When I was much younger, I was a big fan of Nick @ Nite.  I’m not really sure why, but I really dug the Laverne & Shirley and Taxi reruns (though I’m fairly sure I never absorbed one single storyline and could not tell you, to save my life, what one episode was about).  Peppered in the commercial breaks, Ben Stein, of all people ¹ would come out and give little TV tidbits.  I can remember one night in particular when I was floored to find that the television hour was only fifty minutes long.  Fifty?  Wow, that’s amazing!  What do they do with the other ten minutes?

My older self is all too aware of what they do with the other ten minutes.  They stretch it so it’s more than double and pack it full with the most grading ads of television history.

My Ben Stein/ I Love Lucy days were probably around 1995/1996.  Last night, I was watching a show and it t was 39 minutes long.  I know, you’re saying, Carrie, that’s pretty long for a sitcom.  Yeah it is, except I was watching a so-called “hour long” drama.  Do I need to repeat myself?  39 minutes.  ”Hour long” show.  Sitcoms today, like 30 Rock and How I Met Your Mother are fortunate enough to hit the 18 minute mark these days. 

I don’t even know how I can express how ludacris this is.  Packing a fulfilling storyline into less than twenty minutes– it’s doing more harm than good for our shows.  The quality of our shows are having enough trouble as it is without having this uphill battle. It is possible to argue that it just forces the writers to make a much more crisp story in which they have no time to fool around with fluff, but you know what, that’s bull feces, and just an excuse for slackness and the lowest common denominator philosophies ²

The average Buffy episode lasted 43 minutes.  That’s a four minutes drop in eleven years.  When How I Met Your Mother first began, it was 22 minutes long.  That’s four minutes in four years.  And it’s the same damn show!

Not only is the hour disappearing, but at an increasing rate.  At some point, writers aren’t going to be able to tell any story at all.

 I don’t watch TV shows as they air.  I prefer to watch them in large chunks of episodes and without commercials.  I do not think I am going to like being able to watch a half-hour show in ten minutes and a hour show in thirty.  The luxury of watching an episode is gone.  It has been swept away with the rest of our face paced existence.

There might be a glimmer of hope though.  Most basic cable hours are still forty-seven minutes long while some of the networks like Showtime and HBO still hit 53-54 minutes.  Too bad these aren’t all that mainstream, and we still rely on the four major networks to supply us with our fix — even if the quality and quantity are racing each other down the drain.

After a couple of semi-intense, quasi-inspiring, yet, fully-caffeinated meetings at cafes about a script I am currently working on, I can easily say fairly I am enthusiastic about getting started on my next stage of development.  The year is ending, the next chapter of my life, as I outlined in my 12 month plan, is approaching rapidly, therefore the pressure to finish this chapter is on. Not to mention I am trying this new leaf thing where I’m not spending all day surfing YouTube for hilarious The Ellen Degeneres Show interview snippets and I wake up before 2pm.

So I sit down with my ever so slightly used gel pen and my ever so slightly used airport-purchase steno pad.  And proceed to stare at it’s mocking blue lines for two days.

Yes.  It has happened.  Again.  Writer’s Block.

But how, one might ask.  I have all these ideas whizzing through my head.  Worlds.  Characters.  Themes.  Gags.  Humor.  Emotions.  All of which I’m sure if I could get onto to paper, the world at large (or at least a decent sampling) would be amazed, or at least entertained.  But they all remain there like shoppers trying to get out of the bottle necked Walmart parking lot on Christmas Eve.

A quick Google search turns up hundred of articles similar to this one.  Particular theories on what causes and what could help cure the elusive Writer’s Block.  Mr. Taylor’s causes are as follows:

• Cause 1: Writers are sometimes not ready to write
• Cause 2: Writers are sometimes afraid to write
• Cause 3: Writers often try to compose in their heads
• Cause 4: Writers often start in the wrong place

These “causes” are fairly straight foward.  Don’t get ahead of yourself.  Don’t micro-manage.  Start broad, then narrow.  Take it one step at a time.  You have to walk before you can run.  Doodle before you can draw.  The usual.

Now, if you’ll refer back to my own list of the exciting locked up things in my brain, you’ll notice that the word “Story” does not appear anywhere.  I have worlds and themes and emotions and people all hanging around.  All the ingredients sitting in my pantry but no idea how to put them together to make a damn good soufflé.  Hell,  I don’t know if I could even manage a box of Jiffy at this point.

David Taylor’s silly little advice points are too vague, too 101, and probably too true.

Perhaps I am doing all the wrong things, but it’s how I’m going to get to write things.  And damn it, one day I will have something better and more exciting than a blog post full of useless comments about not writing.

Now to the favorite part of my day.  Lunch.