It’s worth doing, because you might not remember that cool idea once you’re next near a keyboard.  But sometimes I find a scribbled note, now completely out of context, and I have NO IDEA what I was thinking at that time.  It probably doesn’t help that I do the same stuff as a producer, in the same notebooks, so organizational notes get mixed in with inspirations.  Here are some favorites I found recently:

Post: finding a spot by a river

What are your plans for today?  I thought I might learn how to fly.  I saw some bluejays doing it earlier, and it looked quite relaxing.

Wanna go look at the Barbies!

Five-year old Jules. Jules leaves job.

Destruction Fire Nature Wood

For the movie, drive-ins & cruising for them. Rented video for us, in the side rooms, with our parents there.

There’s a wizard under the tree, but he’s mostly interested in quarters.

Gold! Notebooks full of gold! I tell you what, if any of this inspires you, you can have it.

“Think about it, deeply, then forget it.  An idea will jump up and hit you in the face.”

So true.  Usually.

But I just watched the first episode of the BBC miniseries Jekyll, and I’m thinking that Steven Moffat‘s name belongs on the short list.

I had always very much liked the BBC series Coupling. Then, hearing it was an impressive remake and hoping for something on par with the new Battlestar Galactica, I checked out the updated Dr. Who. It was mediocre sci-fi, with some sparkling moments. (I think Variety’s Brian Lowry described the Dr. Who universe best on September 7th, stating that the spin-off Torchwood dwells “in that existential rift between really good and just OK.”) But then, somewhere in Dr. Who‘s season one, I saw an episode about a little boy in a gas mask during the blitzkrieg on London, and it was as good as TV gets. I couldn’t figure out why this particular episode was head and shoulders above the rest of the series, until I realized that Moffat wrote it.

Moffat has a uniquely sophisticated skill in story shape. Coupling (for which he wrote every episode) was Friends, but grown-up. It is clearly a sitcom, but told with intricate structure one might see in a Christopher Nolan movie. His Dr. Who episodes feature a Sorkin-like ability to tease us with half-glimpses of details until finally unveiling the big picture at the best moment possible. And he seems equally adept in comedy or suspense. The man has chops.

So far, Jekyll is very impressive in its tone. I wish I could label what Moffat has done to make the story so compelling. Other than the title, an awareness of the original novella, and a wink in the form of naming the main character’s children “Eddie” and “Harry,” the mini-series seems pretty far abstracted. Setting this piece in modern day, Moffat seems to have mostly abandoned the allegory of struggle between good and evil in man’s soul, and instead explores what a present-day citizen would do if cursed with a morally depraved alter-ego. Moffat has deftly created tension from very little, again revealing tiny pieces at his discretion as the story unfolds. But his script is not without the occasional subtle English smirk, in lines like, “I have to go home and change.”

Does anyone else out there know and love this writer? Am I wrong in putting him among the best? Who else am I missing on my list of great living screenwriters? (Please don’t say Woody Allen…)

Meanwhile, I’m going to go watch episode two of Jekyll!

Friday was the weekly writers’ meeting. We have been planning to hit the ground running at this first all-group meeting, and to present a handful of good sketches to wow the actors and directors. (We actually have quite a few to choose from after only a few meetings; I’ve been pretty stoked with how the writing team has turned out.) At the meeting, I said I’d be rewriting a couple of the sketches before we present them. They were both great premises with some funny jokes. I just wanted to brainstorm even more jokes together, and then polish everything up. The team came through on the punch-ups. Friday was definitely the day where we solidified not just as a group of writers, but as a writing group.

The thing is, I’ve been working for the last couple of evenings on preparing for the meeting, and these rewrites have been at the top of the stack of things to do. I tackled one of them each night. (And I’m pretty proud of how they turned out.) But both nights, it wasn’t until 3:30 in the morning before the rewrite really found form in my head.

What’s up with that? What is it about the creative process that I can’t possibly get the juices flowing until after cleaning my room, staring at the page, checking my blog stats, watching some episodes of Rome, downing some guacamole, staring at the page, reading Wikipedia articles about neural diseases, staring at the page, and swatting all the flies in the kitchen? Why can’t I skip straight to the part where the productive page-filling happens?

I’m pretty sure when I die, it will be some side effect of a broken circadian rhythm.

“To be a lawyer, you must go to a lawyer school, like my dad, who is a lawyer.”

