Guest Post: Careful What You Wish For

TODAY'S GUEST POST comes courtesy of the inimitable Daegan Fryklind, Vancouver-based scribe of J-POD and Robson Arms fame. It's another great writer's life post. Oh, and Daegan's right, BTW. She is cute.

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TIME WAS, WE WERE in a certain bar in Toronto, and I’d reached that point on a series. That point comes somewhere between episodes seven and eight -- the bloom is off the development rose, the machine is in full swing, and there are still sixish episodes to be broken. And you think: we’ve squeezed the lemon so hard to get to this point, how are we going to come up with anything other than pulp for the remainder. At that point, you take solace in the crafty table. You start to stack the iPod with “go get ‘em” music. You rally your inner troops. And then sometimes, when the façade fails, you find yourself sitting around a table in a certain bar with a klatch of Toronto writers, and you might declare something like: “oh god, I just want to get knocked up.”

Sidebar: A friend once told me this story -- he was walking home late one night in a hookerish part of Vancouver (careful -- I know what you’re thinking and yes, there are non-hookerish parts of my fine city) and was nearly struck down by a slow-driving John. It was his “I’m walking here” moment, though immediately afterward he realized if he’d just let the John hit him, he could have settled out of court, or even right there on the sidewalk, for a cool grand.

Thing is, sometimes you’re in it so deep you’re desperate for some way out. When you’re a gun for hire, you likey the writing, you needs the money, you takes the risk: there’s no guarantee you’re going to end up on the dream story department. And then you hit that point of the season and find yourself wanting to get knocked up or wishing you’d have just shut your mouth and continued into the path of moving traffic.

This is not the fault of the show. Honestly, you’ll want to blame the show. You’ll want to seethe and wish painful cancellation on the show. But friends, the problem isn’t the show.

What’s going on is a lack of balance. I’ll admit it -- I’ve done two series now where my balance was all outta whack, where evenings were spent on set (because a writer HAS to be there at all times, right?!) and where weekends were spent either sleeping or writing or sleepwriting or standing under a showerhead. And always, wishing for the show to be done.

I’m on the flip-side of that now. Show’s done. Work’s tight. I have all the time in the world for the things I missed when working. I went to Maui. I learned how to snorkel. I opened my eyes underwater for the first time and what I saw amazed me. I learned how to golf. I started trail running. I have more time for friends and family. Along the way, I believe I’ve smelt a rose or two. And it’s been great, but you know what’s next. The coffee shop + the declaration of “oh god, I just want a looming production deadline” = careful what you wish for.

Well, okay, I’m not knocked up so there’s that, and really, we all know writers who went to full-term on a series, so it’s not like that’s an out. But I gotta say, work and “real life” usually went together like this:

there were two sets of footprints in the sand, and then when there was only one set, it was because work shiv’d “real life” and left it back there to bleed out.

So I’ll admit that I haven’t mastered balance yet, but I’ve worked with people who have so I know it’s possible -- showrunners who manage to oversee 13 episodes and also have time to exercise in the mornings before call, get to the Gulf Islands or Muskoka on weekends with their families, see movies in the theatre (rather than internet rips watched in bed at 3 in the morning during anxiety attacks). There are people who do this. They have amazing families. They are steadfast showrunners. They are what FOX NEWS promises to be but isn’t: fair and balanced.

Those of you who are in the throes of pre-prep, or being cacked out the tail end of production will probably shake your head and say “oh Fryklind, you’re so cute with your West Coast flakey mumbo jumbo.” And you’re right. I am cute. But I also know that there’s a way to do this in which you maintain both sides, in which you come out the other end of five or seven months and don’t feel like you need to get your “real life” back, because it has run alongside of production the whole time.

That’s not something we should wish for. It’s something we should strive for. Otherwise we become the lemons reduced to pulp.

Hugs!

daegan