work it baby...

You might sometimes find yourself facing a task so enormous that you freeze.

You'll freeze because you can't do it.

Or at least that's how you'll feel.

Let's think about that for a second.  The 'freeze impulse'.  I think it rears its head because it--a part of us naturally--knows that we're going to fail; or at least it fears failure.

This is why you don't freeze before you go to the store to get milk.  You've done it so many times that you're totally used to it, you know how it's going to go, you know you'll be fine and that you'll get your milk.

But what if you were on the brink of financial insolvency?  What if you'd gotten that dreaded 'insufficient funds' slap in the face enough times that you were actually worried you weren't going to be able to buy milk?  What if the thought of the scornful look the cashier gives you when that moment comes was too much to bear?  

You might walk on by the store and tell your wife you couldn't do it.

Have you ever felt like that?  Has that ever happened to you?  It has to me.

Now let's leap past the simplified milk example and up the stakes a bit.  What if--say--you're getting ready to enter into a two-year co-development deal with a known and established production company, a company with a hit drama series currently on network TV, and what if you have to meet with them tomorrow to explore the 'story world' of the series and what if you happen to be the person who's supposed to create the story world?

Think that might make you nervous?

Bet your butt it would.

So I thought I'd scan and post one page from the brainstorming notes I was working on yesterday.  Reason I figured I'd post it is 'cause I figured it might be useful to some of you to see someone who might be somewhat 'further along' than you on the "Hi my name is ________ and I'm a Hollywood Producer..." timeline posting something that admits to the fact that we're all scared when it comes to doing things that are significant and/or which dovetail with our sense of calling and being.

It's one thing to get rejected over a bag of milk.  It's another thing altogether to have your ideas, your dreams, your vision rejected.

And that's what I'm facing.

Lord knows I would love to be able to hit a producer's blog who's way ahead of me ('cause there will always be people further along and less further along than you...) and find hints, tips, admissions of weakness and transparently shared moments of victory to help me keep keeping at it.

I could do the same thing (and would seek the same) with preaching notes.

You could do the same thing with the notes you make as you build your life and the thing you've been made to do.

Maybe you should start thinking about sharing yourself a bit more--who knows--you might be 'of encouragement' to someone in south east Asia.

But back to the notes...

So I'm freaking out right?  I'm totally nervous and intimidated by the task at hand.  The only thing that's helping me practically at this point is that I've faced this feeling before.  In fact, I still have to force myself to keep moving forward many times when I'm facing a new situation or one in which the stakes have been raised.

(and if you want success and/or the opportunity to do significant work the stakes are always going to be rising)

So I did two things.  

1) I procrastinated a bit.  I had tea with my wife and she and two of my kids made me cookies.  I had come up from my basement office looking lost, my wife took one look at me and said, "You need tea and cookies.  Go back down and come up in half an hour."  I did what she said and half and hour later sat there with her drinking tea and eating warm cookies.  We didn't talk or anything.  I was too lost in the world of ideas but we were together and her presence was more comforting than the warm liquid or gooey chocolate.

Point is, that little break helped.

Then I went back downstairs and...

2) Just pulled out my notebook and started writing.  I don't know about you but the thing they taught you in high school english class was and is true.  Free-form brainstorming starts happening as you start putting ideas down on paper and linking them.  So long as you start and keep going for a few minutes you'll end up gathering a head of 'idea-steam' and, before you know it, you'll have eight or ten pages of good ideas.  I suggest doing this kind of brainstorming with pen and paper because a) it's tactile which I think is better for working with ideas and b) it allows you to make mistakes but not erase them.  When you write something that turns out to be 'not so good' don't erase it, cross it out and write a 'NO' beside it with a circle around it. Why?  Well, this way you'll always be able to see the bad idea and because you'll see it crossed out and in the context of the other (and better) things you were thinking at the time you'll be able to (i) not repeat it and (ii) learn from it 'cause it'll be right there in your notes along with the good, and really good ideas.

Get it?

(you can't do that on a computer--I mean you can with nova mind but who's got the time to master that thing?)

You can do this same thing if you're getting ready to preach.  Same thing if you're building a proposal for work.  

