"Peak TV means peak stress for writers"/ Writers on the Verge

I'm posting this in honor of International Women's Day Mar. 8.

Aug. 21, 2017 "Peak TV means peak stress for writers": Today I found this article by Alex Suskind in the Globe and Mail.  It was a well- written article.  However, I felt a little down after reading it.  You can go to my opinion at the bottom of it:

Television has gone from a disdained medium to an arena in which epic battles are fought between streaming services and networks. And this means that more and more men and women are being chewed up and spit out by a profession known for being brutal

Kirk A. Moore’s sleeping pattern had landed him in the hospital.

Working two jobs last year – he was a member of the writers’ room on ABC’s American Crime and contributing to the Netflix show 13 Reasons Why – Moore was getting by on three hours of sleep (at most). He was also sipping on Applejack Crown Royal during his all-night writing binges. Plus lots of gummy worms and caffeine.

The result: a panic attack that sent him to the emergency room.

“I remember I was at urgent care, working on my script because I was on deadline and I didn’t want to tell them I was sick,” he said of an episode he wrote for American Crime. “So I finished it there.”

Moore’s hospital stay may be an extreme manifestation of the stresses of the TV writing life, but the profession’s possible pitfalls are willingly accepted by a growing number of men and women who arrive in Southern California each year, armed with ideas, scripts and unbridled enthusiasm, looking for success in an industry famous for chewing up and spitting out talent.

 They are enticed by the increased prestige of writing for a medium long disdained as a vast wasteland, in the era of Peak TV, when streaming services do battle with the broadcast and cable networks to win the allegiances of audiences.

 A record 455 original scripted series aired last year and by the time 2017 comes to a close, that tally is expected to top 500.

“I never would have thought there would be enough talent to cover the number of shows currently being made – and yet there is,” said John Landgraf, the chief executive of FX Networks, who coined the term “Peak TV” in 2015. “I think that speaks to the fact that the pool of writers is much wider than it was before.”

Although opportunities abound, the transition has presented additional challenges. Here, three writers discuss the non-traditional career trajectories, long hours, substance use (and abuse) and uneven returns that can come from working in the golden age of a continually shifting creative field.

Finding one’s niche

Jessica Queller, the freshly minted co-showrunner of Supergirl, originally wanted to be an actor.

Growing up in New York’s Greenwich Village, she dreamed of a stage career.

In the 1990s, while in her early 20s, she hung around the Malaparte Theater Company, which was run by Ethan Hawke and Queller’s boyfriend at the time, Jonathan Marc Sherman (Sophistry, Things We Want). “I came up with these crazy talents,” Queller said.

“Peter Dinklage and Sam Rockwell and Philip Seymour Hoffman – and Calista Flockhart and Cara Buono, both of whom remain my two best friends.”

But, unlike her peers, success eluded her. “I was the Salieri of the Mozart story: ‘I am so passionate about the theatre! I’ve read everything, seen everything!’ But I just [couldn’t] get cast at the Roundabout and on Broadway, where my friends were.”

So in 1997 she went to Los Angeles to audition for pilot season. There, a light bulb went off: Why not try writing instead?

“All my boyfriends had been writers – I revered writers and storytelling, and had the epiphany around the age of 30: ‘Oh, maybe I don’t want to marry a manic-depressive alcoholic writer, maybe I just want to be one,’ ” she recalled, laughing.

“I had this little voice inside of me going, ‘I think I could do that.’ ”

Queller then burrowed for two years, writing at night and sleeping during the day. She eventually secured a job, her first, on Fling, the ill-fated show from Glenn Gordon Caron (Moonlighting). The show was cancelled by Fox in 2001 before an episode was televised. But the credit did lead her to a gig on Felicity and the writing niche that has determined her career ever since.

“Here I am, 47 years old, still writing for teenagers and early 20s [viewers],” said Queller, who has also worked on Gilmore Girls and Gossip Girl, which ran on the WB and CW.

