Why we write...a series of short essays on writing

By Greg Garcia, Creator and Executive Producer of My Name Is Earl.

I hate writing. I hate it. Sitting down to write a script is torture. In fact, the only good thing that's come out of this strike is that it's given me an actual legitimate excuse not to write. Usually I have to spend most of my mornings trying to come up with reasons to be lazy. But these days, I simply wake up and my guild has decided that I am not permitted to put pen to paper. Not permitted to sit and stare at a blank page and feel like a failure for hours on end. Not permitted to type scene after scene only to read it at the end of the day, hate it, and throw it out. And for that, I'm grateful to the AMPTP and the WGA. However, I'm bored out of my mind. Because as much as I hate writing TV, I love watching it. Writing TV is hard, but watching it... Watching it is a breeze. All you need are eyes and an ass. When I sit down to watch an episode of one of my favorite shows it's like Christmas morning. I get excited. What have they come up with for me this week? I can't wait. And when it's over I quickly shut off the TV before I can see the promo for next week's episode because I don't want to ruin a single second of it. I don't have to watch the promo. I'll be there. I'm hooked.

The first few days of the strike were great for catching up on my shows. My TIVO was bubbling over with new episodes of Dexter, Family Guy, Friday Night Lights, 30 Rock, and a whole bunch of other shows I'm not going to admit to watching. One by one they were watched and deleted. And now my TIVO is empty. I fear that as the strike goes on my TIVO may try to eat itself to stay alive. Nothing is more depressing than going through the guide for the next few weeks and seeing shows like American Gladiators, Clash of the Choirs, Duel, and Celebrity Apprentice. I'm not gonna watch that foolishness. And I'll watch almost anything. I always have. While other kids were out playing tag, tossing around the ball, and getting laid, I was glued to the TV. I liked it all, but sitcoms were my main drug. At least until I discovered actual drugs and then sitcoms and drugs were my drugs. I watched everything from Father Knows Best to WKRP in Cincinnati. The only time I would stop watching was when my mother would make me come upstairs for dinner. And then, so I wouldn't miss a word, I would prop up my audiocassette player against the TV and hit record. After dinner I would race down, lie on the couch, close my eyes, and listen to what I had missed. Only having the audio, I would be forced to block the scenes, design the swing sets, choose the camera angles, and edit the show in my head.

Years later when I was going to college at the very prestigious Frostburg State University I was excited to learn that they had an actual sitcom writing class. Not only did they offer the class, but if the script you wrote was good enough, it would be sent to Warner Brothers and if they liked it, they would fly you out to Hollywood to hang out with the writers on one of their sitcoms for a week. Eleven o'clock the night before my script was due, I hadn't written a word. I popped a few caffeine pills and sat in front of my roommate's computer staring at that goddamn blank screen. But then, just like I did when I was a kid in my parents' basement, I closed my eyes and pictured the set of Cheers. I pictured the characters, imagined what they might say and I watched as they began talking to each other. I quickly started typing.

The next day we had a table read of my script in class. I remember being tired and nervous as they started to read the first scene. Soon we got to the first joke. People laughed. We got to the second joke and they laughed again. Now, as I'm sure you know, there's no way of describing the feeling you get from people enjoying something you created. It's quite a high. I was hooked.

After getting a C minus on my Cheers script for refusing to take my professor's notes, I was one of two people in the country selected by Warner Brothers to go to Hollywood for a week. This is when I first learned to never take notes you don't agree with. If I had taken my professor's notes I'd probably be digging ditches right now instead of having my dream job of walking around in a circle holding a sign on a stick. When I got to Hollywood I watched the writers of the show Room For Two as they sat around a table laughing, fighting, and creating television. And later in the week I pitched a joke that included the words "grouper fingers" and they actually put it in the script. Once again I was hooked.

A few months later I returned to Los Angeles determined to become a television writer. And a year later I was. I was a staff writer on a show called On Our Own. I vividly remember watching the first episode I wrote as it aired on TV. I was sitting on the couch, just like I did in my parents' basement, only this time the people inside the magic box in front of me were doing what I told them to do. They were saying words that I came up with. Something that started in my head was being beamed out to millions of people all over the country. And I like to think those people watching were laughing. Once again I was hooked.

