How do you juggle all these projects?
Plus a free development slate template to keep track of them all
I recently received a question via DM — my DM’s are open everywhere, FYI — asking me something I found particularly interesting in this present moment because I am juggling A LOT OF THINGS. And I feel a little bit insane doing it.
Here’s the question:
I know you address the total number of projects you have worked on throughout the year in your yearly round-up post, but (I’m bad at math), how many projects do you have on the various burners (front and back) at any one time?
How does it differ when you are in a writers room? And I’d be curious if you could address the phase of each project (brainstorming/active pitching/writing) and the balance of specs/OWA/collaborations/paid assignments--and perhaps what you’ve learned over time and if your approach differs now from what you did before.
Thanks so much!
Great question!
Not only is this the age old question, but it’s also the reason I started writing this newsletter in the first place! My very first public piece about screenwriting (My 2021 in Review) was really about exactly this conundrum. How many projects do you need to balance at once? Is there a normal ratio? What even is normal in a business where most things fall apart? I’m going to get into all of it below…
But first, a reminder.
This Saturday, October 4th at 12PM Pacific / 3PM ET we have our next Hollyweird Hang. If you’d like to attend, here’s the link. Basically writers from all over will all get on zoom together and… just hang. Usually people talk about what they’re up to, and can solicit advice from each other about what’s troubling them, and it’s just a nice time for people to get to meet other writers. Come hang!
Now, back to our question and the answer!
This is a picture of my development slate.
Once you start to have as many things going as I do, and as many things that you’ve sent out over years to various people, I found that it became too unruly to even try to remember everything. Every week I’ll go in here and update the slate, move things from active to inactive, make notes, etc etc.
If you want to copy my development slate for your own uses — I have a blank template here for you to copy and make into your own!
There are currently 105 rows worth of projects. Now, to be fair, a lot of those are highlighted red, aka dead. But there’s a pretty long “active” section, and then a very long “on hold” section after that…
While I can’t reveal titles or specifics, I have the following projects in the “active” section. I’ve put them in the order of highest impact on my day to day life (high touch work) to lowest impact on my day to day life (low touch work).
TV Writing Job — Writing — (Paid)
Feature Writing Assignment Job — Writing — (Paid)
Doc Producing — Post Production — (Tech paid, but v low)
Directing Debut — Packaging / Financing (Unpaid)
Other Directing Project — Packaging (Currently Unpaid)
Short film — Dev / Casting — (Unpaid, in fact, negative payment, as in I PAY)
Spec feature — Out to producers — (Unpaid)
The active writing and producing work are right now taking up the most time, and the packaging type work takes up much less time — the occasional email or phone call.
I also have a few side projects that take up a not insubstantial amount of time, including this newsletter, and an active social media presence on TikTok and instagram, which does feel like a part time job.
There are a few projects that I’ve recently moved from the “active” area of this spreadsheet to the “inactive / on hold” area of the spreadsheet. This includes:
A feature assignment I was recently offered that I had to decline (out of a lack of availability, see my current workload above) (would have been Paid)
A feature film collab with someone else (Unpaid) that has fizzled out
A short story that I want to adapt into either a pitch or a spec (Unpaid) but simply don’t have the time to deal with right now
A feature film idea that I proposed right here on this very newsletter (Unpaid) but currently do not have the time to push forward
What’s the normal amount to be juggling?
I’m not sure I can comment with much precision on how many projects most writers are juggling at any given time, but something I have tried to pay very close attention to over the course of my paid screenwriting career (which began officially in 2016) is the need to always have not just a current paid job, but also a paid job that I know will be coming soon after.
Why two paid jobs always? Well, when I first moved to LA a screenplay of mine was optioned (yay!) and I was set to be paid the Writers' Guild Minimum to rewrite it, which was more money than I’d received for all of my writing in my entire life, cumulatively (also yay!).
What I quickly realized though was that the payment schedule in Hollywood is all contingent on the accomplishment (and then acceptance) of various steps in the process. Meaning you are paid some small portion to start, then another small portion for the first draft, then another small portion to start a second draft, then another small portion when you deliver that draft. It became clear to me that while this total payment would in theory be ALMOST enough to live off of as a broke writer, it actually would not work out to be that at all when considering the extremely attenuated payment schedule, and the fact that a large percentage of every payment went to my agent/manager/lawyer. So after three months of living in LA, I moved back in with my parents.
Welcome to Hollywood!
As I cashed those checks, and tried to save as much money as I could for a security deposit for an apartment, my new working philosophy became very clear to me:
Always have TWO paid jobs, and NEVER spend the money from the first one until you have already been paid at least part of the fee for the second one.
Over time, and with success, those payments have become larger than the WGA minimum, and so the time I can survive from one job to the next has become longer. But, that extended runway has coincided with a Hollywood job market in which getting every job has also started to take longer and longer.
