“Twilight Zone” and the Three Gates

When I wrote my first Twilight Zone episode “Teacher’s Aide” back in the 80’s, Jim Crocker and Harlan Ellison, story editors, were delighted with the first draft and lavished praise. It was, they said, the best first draft script they’d ever seen. It was only designed to be twenty minutes long. Could I expand it to thirty..?

I panicked. Froze. I’d done something good. With a touch of GREATNESS, perhaps. I didn’t know how I’d done it, and anything I did to change it would just screw it up, right? I couldn’t write, or dream, and didn’t know what to do. I froze.

Couldn’t expand it. Blew it completely. And the episode was ultimately cut down to 15 minutes, the extra 5 given to Harlan’s “Paladin of the Lost Hour” episode. I was crushed. But in the midst of the pain I vowed that I’d not let that happen again, ever.

I couldn’t keep that promise. It DID happen again, on THE OUTER LIMITS — my first episode for them was terrific, the others ran into that performance anxiety, and never again hit the high mark of “A Stitch In Time.”

And I eventually came to a realization: my attention had been on the wrong part of the process. I shouldn’t have cared about the episodes. I should have cared about THE INTEGRITY OF THE PROCESS that CREATES the episodes. I have far more control of that. And can commit to improving it 1% every day. And if I do that…yeah, some of the work will be wretched. But some will be GREAT. And the average will continue to rise, IF I LEARN.