Since then I've been lucky enough to be a part of the writing of over 300 episodes of television. I've written on other people's shows, my own shows, family shows, office shows, black shows, white shows, four camera shows, animated shows, single camera shows, shows that get slammed by the critics and shows that win Emmys. I've had the pleasure of experiencing almost everything you can experience in the world of sitcoms. The thing I had worshiped as a child has become my life. But don't get me wrong, I still hate writing. I hate it because it's hard. But if I don't write it, no one is going to say it. No one is going to block it or light it or film it or edit it. No one is going to watch it. And most importantly, no one is going to laugh at it. And as much as I hate the writing part, I love the laughing part. I need the laughing part. I'm addicted to it.

And that's why I write.

Today’s piece is written by Steven Levitan, creator of Just Shoot Me and co-creator of Back To You.

I swear this is true. A couple of years ago I had lunch with a network president who asked me the following question:

“If I offered you a billion dollars, but you could never write again, would you take it?”

I tried to keep a straight face and act snooty because I knew he assumed my answer would be “no” and was paying me a compliment, but, let’s face it, he had me at “billi...” Hell, he didn’t even make it hard. I mean, if he had added, “But you have to cut off your fingers,” well, then now we’re talking a much tougher decision. I play golf. I play guitar. I have an iPhone. What the hell am I going to do all day now that I have a billion dollars and no fingers?

The truth is the strike has given me the chance to experience life without a creative outlet like writing. Here’s something amusing I’ve started doing the past six weeks: I have two teenaged daughters who have just gotten to that age when they’re ashamed of me. So, whenever I drop them off outside a party and there are other kids standing around, I scream out desperately from the car, “MAKE GOOD CHOICES!!!” They’re just mortified. Now that’s good fun.

Maybe I don’t need this job to be happy. I have skills to fall back on. During my senior year of college at (the) Harvard (of America’s Dairyland UW-Madison), and for two years afterwards, I was a television news reporter and anchor for the local ABC affiliate. I covered big fires, killer tornados, grizzly murders and, worst of all, holiday parades.

Like most newsrooms at the time, ours had three televisions on the wall so we could see what the other stations were doing. However, I found myself more interested in what came on before the ten o’clock news than during: Hill Street Blues, Moonlighting, Wonder Years, Cheers. I began to wonder if I could ever write something like that. So, one day, without any plan or guidance, I started firing off my first script -- a spec Moonlighting. It was one of the hardest things I had ever done and I had absolutely no clue what to do with it, but I finished. I had an incredible sense of accomplishment, even though, to those around me, I was like one of those crazy guys who builds a rocket in his backyard.

I then moved back to my hometown Chicago to take a job creating ad campaigns for Miller Beer, McDonalds and that little yutz the Pillsbury Doughboy (total prima donna). And I kept writing. A Cheers. Then a Wonder Years. My roommates would just shake their heads and wonder why the hell was I writing fake television shows instead of going out to the bars with them. a) I just couldn’t stop. b) It was fourteen below outside.

Long story short, I finally moved to L.A. to write and produce trailers and TV commercials for Disney Studios and, a year and a half later, got my first chance to meet on a television series: Wings. I went in, pitched a story and, what do you know, they bought it. I then wrote the freelance script and, when I went to the showrunners’ offices to turn it in, they invited me to come watch the filming of the season premiere later that week.

I had never been on a sitcom set in my life and it was everything I hoped it would be. I would have loved every minute of it, but I knew they invited me before they read my script and, throughout the filming, I became increasingly convinced they hated my script and consequently the talentless hack who “wrote” it. Finally the show ended and David Angell (who left us too soon) asked me to come down from the bleachers onto the set. Here it comes, I thought, the speech where he tells me I should go back to Chicago and write more cuddly copy for the doughboy (who, btw, has an eating disorder).

“Steve,” he said in a “let’s just be friends” tone. “We really liked your script and, if you want to join us, we’d love to have you on staff.”

I’m not sure I can adequately convey the glory of that moment, but cue the fireworks. There I was, on an actual sitcom set, in actual Hollywood-adjacent, being asked to join a network show by the guy who wrote some of my favorite episodes of television ever. Kiss my ass, Doughboy, I’m on staff!

Now, some sixteen years and three or four hundred episodes later, I have to admit to being, at times, a bit jaded. The hours can be long, cancelled shows break your heart, and I have, on occasion, walked onto a soundstage with more dread than delight.

But most days, I pinch myself because I’m one of the lucky few who’s living out his Rob Petrie-inspired dream. And everyday I walk that picket line, I know I’m doing it so that, in the future, others will get to experience my good fortune. After all, my job is to sit in a room with genuinely funny people and tell stories. I get to see my work performed by some of the best actors ever on television. And, on a good night, I get to make millions of people laugh.

