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04/03/2006: A Special Guest


Do you all know who Drew Greenberg is? He worked with me at Buffy and is now staffed on "Dexter," a new Showtime series. A great writer and a pretty slick dresser, too. I asked Drew to read yesterday's post about the temporal confines of Staffing Season to make sure it was all correct and complete. Drew weighed in with two important pieces of info. Take it, Drew:

Drew: "Two teeny things: (a) on rare (very rare, I suspect) occasions, staffing might continue into June, especially for low-level writers. Probably not too far into June, but a wee bit... And (b), for the sake of detail... if staffing is April and May into June, I usually consider agenting season to be January and February into March. Of course, I agree with you that a spec is done when it's done, and people shouldn't let dates force them to rush and finish something, but I always feel that if you're looking for an agent, that's the sweet spot to get them -- any earlier, they're busy with development season and the holidays, and, also, might forget about you when staffing comes around; any later, they're knee-deep in staffing and can't help you."

Thanks, Drew! (Isn't he great, Ladies and Gentlemen?)

So, if you need a deadline for your spec and you don't have an agent yet, well, New Year's Day sounds like a pretty good deadline to me.

And I recall now that Drew is right about the sometimes very late staffing of the lowest level writers too. Sometimes the staff writer is even hired after everyone else has started working, which is horrible, because then you have to walk into a room that is already a functioning machine. On the other hand, a very low level writer is allowed to (and encouraged to) sit silent for a long time, so there's no pressure to jump in and start being brilliant all at once.

Lunch: cold cuts and cheese and pickles off a deli tray