The key is to move beyond being frozen to that place where you start putting ideas (even if they're not so good to start with) down on paper.

They say 80-90% of writing is re-writing.  I think it's true.  The reality is if you don't brainstorm you won't write and if you don't write you won't re-write and if you don't re-write you'll never have anything to say or give to people which will mean you make no impact.

And it seems to me a key reason we exist is to impact each other.

T

The half-million dollar notebook...

That's what them two pages are worth.

Seriously.

I'm writing this 'cause my hope with this blog is to inform/inspire those of you who dabble in preaching and producing--and by extension, when the points are transferrable, anyone who reads this who's life is a little less than ordinary.

What's been happening to me this week is from the 'darker side' of things.

On Monday I get a call.  It's a bad call.  I'm told I have to cut $500,000 (that would be HALF A MILLION DOLLARS!)  out of one of the budgets on one of the TV series I'm producing--if we want to keep it.

Five. Hundred. Thousand. Dollars.

Now there are two things to keep in mind here:

1) The original budgets, though actual--meaning everyone was actually getting paid for the work they were doing--were not 'fat' or overblown.  

2) If we refuse to find a way to work with the cuts the Network will just find another production company to do it and said production company will probably deliver a piece of crap show.

So, (1) means I have to completely redesign the way in which we produce the show while maintaining as much of the 'spirit' of the original concept and execution as possible.  Not easy.

(2) Is in place because I'd rather do my best to produce a show that actually 'speaks' despite these wholesale cuts than allow some yahoo to destroy the time slot which basically means I have no choice.

Fun in'it, this show biz stuff?

So, Tuesday/Wednesday went by with my Executive Producer and I basically fighting over all of the above.  He and I see things from totally different sides of the coin (he thinks like a businessman first, I think like a creative person first...) and that means we spend a lot of time arguing until we come 'round to seeing things in way that suits our perspectives and represents reality.

('aint 'reality' a bitch by the way?  You're trying to create illusion in the arts.  From the pulpit your trying to create a superlative or 'ideal' view of the text and it's application.  "Reality? Don't talk to me about 'reality'!" But reality is always in play in our work.  The way in which we work with it and around it to create that 'illusory-superlative' is why we get paid to do what we do--but that don't make it any easier...)

So we fight Tues/Wed then yesterday and today I sit at my desk and stare at a blank page trying to figure a way to redesign this thing so that it'll work; keeping in mind that this will be version 12 or 13 of the budget on this series.  It's been non-stop difficulty from the get-go.

And it's not as if nothing's at stake for me here.  A huge part of my income is tied up in this series so if I don't find a way to make it work, I'm staring some pretty intense financial uncertainty in the face and after my 2006/2007 (very lean years) I've about had enough of financial turmoil for a while.

But I can't design it to suit me--I have to design it so that it will work.

So I sit and I stare and I sit and I stare and slowly, ever so slowly, the ideas begin to come.  I included the shot of my actual brainstorming so that you can see how messy and unsure it is. All the circles and squares around things?  They come after I've begun to figure things out.  

(by the way this is the exact same method I employ whether I'm designing a TV series, beginning to outline a screenplay, or preparing a sermon...)

Then today I begin to work the design into a budget.

And the freaky thing about budgets is that they're so hard to nail down.  The variables race by like they're from 'The Matrix' and every change affects the whole and the real doozy of it is that each decision I make on my spreadsheet affects not just my life, but the lives of forty other people to greater or lesser degree.  About fifteen people's direct livelihood depends on the choices I make.

How you like them apples?

Wanna' be  a producer, working in the real world?  Them's the realities friend.

But the positive thing is that--unless I've made some grave error (which is possible but not likely)--I think I've found a way to make it work.  I think we're going to be O.K.

And that's the whole point of this post.  

On Monday, when the 'bad news' call came I thought I was going to die.  My wife and I didn't really sleep for two nights--it's was just plain awful for a bit.  Then I knuckled down, chained my ass to the chair at the desk, and stared at the paper 'till a way through began to present itself.

I actually had a moment where I put my head in my hands and prayed a one word prayer:

"Help..."

And it looks like help is on its way and that's worth remembering regardless of how bleak your week is currently looking.

T