9,052

So sometime last month, when I wasn't paying attention, I wrote my 9,000th piece of paid coverage. Now I'm up to -- yes -- 9,052.

Putting me on track to break the 10,000 barrier sometime in late 2007. Unless I sell a script. Then, maybe not until mid 2009.

Because this is a business I can never really see leaving. Even if I did sell a script, and got a writing gig or two, there are a lot of pluses to continuing reading, at least on a part-time basis. It's a steady source of income, it's a way to keep in touch with what's out there, hell, it's a way to keep in touch with the screenplay form.

And who can write 8 hours a day?

I'd probably feel different if I was reading slushpile stuff. But I'm not; most of the stuff I read is from producers or agents, so generally it's in the upper level of the vast mediocrity, with the occasional impressive script passing over my desk now and then.

Even the $60 script notes screenplays generally aren't bad. People can generally write readable scenes; it's the whole storytelling thing that most writers seem to trip over.

Still, 9,052. Damn.

When I moved out to Los Angeles in the summer of 1998, I was at 4,175 paid coverages. I naively hoped that I wouldn't hit 5,000.

That number passed a long time ago.

(And if you wonder how I know these numbers, it's because I have a succession of notebooks, in which I have logged everything I ever read and for who. Plus I have a tattered old Film Writers Guide, in which all the screenplays are entered by writer. Most names are scrawled in the margins. It makes it much easier to track when I get a script that I know I have read for someone else, sometime before).

Fortunately, I love what I do. I guess I'd have to.

Still, when I hit 10,000, someone better buy me a drink. Or at least a taco.