It was advice from an agent – one she met because her mother’s best friend’s son-in-law was the man’s tennis teacher – that set her on this path. Upon hearing that she was writing a spec script for the David E. Kelley show The Practice, the agent told her to choose a lane.

“It was easier for me to say, ‘I know everything about what it means to be a struggling young woman’ than it was for me to say, ‘I know what it means to run a law firm in Boston,’ ” she said.

“The advice wasn’t necessarily bad – it was a bit limiting – but it worked, because I did become the go-to person for those types of shows as I was trying to establish a career.”

More than 15 years later, Queller senses that finding a regular writing job is an ever more difficult proposition as new writers flood the profession and movie scriptwriters chase the money and possibly greater glory that prestige television can provide.

The statistics bear that out. According to the Writers Guild of America West, 4,129 writers reported earnings in 2015, far above 2010’s total of 3,242.

The toll of the grind

For those lucky enough to secure a job, maintaining it can take its own toll.

Before his first staff writing gig on American Crime, Moore worked a night shift in customer service at a psychic-advice company. But in 2014, the Houston native was accepted into NBC Writers on the Verge, which trains aspirants from diverse backgrounds and introduced him to the peculiarities of writing for television. 

The image of the lone scribe, sweating over the Great American Novel or the next Citizen Kane, does not translate to television writing. Collaboration is integral to the profession and the work of more junior writers is ultimately subservient to the vision of the showrunner (not to mention the desires of the companies bankrolling the project).

“I had to be comfortable letting go of something that I knew was just a draft,” Moore said. “Because that’s TV. You go through a writers’ draft, then a studio draft and then a network draft.”

He also had to learn to be rigorously disciplined. “I never thought I was a fast writer until I got into the program,” said Moore, now 37. “It showed me that I really had to be structured: ‘Okay, Kirk, you have to sleep at this time, you have to work at this time, you have to write at this time.’”

Unfortunately, Moore’s allnighters, poor eating habits and self-medication would catch up with him during the third season of American Crime. “I was so stressed out and not getting sleep, it just compounded – and then I was in the hospital,” he said.

Even with proper rest, there are other stress factors to consider, such as cantankerous showrunners (see: the obscenity-filled e-mails Frank Darabont sent to his staff during Season 1 of The Walking Dead) or the constant scramble of having to find the next gig. 

With many of the new shows being greenlit by Netflix, Amazon and the higher end cable networks offering fewer episodes a season than a typical broadcast network show, the need to embark on a job search more often has intensified.

There may be more television shows than ever, but the spoils aren’t necessarily trickling down to the writers. 

Between 2013 and 2016, the overall median earnings of writer-producers decreased by 25 per cent, according to the Writers Guild of America West.

Moore considers himself fortunate, finding his experience on Crime and 13 Reasons Why to be, long hours aside, comfortable and inclusive. “I’ve been on shows where they actually respect my opinion, whether I’m a staff writer or whether I’m a producer,” he said, before echoing Crime creator John Ridley’s approach: 

“‘I don’t care about your résumé. I care about what you can bring to my story and the show I want to tell.’ ”

After his stint in the hospital, though, Moore knew he would have to make lifestyle changes to keep producing quality work. “I had to stop drinking. I stopped drinking caffeine,” said Moore, who is working on the second season of 13 Reasons Why.(American Crime was cancelled in May by ABC.) “That’s taking some time to get used to. But I learned from my mistakes. I want to do this for a long time.”

Climbing the ladder

For many television writers, such as Aida Mashaka Croal, the ultimate goal is running one’s own show.

Croal, a writer and co-executive producer on Marvel’s Luke Cage, originally dreamed of becoming a neurosurgeon while growing up in Vancouver and her parents’ native British Guiana. But her time at Stanford, studying under playwright Anna Deavere Smith, steered her toward writing and eventually, in 2003, to the ABC daytime writers’ program.

But while she’s toiled on soap operas (One Life to Live), sci-fi shows (Sanctuary) and historical dramas (Turn: Washington’s Spies), it’s Luke Cage – about a black superhero in Harlem – where she feels most at home.

