The highs and lows of a writing career

First of all, setting aside the fact that none of us knows all the details of what transpired with “Community,” it sucks to see a writer get fired, especially from a project which he [or she] created. And especially someone like Dan Harmon who has shared his vision of writing with the public numerous times such as here and here. So for those of you who are Harmon and “Community” fans, please convey your thoughts and well-wishes in comments.

Then I ask you to go through the transcripts of the two previous posts, the first of Neil Gaiman’s commencement address, the next Dan Harmon’s comments about his dismissal from “Community.”

And there, my friends, you have an almost perfect picture of the highs and lows of a writing career.

One day you’re being feted by thousands of people gazing at you with awe and wonder.

The next day you turn on your cellphone after a flight to discover — from the trades — that your services are no longer needed.

You get hired. You get fired.

You hope for one. You expect the other.

As the sage prophet Bruce Hornsby wrote, “That’s just the way it is.”

Now there’s a deeper lesson here. Mr. Gaiman can dabble with screenwriting and TV writing with relative ease. Why? Because he can always write novels. There, he is his own boss, not dependent on the whims of corporate suits.

Mr. Harmon? As a screenwriter (Monster House) and TV writer, he will invariably intersect with corporate hacks, each of whom has the power to terminate his ass. Maybe Harmon takes up novel-writing. Maybe he develops transmedia content that he self-distributes on the web, bypassing the suits. Maybe he takes the money he’s made, buys a house overlooking Bob Greenblatt, and spends his days lobbing water balloons below.

The point is as long as you sell your work to studios or networks and they own your copyright… or you get hired by them to run a TV show… or on the staff of a show… you have to go in knowing there is the sword of corporate Damocles dangling over your head.

And some day, that sucker is gonna drop.

Or as another sage prophet of the musical realm Frank Sinatra put it: