Writing for a Deadline: Real World Writers
Janet Turner
If you start getting your reports piled up, it's real easy to take a report, make an arrest, and then go right back out there because that's what we like to do. We don't like to be stuck in the station on the computer or whatever. But you've got to manage your time. Time management is very important. You've got to make sure you get your reports done in a timely manner, and when you have time, whether it's five or ten minutes between calls, because if it starts getting busy, because there are plenty of times we're just going from call to call to call, and all of a sudden it's the end of the night, and you have three or four reports that you need to get done, well you're gonna to get stuck writing overtime, and not even get out of the station on time. And also, the sergeant is the one who has to review the report, so if it's 15 minutes before the end of the shift and all of a sudden you hit him with four reports he has to review, he's not very happy.

Scott King
Writing on a sketch show like Mad TV is the definition of writing under pressure because you are coming in, every week you've got to come up with three to five pitch ideas and they will tell you to write them up, you've got to write them up right away. Within a few days you are reading them with your other writers, you know, with the executive producers and you get notes from them, it's then up in a network read, and it's being taped within a week and you know, within a week after that, millions of people are going to see this and complain, or think it's funny, or have some reaction to it. And I think, you know, some of the writers that have not succeeded at MAD—I think has just been an issue of, it's never been talent, it's always about the pressure getting to them.

Robert Stansberry
Writing under pressure is stressful for me, it is, because the guy's come in and he wants his truck. And it's got to go because it's making money for him. And the longer it takes you to write the story, the more money he's losing…Well, we take tests because, it's to enhance our own knowledge of different products. New products coming out, or lets say a cab or a truck, Kenworth is being fitted for a new style of air ride, they'll send us a test on it. So that we can learn this new suspension so that we'll be able to take it apart, write a story on it, if it comes in, a customer complains, we'll be able to tell him what's wrong with his truck.