Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love. Then you do it for a few friends. And finally you do it for money.
I wish I could take credit for those lines but they were written by a non-WGA writer named Moliere. According to my 1958 edition of the World Book Encyclopedia, he lived in France from 1622 to 1673 B.I. (Before Internet) and wrote everything with his very own hands.
When the WGA went on strike in 1987, we were just emerging into the electronic age. Like Moliere, we ground out copy with our very own hands. Sure, we had typewriters but corrections meant retyping. And retyping. The first computers had just arrived but there was no email. No internet. We looked things up in reference books and spent hours on the phone researching stories. At the witching hour before air time, I would be talking on the phone, writing voiceover copy, scanning the AP wire and logging video while listening for the voice of my producer in the din of wire and telex machines, TVs turned up full, and people yelling across the room. I felt right at home. It reminded me of family dinners at the holidays.
The industry was changing. With computers and new satellite technology, accuracy gave way to speed. Who needed facts when you had a satellite feed of chicken crates spilling onto a Minneapolis interstate at rush hour? Or you could be first in your market with close-ups of a triple murder in Cleveland? "Who? Where?" I would ask the producerettes who assigned the scripts. "Make it up," they said. "We have great pictures." Then there was the story about someone's death. He called the newsroom after the story ran. Like Mark Twain, he protested that rumors of his death were greatly exaggerated. I wanted to run a correction. Management said, "Who cares? No one will remember." Except the undead guy. And he was hardly a demographic.
I dreaded the WGA strike for several reasons: I was already an anachronism. I was about to become a walking anachronism. Management held writers in contempt. The strike would make it clear that our newsfeeds could go out without writers. It was just a question of time before our jobs were phased out.
I cast my vote against the strike for survival reasons. I needed to work. My husband was between jobs, we had a baby and our adjustable mortgage was escalating quickly. A one-month strike would chew up our savings and put us dangerously close to default. As a precaution, we put our co-op apartment up for sale even though the housing market had gone soft. I wonder how many of my colleagues on the WGA picket line are in similar straits today.
On those bone-chilling ten-hour shifts on the WGA picket line, I recited Moliere's lines to keep myself entertained. It helped to distract me but overall, the strike was debilitating. Try wearing four layers of thermal underwear, fleece, and down while bracing a cardboard sign against a northwest wind tunneling through the streets at 30 miles an hour. And that's on one of the warmer days.
In addition to physical discomfort, we endured the emotional strain of seeing colleagues and friends look away as they crossed our picket line to enter the warm building. It was hard to explain the embarrassment. Perhaps it was recognizing pity and contempt on the faces of those who knew us. Or maybe we just wished we could be someplace else. Like inside, at our desks. Doing it for money.
When we weren't feeling humiliated or close to frostbite, we were just plain bored or looking for bathrooms. It bothered me that we could not walk into the building where we worked. Occasionally, one of us would head off on safari in search of a warm, clean, public facility. (For those of you on the picket line in midtown today, try the New York Hilton.)
I had just returned from the Hilton, having spent twenty minutes in front of a mirror designing a more efficient burka, when a scruffy old dude in a tattered brown overcoat fell in step with me. He reminded me of a pigeon: dirty, streetwise, and defiant.
"I saw Morley Safer in an elevator once. I saw Morley Safer in an elevator once. I saw Morley Safer in an elevator once." The grating rhythm matched my walking pace.
"I saw Morley Safer in an elevator once." Relentless, he was. Like a pigeon. I shielded my face with the picket sign.
Sometimes I think I must have a "TAXI" sign over my head that says "WIERDO." I'm like a Jodie Foster character: Strange people love me. They find me in crowded airports, in Madison Square Garden. On the picket line.
"I saw Morley Safer in an elevator once."
After forty minutes or so, it began creeping me out. I tapped the shoulder of the guy in front of me. His head swiveled like the girl in The Exorcist. "You made eye contact," he hissed. "You made eye contact."
"I did not!"
"I saw Morley Safer in an elevator once."
The striker behind me tapped me on the shoulder. When I turned my head, she glared. "You did, you did. You made eye contact."
Now I was trapped. To my right, the crazy pigeon man: "I saw Morley Safer in an elevator once. I saw Morley Safer in an elevator once."
And I was sandwiched between a hiss and a glare. Three hours to go.
Even though the temperature dropped another 15 degrees, I was never so glad to see the end of an afternoon. Morley Safer disappeared. To another picket line? An elevator? I like to think he went back to his coffin.
When we handed our signs to the strike foreman, the hissing dude couldn't resist getting in the last word. "You broke the cardinal rule. You made eye contact."
I wanted to say something like "Brooklyn girls never make eye contact." But it didn't seem worth it. I had survived a day on the WGA picket line. And there was always tomorrow.
Read more strike coverage on the Huffington Post's writers' strike page.