Why is Sleepy Hollow on This Blog?

Reviews of a TV show may seem a strange addition to this blog, but to me it makes perfect sense. This blog is about the crashing of The System (and my system) and nothing on television deals better with trying to stop the apocalypse or at least save what's possible than Sleepy Hollow.

But more to the point for this blog, Sleepy Hollow saved my life last fall. I've been writing, seriously, for 20 years—never full time, because like most writers, I work for a living, and for much of my adult life I've worked an average of 80 hours per week.

Until last fall, my work centered on short stories, poetry, unfinished novels. But last fall, something extraordinary happened. Seriously burned out, feeling rather hopeless and directionless, with both my writing and my other work, I saw, from a distance of a few airplane seats, Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison) stumble onto asphalt pavement and nearly get hit by a car. And then I saw “Sleepy Hollow” on the screen and I thought, “what the hell IS that?!?!? (not to mention WHO the hell is that?!?!)"

When I got home my husband and I found Sleepy Hollow on Hulu (we live in a very rural area and can't pick up anything on our TV without satellite, which we can't afford). The show had me at “my name is Ichabod Crane.” I fell in love with TV again, for the first time since I was a child, and it's all thanks to Sleepy. Half a season later, I knew, “this is it. This is what I want to do, what I was born to do. I want to write for television.” And my spirit said, yessssssssssss. My dormant heart came back to life as suddenly and utterly as Ichabod climbed out of his (first) grave.

Now this isn't quite as batshit crazy a dream as something Ichabod would have. It so happens, I have a friend in the industry, a very talented and successful writer and producer I'll call “Joe” for the purposes of this blog. So I wrote to Joe and said, “I know this sounds ridiculous but I realize I have to write for TV. Will you help me?” To my enormous joy, he said, “yes.”

And so we began together a no-money-exchanged, no-degree-offered MFA in Writing for Television. He got me copies of Sleepy scripts and screeners, I studied the hell out of them, dissected them, broke them down, “broke” a story of my own, wrote 14 hours a day for two weeks at his LA house last January, proudly handed him my product when I was done...and he savaged it...in a good way. He told me I managed to make every single mistake a novice script-writer makes, and then spent an hour telling me in detail what I did wrong and how to make it better. I felt totally miserable and incredibly lucky.

Twenty drafts later I was feeling pretty darn good about my script. I showed him the new version. He said, “the first two scenes are good. They're professional.” As for the rest of the script...it was back to the drawing board.

So trust me when I say I have the utmost respect for the writers of Sleepy Hollow, even when they piss me off, for they manage to pull off each week a Herculean feat of entertainment and storytelling I have yet to achieve once. My feedback about the show is dedicated to them, everyone involved in the production show, and my sister-and-fellow fans, with love and gratitude, for what they're worth.