shake your finger at your monitor while loudly threatening your characters with The Timeout Shelf if they don't start cooperating immediately. Tell them they have one last chance to inspire and energize you and, if they fail, you will be replacing them tomorrow with the next project in the queue.

Be prepared, however, to be grabbed by the hair and yanked into the story so fast and hard that you forget to breathe. In fact, you nearly forget to pick up your kids at school.

Ah, a day in the life. I'm in the last 20 pages of Hush. If tomorrow and Friday go as well as today did, I'm finally going to finish this screenplay.