In other words, I feel like shit.

Had a negative experience last Thursday. Apparently, the detailed outline of my Bob’s Burgers episode was due Tuesday, not Thursday. So I was super late on it, too, just like those versions of my Feature Development beat sheet I fucked up.

And what bugs me about that is that now I have had two teachers act like that’s how it’s always been. But it isn’t. It’s a fairly recent development. I admit that I am having trouble making the learning curve on this development. I still tend to assume things are due next class. But they are due 48 hours earlier so everyone in class has time to read it and generate notes for feedback.

I think I have a grip on the idea now. And in the process I have realized how I tend to just do assignments based on whatever I happen to remember about how to do them, as opposed to looking up how they are supposed to be done. That’s sure to bite me on the ass hard, over and over, so I better put an end to that shit ASAP.

The problem is that I am always so eager to write that I don’t want to slow down to research how it’s supposed to be done. I suppose that, on a subconscious level, I feel like things like that aren’t important, what matters is the quality of my writing.

Which is ironic coming from Mister First And Final Drafts here.

I feel like my current stage of evolution as a writer is the one where I come to terms with that big bad bugbear of mine : rewriting. And in a broader sense, the fact that writing for a living is going to involve a lot more work and effort than I am used to having to address.

That goes double for school. In a TV writer’s room, I will at least be, in general, only working on one thing with one deadline at a time. But in school I’ve got seven courses on the go. And the organizational aspect of being a student is growing increasingly complex.

Once more, I wish I had an assistant to keep track of everything for me. But I don’t. So I have to do it myself.

Back to rewriting. I don’t mind taking multiple cracks at something. Like I have said before, school gives me what I need to make that happen, which is that second party to look at the work, evaluate it, give me an idea as to what needs to be fixed, and give it back. That carries me across the threshold I can’t cross on my own, the threshold between how it is and how it should be.

I do not yet possess the ability to switch from creating it to evaluating it and fixing it on my own. if I try that, the whole thing falls apart in my head and I lose all belief in the thing’s merit, and my own. Editing is so radically different from creating. I can’t switch modes on my own.

More disturbing is what actually went down with said outline. Here’s a link to it : Outline for Bob’s Burgers.

They (my class) still don’t buy my take on Gene and Louise. That’s to be expected, I suppose. And they think the A plot should be the Bob and Linda Go Karaoke plot, which I thought of as a D plot. And if that was all, I would just shrug and chalk it up to artistic differences.

I’m artistic, and they’re “different”. Ha ha ha.

But seriously, they made the very valid point that this is supposed to be a spec script, and therefore should be as “typical” as possible. Which means I have to make it less unique and have it be less of a change for the characters. Which, to my mind, means making it less unique and less interesting.

I honestly don’t want to make anything I do more “typical”.

So now I have to face the first major challenge for any artist who wants to make a living with their art : compromise. When you are just doing it for yourself and maybe a few friends, you don’t have to compromise at all. You make it just how you like it, and that’s it.

But once you want to earn a living with your art, you have to start thinking about what the gatekeepers want. And that means maybe/probably having to make the art “worse” in your mind in order to get paid. And that goes directly against the grain of the drive towards self-expression that is the wellspring of art in the first place.

I really want to work in the biz. So I am going to have to rewrite the thing as being karaoke-centric and maybe choose either the Gene plot or the Louise plot as the B-plot, and Tina as the C. Also, I need to have the plotlines interact more often.

And that’s going to be a big shift for me. But I don’t think I will have too much trouble once I get over the psychological aspect. After all, a karaoke machine based episode of Bob’s Burgers could be a heck of a lot of fun to write. And it’s not like I have to discard the Gene and Louise plots forever.

I just have to decide not to include them, or at least eliminate one of them. Spec scripts are resumes, not think pieces. Like my prof said, TV producers want to hire a writer they can just drop into the writer’s room knowing they can already match the style, context, and tone of the show, and for that, you need to present them with a “typical” show.

And man would I love to work on an animated sitcom like Bob’s Burgers, Family Guy, or the Simpsons.

So I have got a lot to learn. And I am not talking book learning. I mean the kind of learning where you have to change.

And you can’t study for that. You have to do the work, too.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.