Clearly, my work is not yet done with this particular student.

Still, even if his diction isn’t up to snuff, he has a future in philosophy. This was another of his sentences:

“Life is a mystery, and girls are complex.”

Amen, kid.

Sure, there are parts that are brilliant.  Every writer loves working through ideas for the first time, and nothing beats the moment when a flash of inspiration hits you, making your story a million times better.  And then I love outlining, wrestling all those ideas into an actual shape that might entertain people.  Similarly, editing one’s draft is immensely satisfying, shaping and wordsmithing the clay you’ve previously put in place until it looks just so, exactly how you want it.  I even love the process where you have to go back and make the deep cuts, because you know that unless you get your script down below 105 pages, it’s not allowed to be a comedy.

But the actual part where it’s you, your outline, a keyboard, and a white screen?  That can be painful and frustrating.  Writing isn’t fun. It’s having written something that’s enjoyable.

To get myself through the rough draft part, killing pages, I will often promise myself a reward when I’ve finished.  Or, more precisely, I will deny myself some reward until I’ve finished.

Creating a My Name Is Earl spec has recently moved to the top of my priority list, after a while on the back burner, partly  because a premise I like came to me while I was recently re-watching every episode of the show, and partly out of Jane Espenson’s urging to generate an entirely new script by the Disney Fellowship’s July 1st deadline.   I’m interested in pushing myself to faster and faster writing, and four weeks certainly qualifies as an aggressive, aggressive target, especially since the premise is about all I have.  Ms. Espenson suggests that a month is plenty.  I think she’s right, but I also think that in her writing she has two advantages I do not:  1.) she has a writers’ room in which to break stories, and 2.) she’s Jane Espenson.  I know that I’m going to be super busy ramping up an online comedy web site and the comedy troupe that supports it this summer, but  given that tutoring work will soon slow to a trickle, I can devote more writing time at the end of this month than I normally would, so it’s worth a shot.

Even if I don’t hit the July 1st deadline, pushing for it should help me achieve some writing that I might otherwise not.  Plus, my next turn to present in my writers’ group comes on July 17th.

In case two deadlines isn’t enough, the next Harry Potter book is out on July 21st.  I’m not going to allow myself to read it until I’ve successfully added an Earl spec script to my stack.  Given that every day one spends not having read the latest Harry is a day one risks someone spoiling parts of it, I should be sufficiently motivated.

Seeing as she doesn’t have the next Harry to drive her through the rough draft phase, I gotta wonder what J.K. Rowling does to motivate her writing…

Plus, one’s mind is even further slippery in that it tends to wander to perfect ideas for some OTHER story. As a writer, you know you should capture as many of those flames of insight as possible, because there will come a time that you wish you could remember what it was you had thought. But what is the best way to keep them?

The best technique I’ve used was on a month-long trip to work with a writing partner in New York City, into which trip I planned a 10-day vacation to Ireland. I had a thick book of bound pages, about 6 by 4 inches, where I recorded everything while working with my friend in New York. Then, while wandering through Irleand, I had the same book tucked into the inside pocket of my coat. At the end of the month, I had all my brainstorming in one place, so when it came time to write actual scenes, there was only one place to look for my thoughts. However, sunny L.A. doesn’t lend itself to wearing a heavy wool coat with a large inner pocket each day as well as Ireland in September did.

I’ve tried many techniques at various stages of my life for recording ideas, but have yet to find one that works perfectly. Some people call their own voice mail, some keep a stack of note cards, some carry a tape recorder. But none of these techniques has ever proven perfect for me. In the end, I want a way to keep everything in one place. Inspiration jotted on napkins doesn’t lend itself well to organization, and there’s something immensely anti-creative about transcribing one’s notes or voice recordings into a single notebook or computer document. And the problem with electronic devices (any object, really) is having it with you ALL the time, lest any idea go unrecorded. Notepads are horrible when you’re driving, unless you’re really good at scribbling it all down during a red light.

What I really want is a combination phone/mp3 player/organizer with automatic voice-to-text conversion, that synchs to my home computer wirelessly, is the size of a credit card or maybe a wrist watch, and cannot be destroyed. Then I could just talk to it while I’m out and about, and when I get home it would automatically store a text version of everything I spoke into it over the course of the day. Why hasn’t someone invented that yet?

