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

January 16, 2002

Her kindness bangs a gong
My significant other wants to have a child. My child. Not today. Maybe not even this year. But certainly within the next two. And I am still living on 25 grand a year or less with no inkling of when or if my fortunes in Hollywood will change.

That is not to say that all has gone fallow. My writing partner and I have worked assiduously on our Scrubs spec these last two weeks. Our agents have started pursuing any in tv land who would be in a position to hire us (most recently sending our Will & Grace script to the producers of My Wife and Kids and to Grenada Television, a production company). And in an attempt to keep myself sane, I've cut down my worrying to twenty-three hours and fifty-nine minutes per day.

But time is running out. And not just for the woman I love watching her child bearing years taken away by the ghosts of progeny she'll never see. Having just turned 40 three weeks ago, I am a veritable fossil in the land of twenty-something tv scribes. That combined with the growing possibility that my writing partner and I will not land jobs during the fast-approaching staffing season (the two week window in March/April where ninety-percent of the writers for the upcoming fall tv slate are hired) has created a confluence of events in my personal life that leaves me only the choice between prayer and pain.

The nutshell: She who I want to spend my life with has told me it's too painful to stay in a relationship with me and not eventually have a child. However, as we both agree a newborn should share the majority of its first two years with its mother, it would fall to me to provide for our needs. And I do not like the image of children learning depression and anxiety from living with a father who hates the job he took just so they could exist. Nor will I knowingly bring forth a life only to have it live in poverty while I pursue a career that may never come to fruition.

So it appears the stakes have just gotten higher. I need to break into television now. This season. If I don't I will lose something that's a part of me. Or someone.

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� 2001 - 2002 tv writer. All rights reserved.