{"id":3771,"date":"2012-02-01T05:00:48","date_gmt":"2012-02-01T11:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/?p=3771"},"modified":"2012-02-01T09:14:39","modified_gmt":"2012-02-01T15:14:39","slug":"the-timing-of-it-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/2012\/02\/01\/the-timing-of-it-all\/","title":{"rendered":"The Timing of it All"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\" On Monday<\/a>, I wrote about how all stories have — in many ways — been told before.<\/p>\n

While that should never stop a writer from writing the story they want to tell, it’s not the only obstacle we face as writers.<\/p>\n

Sometimes the timing of things can send a writer into a wall.<\/p>\n

Two Months in Atlanta<\/strong><\/h2>\n

A big handful of years ago, I went to Atlanta for two months with the job I had at the time, working with a flight training center to turn their CRJ200<\/a> training program into a CRJ 700<\/a> training program. Stuck in a city I’d never visited, I tried seeing in the trip an opportunity.<\/p>\n

I pitched some travel articles to a publication that accepted my work before, but nothing developed. (“We recently did a spot on Atlanta,” they said. “Bad timing on this one–sorry.”) On weekends, I worked on fiction in my hotel room. One day while running through a list of differences between the CRJ200 and CRJ700, it hit me: “Atlanta is where Williams Street Productions<\/a> is based…”<\/p>\n

Williams Street Productions is the studio responsible for Adult Swim — The Cartoon Network’s nighttime lineup. My first novel, Hell Comes with Wood Paneled Doors<\/em><\/a> had gone nowhere as a novel (agents liked it, but said it was too quirky and they didn’t know how to market it). As a screenplay, it had a few close calls, both in competitions and in chatting with some studio contacts. But that was it — the story had run its course.<\/p>\n

Unless…<\/p>\n

The Pitch<\/strong><\/h2>\n

I chatted with people I knew until I had a contact at Williams Street Productions. I sent a quick pitch, letting the contact know I was in Atlanta for two months and would love to discuss the project in greater detail if they had time. Somewhere into the trip I heard back, and this was the gist of the message:<\/p>\n

“Hey, this sounds really cool, but we’re working on this thing called Lucy, Daughter of the Devil<\/a>, and we can’t do two <\/em>devil things at the same time.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, you might say, “Well, most <\/em>production companies have several <\/em>similar things going at the same time,” and you’d be correct. But like it or not — despite how different Hell Comes with Wood Paneled Doors<\/em> is from Lucy, Daughter of the Devil<\/em> — that was the decision. Maybe in the same situation to make the decision, I’d have said the same thing — who knows.<\/p>\n

It had nothing to do with what I was pitching (the contact loved the idea), but it was all a matter of timing.<\/p>\n

When I mentioned what happened to some people, they said, “You should just figure out what’s popular and write that.” (As though it’s that easy.)<\/p>\n

Why I Don’t Chase Trends<\/strong><\/h2>\n

I never try guessing what publishers and production companies want because I know no matter what I write, the timing of it all may or may not be on my side.<\/p>\n

I once got a screenplay I wrote into the hands of a contact I had at a large studio that was being acquired by a larger studio. I was told, had I sent the screenplay a year or so earlier — before the acquisition — that they would have fought to get the movie made.<\/p>\n

My timing was off.<\/p>\n

The first travel article I wrote was pushed back almost a year after acceptance because the area I covered ended up in the news for other reasons. The publication felt they’d given the region enough coverage, and decided to sit on the article until I followed up much later.<\/p>\n

My timing was kind of off.<\/p>\n

Other times, things I’ve written were accepted quickly because it was exactly <\/em>what a publisher needed at the time. (The publisher that pushed back my first travel piece jumped on another article I pitched and asked me to expand it because they were looking for the very kind of article I offered to write.)<\/p>\n

Sometimes, my timing’s been good.<\/p>\n

The Point?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Whether we like it or not, timing and luck play into making it as a writer.<\/p>\n

What may not be needed one month or even year may be the hot trend years down the line. (There was a time it seemed only Anne Rice could sell a vampire novel — now vampires are everywhere.)<\/p>\n

Sometimes you write the most perfect thing and the timing of it all seems to almost conspire against you.<\/p>\n

But write enough and keep submitting things, and sooner or later, time will be on your side!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Monday, I wrote about how all stories have — in many ways — been told before. While that should never stop a writer from writing the story they want to tell, it’s not the only obstacle we face as writers. Sometimes the timing of things can send a writer into a wall. Two Months […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":""},"categories":[28,59],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3771"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3771\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}