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

December 05, 2001

What the tide brings in
If I have one talent, it is this: I can sit and do something for ten to fourteen hours at a clip and continue that work ethic day after day for months. It is this ability that keeps me contending for artistic glory against those with more substantial talents. So when I can't summon a single word to put to pixels; muster an idea more complex than "arrgh"; or am stumped by a problem with character, plot, or that intangible quality of "feel," I will sit at my computer and continue working while seasons pass, obligations are ignored, and relationships go untended.

Sometimes, however, I slip into a funk. A bog. A fibrous mouth of despair whose tentacle-like teeth coil around my body drawing me into its maw, bathing me in corrosives sure to remove any thought of hope or desire. I lived in this maw for the first three plus decades of my life. I revisited it these last three days.

It is easy to blame external factors. Dental problems. The Holidays. Agents that are now requesting a third spec script, despite the fact that they haven't begun to submit the first two to television producers and others who barely have time to read one submission from a writer, let alone three.

A lot of therapy and a lot of searing pain have taught me that my depression often appears when I feel powerless. When I perceive myself as a spec of human flotsam at the mercy of everyone and everything. But I have learned there are almost always choices. Almost always ways to make an attempt; to affect an outcome.

My writing partner and I will soon begin work on a third spec script. This does not mean we will keep our agents or that they will keep us. Creating this script will do nothing more than maintain our options for the future. It will do nothing more than invoke my talent.

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� 2001 - 2002 tv writer. All rights reserved.