Today, I was surfing through Netflix and found Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.  Not sure if you remember the show; it only aired for one season.  But it had Matthew Perry, Bradley Whitford, Amanda Peet, and many, many other talented people.  I liked the show when it was on the air… let’s just get it out there: I’ve got a big man crush on Aarron Sorkin!  Sorkin is a god among men.  He writes like a poet.  We’ll just leave it there before I embarrass myself anymore.

As I was watching the first episode, it occurred to me that first episodes (especially, pilots) are like first novels.  Ask yourself, how many shows have you liked that started off really great but kind-of went downhill after that?  How many writers do you like that their first book is your favorite?

Yeah, I thought so.

So, then, why is that?Sure, you could say the obvious: they had years to work on that novel so that’s why it’s so good.  Maybe.  However, there are writers out there who can pound out amazing fiction in a few weeks.  By that rationale, if they had years to work on what they are writing, then they would be producing Shakespeare (or, at least, Nicholas Sparks)-level works, right?  Maybe.  Or maybe they would over-think every single creative decision and write the spontaneity completely out of their works?

You could also say: it’s a labor of love.  Here’s where I think we’d be hitting it closer to the mark.  Love.  It’s a funny, fickle creature.  When we’re in it, we’re enthralled and bedazzled by it.  When we’re not, we can’t stop thinking about it.  It’s elusive, slippery, and completely unscientific.  Seriously, love can neither be proved nor disproved.  Yet, it’s about as important to life as oxygen.

And it’s essential to writing.

When a writer is truly in love with his writing, the words flow like the Mississippi and pages and pages just fly across your computer screen, effortless and wonderful.  When you don’t love it, writing can be hell.  It can make a plot impossible to move, characters unable to speak, descriptions boring and uninteresting.  Your writing can be… well, crap, to be honest.

But when you’re in love…  Ah!  L’Amore!

Now, I realize that I’m being a little vague about exactly what aspect of the writing that the writer is in love with.  I will state though that it’s not the physical act of writing itself that people love.  True, the act of writing can be amazing – addictive, actually – but the act of writing is just the crack pipe.  It’s the medium that delivers the high, not the drug.

So it’s the product, then?  But what is it?

The subject matter can be a big one for writers.  Writing about a time or place that you are enthralled with, sweeping the reader up and giving them a guided tour of this world you love.  Look at steampunk, for example.  People love the setting, the trappings, the look, feel, and smell of steampunk.

Or it could be the genre.  There are writers who are so in love with their genre that plots and characters just appear, eager to act out a certain type of drama or comedy.

Mostly, though, I would say it’s the characters.  For me, that’s usually the cincher: loving the characters.  I get so crazy about my characters that they truly, honestly begin to talk in my head.  And often, they don’t shut up.

Watching the first episode of Studio 60, I knew the magic behind that first episode was that Sorkin was in love with the characters.  You don’t give such wonderful dialogue to characters you don’t like.  You give them the most succulent words.  It’s like writing for an actor that you love: you don’t write wonderful words so people will think you are a good writer; you write so that people think the performer is a good actor.  The writer’s ego takes a backseat to their passion.  Sorkin seems to love each and every one of the actors and their characters.  He dresses them in wonderful quirks, gives them beautiful words, and sets them out to dance that could only be called art.

Of course, as these things go, the series doesn’t stay at that same level.  It, eventually, begins to lose its luster.  Sorkin seems to stop loving them as much.  Who knows why but with each next episode, the characters are less and less… amazing.  And in the end, the show becomes too self important and bound for termination.

In many ways, there are echoes of this in other author’s works.  Their later novels lose that magic they once had.  They seem like forced dances instead of impromptu ballets.  The reader begins to have to push themselves through the books.  The dance becomes difficult for all involved.

So how do you do it?  How does a writer stop that from happening?  How do you keep writing that first novel, that pilot, time after time?  My gut feeling is that you have to love something about what you’re writing.  You have to have something about it that you can’t do without and the only way to satiate that feeling is to write it as best as you can.  Writing a book to fulfill a contract, to keep your name fresh in a reader’s mind, to pay bills just isn’t enough.  It’s a drive to get you started but not to sustain and not enough to produce great work.  It has to be something more.

It has to be love.

Whatever the hell that is.