed. Unfortunately, my last fourteen days can not be expunged.

My agent had called. Good news, bad news. We had found the funny in our Will & Grace script � no further rewrites needed. However, our Becker spec was now found extremely wanting. It was forced. Stilted. No funny was found.

Two days before that fateful call, I foolishly agreed to do some freelance work procuring equipment for and setting up a small seven person network in midtown Manhattan. In a former life I had been a computer consultant, and living off my savings these last seven months while I pursued a life in television, I thought a few arduous but lucrative bucks would come in handy.

Procurement. Rewrites. Script prep. FEDEX. Network planning. Eighteen-hour days this weekend solving computer problems important only to those whose name is followed by the letters CPA.

I have not slept more than five hours a night this past week. As I type this my hands shake. I have varying degrees of temperature running through my body. I would like to sleep. More than anything. But I am so strung out, so anxious, that every time I attempt the land of Nod I just lay in bed letting the gerbil wheel in my mind rotate out of control.

My agent called again tonight. Becker needs yet another rewrite. And I am in the cornfield of Hollywood, stripped to the waist, wondering where the hell the last two weeks went.

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� 2001 - 2002 tv writer. All rights reserved.