EDITOR’S NOTE: LB pal Troy the Boy imparts some vital information for both reality and unreality writers:
Working vs Making
by Troy DeVolld
I’m proud to say that the last three years of my career were spent churning out five seasons of a number one hit for VH1, two of another number one hit for the same network, and a game show that sort of changed everything for me.
I’d forgotten how much fun it is to be in over my head on something I’ve never done before. When I took Hollywood Game Night for NBC this Spring, I had no game shows on my resume. Reality competition galore, yes, but straight-up game shows, no. Zero. Zed. Naught. Nary a one.
I’d gotten comfortable with docusoaps. I had a great team in place and all I was really doing was overseeing story, suggesting nips and tucks and rejiggering outlines. I felt like I was really good at it… comfortable with the gig.
Comfortable.
F*ck. Comfortable is terrible. Comfortable is the 40 hour a week job you do so you can go out on Friday night. Nobody ever built an empire on comfortable.
So I took the game show.
I had never worked hours like that in my life. Game shows are SO deceptively simple. I worked myself into glorious numbness and total exhaustion… and boy, was it fun.
When Basketball Wives and I parted ways, I went back to docusoaps with the project I’m on now, which is decidedly a departure from the usual. Like Hollywood Game Night, it’s no cinch to deliver. But as tired and fussy as I get sometimes, I know that if we can bring it in for a landing, it’s going to be something outstanding… something I can be proud to have been a part of.
When you go from feeling like you’re “working” to feeling like you’re “making”, it’s pretty awesome. Don’t let yourself get pigeonholed.