Congratulations, DVR User, You’re Now the #1 “Network”

…At least TV Guide considers you one. Because that’s how important time-shifting has become. (Hey, we keep saying it’s a whole new ballgame!):

TV Guide Report Declares a ‘New Network’ to Be No. 1 — and This One Might Surprise You – by Team TVWriter Press Service

A new report says there’s a new No. 1 network in prime time — and this one might surprise you, TV Guidereports. read article

LB: TVWriter™ Passed a Milestone Last Weekend

TVWriter™, which started way back in 1997 as “The TV Writer Home Page,” passed a milestone last week: Our 1000th blog post in our current format, which began on June 1, 2012.

Supplementing our basic How-To Write This, That and the Other Thing page content, we’ve blogged about a lot of topics over the past 5 months, including announcements about the various TVWriter™ contests (that’s the People’s Pilot and Spec Scriptacular to be specific) and classes (TVWriter University, natch), interviews with showrunners, advice to future sitcom writers, various peer-produced/user-generated web series, why Charlie Sheen rocks, DOCTOR WHO (and the Doctor Who Puppet), Louis C.K,. writing and productivity tips up the wazoo, TV series reviews, everything the minions and I could think of that would make life better/more fulfilling/easier/more entertaining for writers, aspiring writers, and fans. read article

We Never Said Being a Writer Would Be Good for You

…And that turns out to have been a smart thing because guys like this prove it isn’t:

Po’, sad li’l James Joyce

10 Writers’ Mental And Physical Maladies – by John J. Ross, M.D.

The honors list of English literature is a roll call of dysfunction. Coleridge was a dope fiend, Joyce and Faulkner were high-functioning drunks, Sylvia Plath a hot bipolar mess. The epic social ineptitude of Swift, Milton, and Emily Brontë is suspicious for what we would now call Asperger’s syndrome. Herman Melville was mired for decades in black depression. The Bard of Avon contracted his terminal illness in the wake of a marathon drinking bout. Why is literary achievement associated with so much gormless and self-destructive behavior? The answer may lie in the fact that the personalities of great writers are formed from a volatile mixture of the elements, a witches’ brew of emotional nitroglycerin.

Those who claim that Shakespeare did not write his plays posit that only some rich, privileged, and highly educated person could have written them. This premise is fundamentally mistaken. Literary genius is more likely to arise from disappointment and chagrin than comfort and complacency; the wealthy and content have no need of imagination. Most great writers experienced emotional or financial turbulence in childhood. Swift, Defoe, Byron, Keats, Coleridge, Hawthorne, Melville, Thackeray, the Brontës, Virginia Woolf, and Sylvia Plath all lost a parent in childhood. Poe, Tolstoy, and Conrad were orphans. Byron, Melville, Dickens, Joyce, Yeats, and Shakespeare had debt-ridden fathers and sharp brushes with poverty. Shelley and Orwell spent desolate years in brutal boarding schools. Jack London was forced to work in a cannery at age 12. read article

Using Your Failures to Become Even Better at What You Do

Recently, a commenter on another article suggested we read this post. So we have. And we’re proud to reveal our take-away: “Be proud of your failure because it will help you succeed.” (Yeah, tell that to the mortgage company. Right.)

Saddest pic we ever saw; we think it’s the white socks

Paula Scher on Failure – by Jay Dixit (Psychology Today)

Paula Scher is one of the world’s most famous graphic designers, known for creating Citibank’s umbrella logo as well as for design work for The Public Theater, The New York Times Magazine, the American Museum of Natural History, The New York City Ballet, and Herman Miller. She believes failure is the secret to artistic success. “You have to fail in order to make the next discovery,” says Scher. “It’s through mistakes that you actually can grow.”

You have a whole philosophy about recovering from failure—how you can learn from failure and how it can actually help you. You’ve spoken about how failures and mistakes in your own work led to your current level of success and allowed you to be creative. read article

Love & Money Dept – TV Writing Deals for 10/28/12

“Write to tell a story, not to sell a story” (Gerald Sanford of BARNABY JONES, KNIGHTRIDER, etc. writing fame)
  • Margaret Nagle (SENSE & SENSIBILITY) is writing the pilot for the Fox sitcom PARADISE FALLS, about a documentary maker investigating a “Memphis Three” type story. (Everyplace else on the web talks about the producer of this project like he’s kind of a big deal. So we’ll leave him nameless here.)
  • David Hubbard (something called NOEL) is writing THE RETURN OF DANIEL SHEPHERD for HBO. (Everyplace else on the web neglects to tell what this project actually is – a pilot or a TV movie or what. We aren’t telling either. Not our fault, honest – the inept press release doesn’t say.)
  • Terry George (HOTEL RWANDA) is writing THE CLAN for ABC. (Um, nope we don’t have info on whether this is a pilot because the same inept P.R. team as above hasn’t said. But to atone for that, this time around we’ll tell you who the featured player in this deal talked about on all the other sites is: Charlize Theron, who’s producing. No comment on her value in that, erm, position.)
  • Thomas Bradshaw (playwright whose work includes THE BEREAVED) is writing a drama pilot for HBO about a black college president. (The Big Gun here is Oprah Winfrey, who’s company is producing. Ask not why her own network isn’t presenting this. The answer, we’re sure, would be, “$$$$,” as in “too much.”)