Lately, I find myself working 'round the clock, staying up 'til all hours. I used to have the virus checker on this computer set to run a scan each night at 5 AM, a time selected because I'd always be asleep then. The last few weeks, I've sometimes been at this keyboard at 5 AM so I moved the scan time to 7. Once or twice, I've still been up working when it started.
My "day" has become more vaguely defined. Much of my effort lately is on The Garfield Show for which I am soon to wrap my responsibilities for the third season. The production company is in Paris so I start receiving the morning e-mails from them around 11 AM their time, which is 2 AM my time. Meanwhile, we both consult with Garfield's creator Jim Davis, who's usually in Indiana and who gets up and goes to work indecently early. He'll start writing me at 6 AM his time, which is 3 AM where I am. So at an hour when my body is suggesting it's time for bed, I'm answering correspondence from France and Indiana, and I've even had the occasional phone conversation at that hour.
This is not a complaint. I'm just writing about something that I'm all too aware has happened in my life…and it isn't the first time. When I was "on staff" on sitcoms or variety specials, I often found it necessary to work until the wee small hours. On Welcome Back, Kotter (my first real staff job in television), I often got to sleep at 4 AM or 5 AM…and would have to be up, showered, dressed, breakfasted and back at the studio for a 10 AM read-through.
That has always been for me one of the key differences between writing for TV and writing things like comic books or magazine articles. For the latter, I'm usually able to write when I want to write. There are deadlines to be sure but to meet them, I can usually finish the material tomorrow. It doesn't have to be done tonight. In television, especially when working on something currently in production, I keep finding myself in the position of having to write a certain script tonight.
Writing to a tight, drop-dead deadline can be exciting at times…and also empowering when you're in one of those situations when you're aware of the following situation: Things are so time-sensitive that what you write will probably wind up reaching the audience in pretty much the way you write it because there won't be much time to change it. It becomes a trade-off in my mind. I may resent how the exigencies of some show force me to stay up tonight until I finish a script…but hey, my script is going to get produced and there's no time for them to bring in another writer to rewrite me. There probably isn't even time for them to ask me for much of a rewrite.
In the best of all possible work situations, there wouldn't ever have to be such a trade-off. I could go to bed tonight when my body told me to, not as dictated by some deadline and I could retain the kind of control that I get when the schedule precludes rewrites. Sometimes you can get both. But when I'm sitting here at 5 AM struggling to retain some perspective on whether what I'm writing is as good as it would be with a clearer, well-rested head, it helps to remember two things. One is that what I'm writing will be produced. And the other is how good it will feel when I finish it and can go to bed.