Right now I have a tiny memo pad and a mini pen. It’s a pretty good solution, because it’s small enough to fit into any shirt pocket, even a t-shirt pocket. And then I stopped buying any shirts that didn’t have a pocket.

But there’s got to be a better solution. What do you use?

That said, I must now officially disagree with one of her recommendations. Yesterday’s journey to the WGA “Breaking into the Box” all-day workshop convinced me.

I have gone back and forth for a while now (as has Ms. Espenson) as to the best kind of material a writer can prepare so that s/he might win a staff job on a TV show. To provide background here, the traditional method for a writer looking to break in has always been to create a “spec” (short for “speculative”) episode of an existing show. The conventional wisdom was that reading a writer’s spec script would help an executive producer see how well the writer can mimic the tone of a show, while hopefully still injecting personal voice. Lately, however, the scuttlebutt has been that showrunners would just as happily see an original writing sample, such as a feature screenplay, a play, or even a short story.

This is an incredibly recent shift in the tide. When I finally decided that TV was where I wanted to point my writing, I crafted my first spec. No sooner had I finished than I came across the advice that you shouldn’t put yourself out there as a prospective TV writer unless you had at least two spec scripts. The first might be a fluke, was the logic, so you need to prove you can deliver more than once. So I wrote a second. Finally prepared, I made the commitment and moved to L.A.

Once I started contacting potential representation, now with authentic L.A. contact information, I had a few replies. Some wanted to read one of my scripts. Some, however, wanted to know if I had anything original to show them. One manager was kind enough to trade e-mail with me, and he explained that showrunners were beginning to ask for something original, and therefore it was what he was now requesting from potential clients as well. Keep in mind, this conversation happened less than a year ago.

Fast forward to yesterday. Because of the big names involved, I dropped the $150 to attend this all-day WGA Foundation workshop on kick-starting one’s career in television, geared specifically to give advice to aspiring TV writers about what executives look for in potential shows, how the writers’ room works, and how to break in. Of all writing events I’ve attended, this was the most impressive collection ever of people doing exactly what I want to do. Consider, for example, the line-up of the second panel: Damon Lindelof (co-creator, Lost), Shawn Ryan (creator, The Shield), Brannon Braga (god of the Star Trek universe), Ian Biederman (creator, Shark), Peter Casey (co-creator, Wings, Frasier), all moderated by Winnie Holsman (creator, My So Called Life.)

At most of the panels, the question of spec vs. original material came up. EVERY guest responded that they preferred to see original material. Every guest. In every panel. One of the panelists would eventually point out that a writer should have both. All the panelists would agree. But you could tell it was an afterthought. Their initial answer–their real answer–was show them something original.

The tide has officially turned.

Only a few reasons were offered for WHY things are now done differently than they always have been. Perhaps the chief reason was not wanting to read yet another spec of the same old shows. With the current proliferation of reality shows, crime show clones, and serialized dramas, there are few shows a writer can spec. As a result, all writers have their episode of The Office or Grey’s Anatomy. Rather than read yet another of those, the showrunners would happily look at a play. Another reason given was that in original work, the reader already knows everything s/he need know to appreciate the writers work, whereas a spec requires knowledge of a show. A biggie seemed to be an overall desire to get to the writer’s own voice. What exactly will a potential hire bring to a show in terms of personal experience, story ideas, and unique contribution to a group?

On Ms. Espenson’s blog. She has cataloged continuing evidence of the shift in requested material. She continues (quite rightly, no doubt) to point out that the Disney fellowship still requires a spec script, and since that is one of the few ways for a novice to break through, a spec is worth creating. Plus, she is an alumna, and it clearly was a fantastic stepping stone for her. At this point in my career, though, I suddenly feel less pressure to knock out another spec. I have a pair that are viable for a (short) while longer. Therefore, I no longer need to feel guilty working on a feature script, even though I truly want to write for TV. When I finish my feature, I’ll not only be able to use it as a writing sample for TV gatekeepers, but I’ll also have a feature. It has other uses. If I write another TV spec, I can only use it for one thing, and it’s not even the preferred method for that one thing.

(Of course, I’m still going to take a stab at meeting her challenge to have a brand new spec ready by the Disney deadline. Writers write, right?)

SIDE NOTE: The Warner Bros. workshop currently contains a message that they are revamping their process and will post further information on June 15th. I wonder if they are considering a shift in submission material, along with whatever other changes they may be making.