So Where the Hell Have You Been?

Writing, and then melting down, and then writing faster.

I try to be honest with you folks here on the blog, so I'll give this a whirl.

Right after wrap last year I took a little "fix this pilot" job -- which was then picked up to shoot and led straight into production. Although the pilot didn't go to series, it still ate up Sept-through Dec. Add that to some family health issues, and my hiatus ... wasn't. No hiatus for two years in a row by this point, as I had a movie to write on the hiatus before that, further complicated by some unpleasant personal issues.

There was something else, too. Those of you who heard me talk at the Fan-Con this year in Portland heard me be kind of raw about this: I hit asshole fatigue. Three years of endless research on corporations and fat cats who ripped people off, causing misery and harm in the name of profit -- and relentlessly, inevitably got away with it. Either the law was never applied, or they got a pass because the economy was so bad or ... whatever. Leverage to a great degree was born of anger. Robin Hood is an angry hero. After the bloody research required to make 44 stories, I was all angered-out.

So I ran smack into burnout over the 2010 holidays. And this with Day 1 of the Season 4 writing schedule coming.

Not fun. Not conducive to blogging, in any way shape or form. What writing I could get done besides prepping Leverage S4 was spent on launching the Dungeons & Dragons comic book. Basically, I had nothing left.

Luckily, the enthusiasm of the new blood on the Leverage staff got me fired up. Breaking stories in the room is the same process as writing, to a great degree. As we all know, you can't think yourself out of a writing block, you have to write yourself out of a thinking block. In short order I was back, enjoying the genuinely new and exciting ideas they were bringing to the room ...

... and then I was directing.

Directing means I'm out of the room for 3 weeks. Directing 2 episodes (plus on-set for the season opener) meant I'd be out of the room for close to 8 weeks. If I was going to live up to my responsibilities in the writer's room, that meant going fast and hard at story-breaking for the first few weeks, before I started buggering off to Portland. So no typing for you folks then, either.

Now, with every episode but the finale written, I should be able to get back on a regular schedule for the blog. We'll see.

None of this is "poor me", of course. I only mention it because somebody out there who's typing their spec may be having a shitty week. You should know -- and this may be either encouraging or discouraging -- that everyone has that week, sometimes. No matter how long you've been doing it, or how many tools in the toolbox, there are still days, sometimes weeks, where the blank page just stares back at you and wins.

Let's start back up with the post-game for #312, and we'll see what we see, eh?