Sam went dark on me the week after Thanksgiving.
The truth is so much was going on with Lou’s health that week that maybe I went dark on him — who knows. But I remember feeling anxious about the fact that very soon, I’d have no reason to see Sam anymore, and so stalling out on the last episode we had left to write felt like holding on to a shadow of something I still wanted to have in my life.
The fact was, as soon as I completed that final set of scenes, Roy would have everything he needed, and Sam and I would have no reason to meet in bendy or dirty coffee houses anymore. Once Roy had the content, Sam and I would each be left to hope for the best for the series in different ends of the same city.
Early on, Sam gave me this solid piece of perspective about selling the pilot. He said:
“One of three things will happen. One, Roy’s people will like it, and want it right away; two, it will take them a very long time to read it and green light or reject it; or, three, they will instantly reject it, and this will be all over. But the first thing or the last thing is the most likely of the three.”
I remember how blunt but simple he made it all sound when he said it like that. But as I inched closer to completing everything, knowing there were only three possibilities for all of this work created a fear in me that I didn’t want to name.
But I do think managing my expectations like that was good for me. It simplified the process down to the inevitable realities in a way that I could at least try to accept. It was unemotional advice, and, it gave me some understanding of how I’d need to view the business part of storytelling in the big leagues.
But while I was still writing and creating with Sam, every possibility felt like it was in the mix, and there was a growing sadness around the fact that one day soon, all of that would end. Living in the lives of my characters gave me so much joy during an extremely bleak time in my life, and I was so afraid of how lost I would be without a reason to write about them anymore.
