Tonight I listened to a 3-hour seminar on writing given by Stephen J. Cannell. He's the guy who came up with all those TV shows like Wise Guy, The Rockford Files, Hunter, etc. He's also written and published 10 novels.

Cannell started out by saying he is severely dyslexic, but it didn't stop him from being the successful Hollywood writer he is today. He writes five hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, even on vacation. The guy is definitely a workaholic. When he's working on a novel, he writes a chapter a day.

Because of his dyslexia, Cannell writes with a selectric typewriter, then has his secretaries type the pages into a computer document. He said that David E. Kelly, creator of Ally McBeal and The Practice, writes all his episodes in long hand.

In the middle of listening to his seminar, I realized what was wrong with my second screenplay and why I was having such a hard time finishing it. Thank you Mr. Cannell.

Cannell said you know you're a professional writer, when you can finish your writing projects whether they're good or bad.

My revised second screenplay definitely sucks. It's not fully developed, my second act drags, it's too talky and I don't show enough. And I think deep down I knew it, but I didn't know why. And even if I knew what was wrong, I didn't have enough skills in craft of storytelling to fix it last year.

Now I know, but I would have to completely replot my whole screenplay to fix it and start over from the beginning.

So I'll finish the sucky second version of my screenplay, just to practice the art of finishing my work. Afterwards, I'll rewrite another outline, treatment and beat sheet, and start what I hope will be a third and final rewrite.