“When I looked at television, I thought every single show was about a white man doing something, and I felt like, ‘I have to fit my stories into that narrative in order to be hired,’ ” Croal, 42, said. 

“It created a sense of insecurity: ‘Well, what do they really want to see? What do they really mean?’ And I would kind of psyche myself out about it, so it was nice to have somebody say, ‘What we really want to see is what we really have to say.’ ”

Besides a higher paycheque, her co-executive producing role has meant new responsibilities, from casting and production decisions to the hiring of directors. 

“I thought I was working hard before, and I was working hard, but I simply did not have the visibility in all areas of the operation,” she said. “It’s terrifying at first – I was like, ‘I don’t know if I have the stamina for this.’ But you build it up – quickly – because that’s the job, and I find that I love it.”

Her role on Luke Cage has also prepared her for her next mission: her own series. A show she co-created for AMC in 2016 did not get the go-ahead – she declined to divulge details but said that it ran up against a similar show that came to fruition more quickly. 

(That show has since been cancelled.) Nonetheless, Croal remains undaunted. “It’s happening,” she said. “There are a couple of opportunities out there, and we will see very shortly which dream will come true.”

While the Peak TV era has afforded greater opportunities for talents such as Croal, the industry may be in for a reckoning. Executives such as Landgraf wonder how long the newcomers will stuff the market at the current pace despite seemingly negative returns. 

(Netflix, which just signed Shonda Rhimes to a multiyear deal, will spend $6-billion U.S. on original content in 2017.)

“I think all industries go through phases of expansion and contraction, as well as periods of stasis,” he said.

Landgraf may be unsure about the timing of that decline, but he does have one piece of advice if, or when, that day arrives:

 “When an industry contracts, it’s just better not to be in the bottom third in terms of talent,” he said. 

“The only way to really preserve your longevity is to continue to grow, and retrain and get better.”

https://www.pressreader.com/canada/the-globe-and-mail-alberta-edition/20170822/282144996466025

My opinion: I've been pitching my script to every TV production company in Canada from 2008-2012.  They all read my script and they reject it.

Then in 2014, I met this new co-worker M at the restaurant.  

M: Have you thought of pitching to the US companies?

Tracy: I haven't.

However, that means I have to start pitching all over again.  The article above already proves how competitive it is in the US.

I am playing my field in Canada and it's hard.

Dec. 27, 2019: I'm rereading this and other filmmaking articles right now.  I feel neutral after reading this.

I looked up the writers that were interviewed.

I also looked up Writers on the Verge:

http://www.nbcunitips.com/writers-on-the-verge/

http://www.nbcunitips.com/category/programs/writers/

Writers on the Verge is a program focused on polishing writers and readying them for a staff writer position on a television series. We are looking for writers who are “almost there” but need that final bit of preparation with their writing and personal presentation skills. We particularly encourage writers of diverse backgrounds to apply.

The program will consist of weekly evening classes at NBCUniversal in Universal City, CA. Once accepted, students must attend all classes and turn in all written assignments.

Classes concentrate on creating exceptional material to enhance their portfolio, and understanding the dynamics of pitching oneself in the television industry. Writers are given the chance to interact with industry players ranging from network executives to show runners to agents and receive valuable feedback on their work and pitch style.

 Writing assignments on a NBC Universal television show may be available after successful completion of the program but are not a guarantee. Past participants have gone on to series including “The Blacklist,” “Marlon,” “Community”, “Burn Notice”, “Brooklyn Nine-Nine”, “White Collar”, “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”, “Chicago Fire” and “Parenthood.”

#1 Write, Write, Write!Practice your craft and have a portfolio of work to show for it. That portfolio should include an original pilot, and up to date spec. Short stories and one-act plays are always fun to read, too.

#2 Character, character, character!It's the most important element in your script. Your lead has to be active and have a clear goal.  The other characters should all want something.

#3 Don't write in a bubbleLet others read your work - ask for their feedback & listen to it.  Even if you don't agree with the note on page 9, look at page 9 and recognize there is a problem there.