Actually, my percentage of produce to unproduced, and published to
unpublished, is rather high in favor of the former in each category. I've
been quite fortunate that way. The main unproduced stuff comes under the
category of screenplays, and that's par for the course. Only about 1 out of
100 scripts ever gets NEAR production. I have friends who've been writing
nothing BUT screenplays, all on assignment, all unproduced. They get very
frustrated after a while. That's one of the benefits of working in
television, the odds are better. During the 91-92 season of MURDER, for
instance, I wrote six scripts, of which 5 were shot.

One thing that didn't occur to me to mention is the fact that during
these five years I've been on staff (story editor/producer) on five and a half
projects. My main responsibility when on staff is to do what I refer to as
"dialog-ectomies," where the structure is fine on a freelance script, but the
dialog just isn't cutting it. So I go through and replace all the dialogue,
leaving the structure intact. These are completely new scripts in that sense;
they're rewrites from page one through Fade Out.

If I were to have arbitrated any of those scripts (attempted to put my
name on them as co-writer, for which you only have to show that you've
contributed 50% of the material), there'd be another 20 or 30 scripts out
there with my name on them. But I strongly don't believe in doing that.
There's a lot of credit poaching in this town, and it hurts the freelancer.
When I'm on staff, I'm getting a salary in addition to script fees, while the
freelancer only has script fees in addition to residuals, and if a producer or
story editor puts his or her name on the script, that cuts the residuals by
half. I don't think that's right. Out of something like 200 scripts that
I've edited, I think I've put my name on about 5, each under very specific or
unusual conditions.

It's tough enough for writers to make a living in this town without
contributing to picking their pockets.

jms