Turned in a first draft on an outline on Thursday & got minimal/mostly positive notes on Saturday. Yay! Sun, doing the rewrite, I hit a wall & realized that it& #39;s b/c large parts of my B story do not quite make sense. I rebroke the story, pitched it Mon, got the go-head. More yay?
It& #39;s an easy swap, putting in the new version of the b-story. Same number of beats, same landing point at the end, should be easy to plug it in. I say, "You& #39;ll have it late today or early tomorrow."

Reader, it was not an easy swap. It changed the entire timeline of the episode.
Every time I came up with a fix on the timeline for the B story, it threw the A story out of whack. When I fixed that, the B story went screwy again. At some point, I& #39;m thinking, maybe the cure is worse than the disease. But thing is, that original B story still makes no sense.
Spent about ten straight hours on the rewrite yesterday. Still not done. Still out of whack. Each step I take gets me closer to something good, but also reveals a new problem. 10am, I tell my bosses I need a couple more hours. I just turned the damn thing in. THREE PAGES LONGER.
I& #39;m pretty sure it& #39;s better. I think I like it better. I& #39;m a fast writer & faster rewriter, normally; having to work this hard on an outline rewrite is new for me. To be fair, the episode divides its time between two worlds I knew nothing about when I started. But still. Rough.
Now, I& #39;m not complaining. This is my job. I get paid nicely for it and I love doing it. (Well, I love having made television. Getting there is not always the most fun part of it.) I share this to let you know that every show & every episode is different, & a new learning process.
This is the 14th episode of TV I& #39;ve outlined as a professional. And every show has a vastly different way of doing it. And it always takes you by surprise how much you have to learn & change, b/c you keep thinking you know what you& #39;re doing now. It turns out ok! But it& #39;s a TRIP.
Honestly, it can get kind of demoralizing midway through. I always think of that moment on ER in Love& #39;s Labor Lost when Bradley Whitford shouts, "Why can& #39;t you deliver this baby?!" b/c at some point part of me is always yelling, "Why can& #39;t you write this story?!" at myself.
Anyway, I tell you all this because many of you are writers, and many of you are pre-pro or early in your career, and I need to tell you, as more accomplished writers have done me, that some of these feelings do not go away. It& #39;s knowledge that& #39;s both depressing & comforting.
Depressing because I& #39;m sure you hope, as I do, that one day you will not have such crises of confidence. Comforting because at least now you know you& #39;re not alone. To quote another line, this from the pilot of Friends, "Welcome to the real world. It sucks. You& #39;re gonna love it."
You can follow @jillybobww.
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