What are you?
I ended up having a busy week! My old internship offered me some money to come in for the week and help them move offices, so I spent some time doing some lovely 9-10 hour days in exchange for roughly peanuts. Hooray. But money is money, and now I return to my sedentary, unemployed lifestyle, and back to the job hunt. On the other hand, I've been feeling inspired to start writing again... but suddenly, I find myself asking: writing what?
I've been struggling with this, lately. I've finally been forced to confront the fact that with the field I want to go into (TV), I'm going to have to be okay with creative limitations. I need to be able to 'brand' myself; I can't write raucous 4-camera sitcoms and then do hard-hitting sci-fi dramas. I mean, I certainly would do that in grad school, and I understand the importance of learning to do both, but I can't actually do both. The wisdom used to be do as much as you can, diversify, be a jack of all trades, you never know who will hire you, but in the new age of the celeb showrunner, the advice I'm getting on all sides is that you have to be able to create an image. It's unlikely that anyone's going to ask J.J. Abrams to write the next Seinfeld*, and it's unlikely that Tina Fey is going to get pulled in on A Song of Ice and Fire.
And the question is, where does that leave me? I have two pilots in the works. One is a heavy, LOST-esque drama, and the other is a more lighthearted action series. Both are science fiction. I was working on a third, for a while, that was straight drama, maybe dramedy. My writing definitely skews dramatic-with-funny-in. But my tastes and influences are all indisputably comedic: I watch almost solely sitcoms, I read Discworld and Dave Sedaris, I'm signing up for improv next month.
My specs-in-progress are all comedies (How I Met Your Mother, The Office, Psych), and my pilots are all roughly dramas. Somehow, I didn't really pay attention to this until now. And now that I have, I'm really not sure what to do. The obvious solution is to meet in the middle -- do some new specs (keep the Psych and add some House, Mad Men... what else? I don't even know, I seriously don't watch dramas!), lighten up the heavy pilots, darken the light pilots, and work something out. But I don't want to give up the sitcoms. I like the sitcoms. And I don't think I can change myself, either -- I write a lot of sci-fi and I write a lot of drama and I don't think that will change. I want both in my life.
And what does that say about me, that I rarely like watching the sort of thing I write myself? Or that I can see myself staff writing for shows I don't think I could ever create myself? I can do a kickass HIMYM, but ask me to come up with a series about five people in their late 20s who hang out in a bar and I'm at a loss. With BSG off the air, I don't have a single drama in my viewing list, but that's my entire stable of pilots. I was told today that thanks to series like Psych and Glee, people are starting to think less in terms of drama and comedy and more in terms of half-hour and hour-long, but I don't know how much that really helps me. I still don't think anyone's going to ask Steve Franks or Ryan Murphy to do the next Battlestar just because they're all hour-longs.
It's times like this I want to split in two. But since I can't, I guess I have to face the question: What now?
And really, arxev, who the hell are you?
*Yes, I know he did Felicity, but that was A: ten years ago, pre-~*~showrunner~*~ days, and B: still at least a drama!
eta I just realized that my LJ "name" is weirdly appropriate for this post. You speak to me, Patrick McGoohan.
I've been struggling with this, lately. I've finally been forced to confront the fact that with the field I want to go into (TV), I'm going to have to be okay with creative limitations. I need to be able to 'brand' myself; I can't write raucous 4-camera sitcoms and then do hard-hitting sci-fi dramas. I mean, I certainly would do that in grad school, and I understand the importance of learning to do both, but I can't actually do both. The wisdom used to be do as much as you can, diversify, be a jack of all trades, you never know who will hire you, but in the new age of the celeb showrunner, the advice I'm getting on all sides is that you have to be able to create an image. It's unlikely that anyone's going to ask J.J. Abrams to write the next Seinfeld*, and it's unlikely that Tina Fey is going to get pulled in on A Song of Ice and Fire.
And the question is, where does that leave me? I have two pilots in the works. One is a heavy, LOST-esque drama, and the other is a more lighthearted action series. Both are science fiction. I was working on a third, for a while, that was straight drama, maybe dramedy. My writing definitely skews dramatic-with-funny-in. But my tastes and influences are all indisputably comedic: I watch almost solely sitcoms, I read Discworld and Dave Sedaris, I'm signing up for improv next month.
My specs-in-progress are all comedies (How I Met Your Mother, The Office, Psych), and my pilots are all roughly dramas. Somehow, I didn't really pay attention to this until now. And now that I have, I'm really not sure what to do. The obvious solution is to meet in the middle -- do some new specs (keep the Psych and add some House, Mad Men... what else? I don't even know, I seriously don't watch dramas!), lighten up the heavy pilots, darken the light pilots, and work something out. But I don't want to give up the sitcoms. I like the sitcoms. And I don't think I can change myself, either -- I write a lot of sci-fi and I write a lot of drama and I don't think that will change. I want both in my life.
And what does that say about me, that I rarely like watching the sort of thing I write myself? Or that I can see myself staff writing for shows I don't think I could ever create myself? I can do a kickass HIMYM, but ask me to come up with a series about five people in their late 20s who hang out in a bar and I'm at a loss. With BSG off the air, I don't have a single drama in my viewing list, but that's my entire stable of pilots. I was told today that thanks to series like Psych and Glee, people are starting to think less in terms of drama and comedy and more in terms of half-hour and hour-long, but I don't know how much that really helps me. I still don't think anyone's going to ask Steve Franks or Ryan Murphy to do the next Battlestar just because they're all hour-longs.
It's times like this I want to split in two. But since I can't, I guess I have to face the question: What now?
And really, arxev, who the hell are you?
*Yes, I know he did Felicity, but that was A: ten years ago, pre-~*~showrunner~*~ days, and B: still at least a drama!
eta I just realized that my LJ "name" is weirdly appropriate for this post. You speak to me, Patrick McGoohan.