Speedy Gonzalez

Last night I enjoyed some drinks with a handful of writers in various career stages. I love when I get that opportunity because just sitting and chatting with no real agenda is a great opportunity to learn and ponder your own choices.

One of the things we discussed was the speed of writing. One of us, who I will not out unless said person wishes to out said person's self, writes what must amount to like 90 pages a day. I asked "How fast do you write?" and he said "When's my deadline?" and then told us about a script he wrote in three weeks that was shot. I'm jealous because he does this for a living and he does it well.

TV writers have to be able to do that. Michael Sullivan (Red Right Hand) is good at that. The boy's got like eighty pilots in the works and like a million spec episodes and somewhere in there he found time to write a play that's heading to the stage on Saturday. And his stuff is largely solid.

I can't do that. I used to think I could do that. The first day I ever started a screenplay I banged out 20 pages. I thought you had to write the script in a month or you weren't writing enough. I gave myself a month to plan, a month to write, and a month to revise, which sounds great but doesn't really take into account a day job.

I wrote a lot of scripts that way and that's how I ended up with a lot of weak scripts. I was more interested in having a lot of material than in having one quality piece.

Not Dead Yet ended up taking almost two years to get into shape. I wasn't working on it solid for two years - I took a few months off and wrote something else in the meantime that I'm probably going to abandon for good but that's another post - but then I went back to the script to make it stronger. And even though it took a lot more time, I have one solid script instead of another piece of crap that goes nowhere.

It's easy to be in a hurry in the beginning because you just want to quit that dayjob and write full time and the only way to do that is to get a script done. And if only I can get this done and in somebody's hands it will all be perfect. But it's far more important to make sure that script that lands in that somebody's hands is perfect, even if it takes extra time.

On my new project I have this urge to work faster, like I'm not accomplishing enough unless I'm cranking through 5 pages a day. But since I don't have a deadline and nobody's paying me, it's completely okay to slow down and concentrate and make sure I get it right. Then I'll have two whole good scripts instead of a bigger shitload of crap.