Shortly after lunch there’s another knock on my door. Jack Hanrahan barges in, demure Eleanor Burian-Mohr in tow. As I make a mental note to have a lock installed, Jack plops a sheet of paper on my desk and asks, “When do we hear back on these?”

I sarcastically offer, “Hello, Jack. Hello, Eleanor…

Eleanor smiles as she skirts alongside her partner. “Hello, Jack. Good meeting yesterday.”

Jack Hanrahan’s a big guy, Eleanor diminutive by comparison. She has a soft smile and soft features; pretty without having to work at it. I like her immediately.

It shouldn’t matter whether or not I like someone or what they look like. I want and need story springboards, treatments and scripts to help me get Care Bears back on track, and that should be that. But it’s more complicated than that.

After my having written a handful of scripts, lots of springboards, a few treatments, conducted a writers’ meeting, having and resolving a run-in with a senior staff writer and spending my morning in a grueling rewrite of another writer’s script, I’m realizing being a story editor is hard work.

There’s overlap with being a scriptwriter, but being a story editor complicates things. It means interacting with a sizable group of writers, each with their own skills, personality and issues. I like that. Writing is a solitary business – just me and my (newly christened) computer for eight or more hours a day. Having people occasionally around can be a good thing, depending on the people.

Five minutes into talking with Eleanor and Jack, I like having them around.