It’s like this: The Writers’ Guild of America (WGA) strike doesn’t affect me directly. We don’t have cable, and have never bothered with an antenna, which means we don’t pull in broadcast channels either. I don’t care from award shows. I have several seasons and series worth of television to catch up on through the miracle of Netflix. My entertainment needs are covered for a good long while yet.
[In the interest of full disclosure, having caught up with the third season last month, I will beg, borrow, steal, or tape while housesitting the next season of LOST when it begins at the end of this month. But otherwise? I'm good.]
While I’m not affected by the strike as a consumer, I support the WGA 100% in this labor action. As many people more articulate and more invested in the issue have said already, the central issue behind the strike is perfectly simple: if someone makes a dollar from a created work, and a writer contributed to that act of creation, a portion of that dollar belongs to the writer. If someone finds a way to distribute that creation in another way, and that distrubution generates another dollar, guess what? A portion of that dollar belongs to the writer. That holds for every dollar, and every distribution channel. There is room for negotiation about the size of the writer’s share, but not about the existence of that share.
With their day jobs on hold, a couple of television writers started a blog for their peers. Why We Write is a forum for working writers, aspiring writers, and others to explain their chosen profession (obsession) to the world. The entries are interesting, and like all writing, some are better than others. The common thread through the entires is that writers write because they can’t not write.
Check it out.