The paid feature assignment I mentioned earlier is something I heard about and started working on a pitch for approximately 14 months before I ended up receiving any payment for it. That timeline consisted of months of pitching, months of negotiating, months of waiting to be told I could start, and then finally, getting paid (approx. 10% of the total fee).
This is a good time to remind everyone of my philosophy for payment in any freelance field — never never never spend money you’ve been promised but haven’t received yet. It might take anywhere from 14 months to 6 years to get everything finished when you work in a field where payment is based on delivering a creative product.
But you can’t just chase paid work.
I also always try to have at least one unpaid, speculative project that I’m working on. That could be a new spec feature that my team would hopefully be able to send out / try to package / sell, or a TV series that I’m developing (with the same goal in mind). If you are only trying to chase jobs or writing assignments, you can end up spending an entire year (or years) working towards getting something to happen only to find that nothing has happened at all, and, worse, you have no work samples to show for any of it. Generally this spec work falls somewhere between passion project and thing that I hope will be marketable and saleable.
As you can see from the projects listed above, I am also currently at a bit of an inflection point in which I am no longer just writing, but also writing for me to direct.
What this has meant over the last couple years is that the number of new original ideas I’m actively pursuing has gone down, because I need time and energy and the ability to focus.
When I do have cool ideas, it has become less appealing to me to try to spend a lot of blood sweat and tears to perfect them knowing that I would then be giving them to someone else to make. So I am putting more things “on hold” rather than in active development. There are only so many movies that a person can direct.
How do you balance having all of these happening at once?
Well, rarely are you WRITING all of these things at once.
My ideal workload is a sort of one in, one out method. On any given day I would ideally be focused on only one active writing project, while having the next one waiting on deck. Then there are all the other active but not currently being written projects.
It tends to be a bit easier to juggle several of these at once than it does to juggle several writing projects at once. Talking to agents/managers, discussing ideas with producers, trying to help craft an edit, raising money, etc etc etc, all feel a little easier to multitask. This kind of work is also a bit more “low touch” than dedicated creative writing time.
With the “one in one out” writing model, the moment I am done with whatever phase of the writing process I’m currently working on, I have something waiting for me to get started. This is less about phase of the project (ie outline / writing / rewriting) than it is about dedicated creative time. There are only so many really productive creative hours in the day. So there tend to be diminishing returns if I’m actively writing two things at once.
A pragmatic or ideal development slate might look like:
In order to be sure you have a paid job on deck at all times, you most likely need to be pitching on at least 3-4 things at any given moment.
In a year where I’m really trying to secure a job, I will pitch on maybe a dozen projects? Maybe more? And if I get even one job out of those, I actually think that would be a very good hit rate. Some years you don’t get hired at all. [See my above notes about never spending the money]
If you’re really digging the nitty gritty details of just how many plates professional writers are keeping spinning at once, I would definitely recommend digging back through my years in review, as our anonymous asker has…
Here’s 2024. And 2023. And 2022. And 2021.
So… how many things are you working on at once?
This really depends on your definition of “working on.” But if we’re talking about things that feel in any way active — ie, I might expect to get an email about them this week — let’s say 8-9.
Is that insane? I think so.
Is that the pressure of the marketplace? I also think so.
Is that sustainable? I don’t think so!
So… I have been trying to get it down to a more manageable number. I think 6(ish) is actually a good sweet spot. The idealized development slate I made up above has about that number of “active” projects on it. Beyond that it does feel like you’re burning the candle on all ends — or heck, throwing the candle directly into the fireplace and just seeing what happens. Hint: melted wax.
Hopefully that answers the question!
And as always, if you have any questions out there about writing, process, craft, career, anything and everything shoot me a message here or elsewhere! I genuinely do love talking about all this stuff.
In Other Hollyweird News…
Tilly Norwood the AI “actor” is bad. So far the courts have ruled that AI creations cannot be copyrighted, so I fundamentally don’t understand the game plan here. Create an “actor” that anyone can use (without paying for it) to put in anything they want? Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. My take: Seems like most AI nonsense, which is usually some version of… we thought of this weird way to use this, now can someone else come up with a way to earn money with it? Please?
Speaking of things that don’t make sense… Trump’s foreign film “tariffs." Again. I don’t think he understands what a tariff even is. My take: There’s no way to do what he’s proposing, there is no mechanism for any of this, doesn’t make sense, not possible, don’t need to worry about it.
Shout out to for shouting me out in his (very good) recent piece about the need to Pursue the Side Quests.
No news yet on the good news I got last week, but the idea is currently in the works. Cannot update you on it any further.
If you liked my recent “Why is Slow Horses So Good?” you might like this video I made about “Why PTA is So Good.”
Final reminder: Hollyweird Hang. This Saturday. 12PM PT. Link here.
I am echoing Courtney here!
Colby this was such a useful and generous breakdown of your thinking around slate. Not only was everything you wrote valuable, your writing is just so FUN.