Matt: thanks. To be honest, I don't know any other way to write. Those
here who've known me for a while now can testify that there's a lot of
personal stuff in just about everything I write. And sometimes that's very
hard on an emotional level. (And people in my life have to understand that
everything is fair game; I won't violate a trust, won't betray a confidence,
but it's altogether possible that the *sense* of an argument or a hushed
midnight conversation might someday show up in something, never in its
entirety, never wholecloth, but informing the sense of a scene or a
character.)

It's very easy, in this town and in this business, to fall into writing
from non-primary experiences. We've grown into a nation where we watch TV as
we grow up, and then when we get the chance to write TV, cycle back to things
we've seen before...recycling themes and stories rather than using our own
primary experiences. I think that film/TV schools are the worst perpetrators
of this attitude, teaching how to emulate the past rather than seeking out the
present. That's why I chose NOT to get my degrees in TV or Film or Creative
Writing. A writer has to be a *generalist*. Know a little about everything,
and able to find out whe she/he doesn't know quickly. I've been far better
served by a degree in clinical psychology (minor in philosophy) and a second
degree in sociology (minor in literature) than I would've been served getting
a degree in film production.

This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately, after one person
asked me, on another system, if I was concerned about the very real likelihood
that at some point or another, our show would be touching on some of the same
areas dealt with on other shows. There's been so much covered in SF, and when
you have two shows on space stations, well, you're inevitably going to hit
some common themes. I've thought about the question a lot since then, and as
I review the scripts, it comes more clear to me every day just how much this
show comes from a very subjective and personal viewpoint. It's very
eccentric, and as much as we engage in the larger issues and the story arc,
our stories tend to have a very personal edge to them, an attitude that can't
be copied because attitudes are formed inside, over years, and you can't copy
them any more than you can copy fingerprints. And the result will always be
different.

I don't mean to ramble, but I'm in a thoughtful mood, and just sorta
working things through...thinking out loud, if you will.

The pilot notwithstanding -- and I've gone over the problems there with
exposition and character stuff cut ad nauseum -- the one thing that draws me
in, as a writer, a reader, and a person, is intense emotion. The more
intense, the better. There's much of it in Captain Power, where I could slip
it in while no one was looking, even in some of the animation work. I think
we all live for moments of revelation and outbreaks of passion. And the only
way to find those moments is by writing about the things you find hard to
write about. You have to write what scares the hell out of you.

I've never talked about this before -- said I was in a thoughtful mood --
but I've known several people, friends, who've taken their own lives. In one
case, I spoke to her just beforehand. Tried, through the phone lines, to
reach her one more time, pull her back from the edge. I couldn't. Years
pass. Time comes for me to write the last filmed episode of Power. Jennifer
Chase is going to die, partly of her injuries, partly of her own volition.
Part of my life went into that scene, in the way it was constructed, and what
was said. And what was not said, what never had the chance to be said, and
thus still burns. I knew that, at the crucial moment of that scene, he
couldn't be near her, as I wasn't near my friend...it had to be long-distance,
hearing but not seeing her, and the terrible pain of arriving too late.

I cannot watch that episode without crying. Ever.

Flash forward again. About two, three months ago, I got a note on the
Internet/GEnie railroad from a young woman whose name I won't mention here.
She had lost a friend to suicide not long before that episode aired. When she
saw it, she started crying and couldn't stop, something she hadn't been able
to do since the real death of her friend. It helped purge her of the feelings
she'd been carrying around. Helped her deal with them, because I'd been
honest in how I'd portrayed it.

On Twilight Zone, I wrote an episode called "Acts of Terror" that
concerned wife beating...something with which I'm more familiar than I ever
wanted to be, due to some things in my family's history. It was a terrible
and painful experience to write that script; it hurt and angered me beyond the
capacity to explain it to you. I fought desperately to make it true.

Flash forward. That episode is now used in many counseling sessions for
battered wives, to help them deal with their anger and find their own self-
worth. I've received literally dozens of letters from people about that one
episode, many from women who finally found it in their hearts to leave an
abusive situation.

Writing is a powerful tool; broadcast to millions of viewers, it is too
powerful to be relegated to rehashes of Adam and Eve stories. It may not be
fashionable anymore, which is unfortunate, but I feel that there is an
obligation to use the form for more than selling soap. Not to be preachy, but
at least to be *honest*, to write from primary experiences, to take a
position, even if it pisses somebody off. I was on a TV talk show a few years
ago, debating that very episode of Power referenced above, and a viewer called
in to say that he thought it was wrong because the episode left him upset. I
wanted to lunge through the phone at him. Yes it upset you. It was MEANT to
upset you. It SHOULD upset us when someone dies, it can't be just a dramatic
hook bracketing commercials; when we lose someone we care about, we should be
moved, or else what the hell are we doing here?

The role of the writer is to touch passion, and not be destroyed by it,
then come back and report what it was like.

I wish I could find a great concluding thought, a benediction to wrap all
this up in a neat little package, but I haven't got one. I'm rambling, and I
know it, and my apologies if this has gone on too long; just contemplative
tonight, I guess.

jms