That’s something I never want to give up. Not even for a billio... I’m sorry, I can’t even say it with a straight face.

"Today’s piece is written by Damon Lindelof, Co-Creator and Executive Producer of Lost.

I was listening to the news on NPR the other day and two things occurred to me. First, only assholes feel the constant need to tell you they listen to NPR (does anyone ever say, “So I was watching the CW last night…”?) and I guess that makes me an asshole. The second was that in the midst of listening to the story in question, I had finally figured out how to succinctly sum up why I write. It goes a little something like this --There’s this ninety-year old woman named Rose who, after honking her horn repeatedly at the school bus idling in front of her, decides she has much more important things to do and guns her Honda Civic around the bus. Before she realizes that the bus was stopped for a very good reason indeed, Rose finds herself watching a freight train bear down on her and almost instantly, it smashes into the passenger side of the Civic and pushes it a good hundred feet before screeching to a stop. Forgoing all the gory details, Rose is pronounced dead at the local hospital and the attending doctor in the ER is tasked with notifying next of kin. Turns out Rose’s husband has been dead for decades, but she has a couple sons and a daughter. The doctor calls one of her sons and his wife answers the phone. The son isn’t home, but the wife offers to take a message. The notification ethics, however, forbid the hospital from telling anyone but next of kin about Rose’s death and so they ask when the son will be home so they can call back.And the wife responds “He won’t be back for two months.” And the hospital says, “Well… do you have a number where we could reach him?” And the wife says no, she doesn’t. And why not?–

Because he’s in space.

As in outer space. As in orbit. As in one of a handful of human beings who have the unique distinction of not being on the planet.

The son, Richard, is working on the International Space Station doing repair work. And as he floats in Zero-G, he is blissfully unaware that his ninety-year old mother has just been flattened by a train.

I kid you not. This really happened.

And what does this family’s personal tragedy have to do with why I write?

Because to me, this is an amazing story. And as soon as I hear it, my brain is already hammering out the scene where Rose’s other kids debate as to whether or not to even tell Richard. The daughter, Christine, insists on telling him that mom died peacefully in her sleep and holding the grisly truth for when he’s back on Earth. Richard’s brother Michael, however, demands they tell Richard all the gory details. Why? Because it was Richard’s fault she was still driving at ninety. Michael’s been trying to get her into assisted living for over five years now and if stupid fucking Richard had just fucking listened to him, she’d still be fucking alive!

Fortunately, I think, the decision is not up to Richard’s siblings. He is, after all, a member of the military, so this would be a NASA issue. And it turns out in their guidelines there’s this thing called the Dual Plume Protocol. The Dual Plume Protocol, or DPP, was officially incorporated into NASA’s Psychological Charter this year. Let me back up --

In September of 2001, the space station was manned by three people -- an American and Two Russians. As they were orbiting over the Northeastern United States, the American called Mission Control to report that he could see (with his naked eye) two massive pillars of black smoke rising up through the atmosphere. When they answered back, explaining that the black smoke was all that remained of the Towers, the American took a long, sorrowful pause and responded – “I wish you hadn’t told me that.”

As a result of the DPP, NASA started actually asking the astronauts who are leaving the planet what their personal wishes are regarding notifications of earthbound tragedies. And this is like, a very detailed document because it covers everything from worldwide catastrophes (i.e. Katrina or a Tsunami) down to things that would only affect the astronaut him or herself (i.e. their mother’s Honda getting pulverized by a freight train) and it must be signed and notarized before launch. Why? Because the emotional state and focus of these guys is critical. They’re being sent up to perform missions on a space station and after spending millions to train them (Richard is one of three people alive who has the skill set to execute these specific repairs) it costs BILLIONS just to get them up there to perform them and the last thing NASA needs is for someone to go batshit with grief on the day they’re supposed to fix the thruster converter thigamajob.

So I’m sitting there thinking how Richard may have filled out his DPP Form…

And I realize there’s no such thing.

I made it up.

Yeah, I remember hearing about the astronauts on the space station having seen the carnage over Manhattan from orbit, but that’s got nothing to do with the story of Rose’s death. In fact, I don’t know how many kids she had or, for that matter, whether or not they can just send an email to Richard (can you get email in space?) and dispense with all the formality.

But where’s the drama in that?

So that’s why I write.
I write because I can’t help but make things up.
I write because I love to tell stories.
I write because my imagination compels me to do so.
I write because if I didn’t, I’d be branded a pathological liar.
Oh, and also because I’m still trying to make my dead father proud of me.
But that’s none of your business.