Writing content under deadline is one of the biggest challenges a writer can face. It’s also one of the most important for working writers.
John Irving, for example, can write beautiful prose, wonderful novels that sing of a mastery of the English language. But he completes perhaps one novel every three to seven years; he’d never last in the world of television, where the average staff writer has to complete perhaps four or five one-hour episodes as part of a 22-episode series, on a show’s writing staff, each season. Most of these scripts have to be completed in a matter of a week for a first draft, and in a matter of hours for successive rewrites.
Irving would never survive.
And becoming John Irving isn’t easy; it takes a lot of hard work and a minor miracle or two to find publishers willing to publish your work these days, let alone wait such long stretches between masterpieces.
Far more common is the work of James Patterson; his novels may not be the literary masterpieces Irving produces, but he can pump them out at a rate of three to five a year. Guess who would have a better chance of working and succeeding in Hollywood?
Guess that’s why this fall’s TV schedule does feature a Woman’s Murder Club series, but no show based on “The World According to Garp.”
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