I’ve been fighting with CODENAME ABRAHAM for well over a year now. ABRAHAM is a TV pilot, and it’s the sort of thing you want to get right. It’s supposed to be a calling card, something I can give to showrunners and producers to prove that I’m worthy of hiring…not to mention that I have something worthy of purchase. I’ve been through seven attempts before this one. Some of them were full drafts, some of them blew up on the launchpad, by which I mean I abandoned them after about 30 pages or so.
Now, I approached this most recent draft more…professionally?…than I did the others. I’ve often been content to wing it when I write, because I have a strong command of language and of character (as a rule). But I’ve been much more satisfied with the work I’ve been doing on Hunter Black since I started outlining more tightly each chapter. I also did a lot of soul searching regarding where I’d gone wrong in ALL THE OTHER DRAFTS. I realized that I had a main character problem, as in I didn’t know who she was anywhere near as well as I did the supporting cast, and that’s obviously a problem.
So I did a bunch of character work and then sat down to right a really tight outline for this pilot with that new character work in mind. That level of planning and analysis paid off in interesting ways; my whole approach to how this proposed season of television would start changed, and thus so did the pilot. New settings, a few new characters, new inciting actions. It all seemed to fit.
The actual writing came in fits and starts. I’ve kind of let myself get rusty. (Kicking off the rust is the biggest benefit of being under lockdown.) But once things finally got flowing…they REALLY got flowing. I knocked out something like 20 pages this past weekend. I finished the draft.
I’ve always said that I knew I was a professional level writer when I could write something and just KNOW that it wasn’t any good. I knew that about one scene in the pilot, but I decided to follow the advice that I see from most of the writers I respect…JUST GET IT DONE. So I kept plugging away, knowing that I was going to have to go back and fix that scene. So I got to the end last night. I JUST GOT IT DONE. The good thing about doing that was I had a better sense of what I actually needed from that broken scene with everything else done. So I just went immediately back and rewrote the broken scene.
I was ELATED when I finished last night. I was PROUD. I felt GREAT.
Twenty minutes later, the doubts started to creep in. I’d failed to deliver on SEVEN previous attempts. What makes that eighth attempt any different, really? I mean, I just explained everything that makes the eighth attempt different…but somehow, my heart just isn’t convinced.
Now, I’ve been doing this writing thing for a while now. I have some reasonable successes. I’ve seen my work in print. My partners and I created our own book. I’ve seen my name on the television screen. I’ve gotten paychecks from some of the most prestigious companies out there. I’ve gotten to put words into the mouths of some my favorite characters.
None of that matters. I’m a guy that writes for an audience, and I want my audience to love what I do. I want to make them happy and sad and angry, to feel all the things that I want them to feel. I want to write things THAT WORK.
I never know if what I’ve written works. I’ve lived with it too long. So now I’m filled with doubt. It’s shitty…but it’s also what I asked for.
If I’m ever as successful as I’d like to be, I kind of hope I still feel this way when I finish a draft. This…fear and dissatisfaction will send me into the shower where my tears will be lost from view (because it doesn’t rain in souther California, at least according to Raphael Saadiq), but it’ll also make me try harder with the next project…
…speaking of which, I need to get started on that.