On Thursday, we packed out bags and embarked upon a weekend trip to Ireland. We were excited, as much for the airport Burger King as for the trip itself. We arrived – as suggested by a company whose name rhymes with CryinMare – 3 hours early. This was no problem since that gave us plenty of time to enjoy the aforementioned BK treat. But it did promise a long day.

Our flight time was 15:15, which got us into Dublin at 16:40, which in turn gave us lots of time to meet our friend and to enjoy many Guinness and whiskeys before they gave last call at 11:30. This, naturally, was not to be.

You have no doubt flown and understand the sequence of information one wants and one doesn’t want as regards to your flight. You get in the airport, you check-in, you expect to get a gate and you expect to get calls to go to gate and to board. On a bad date, you find out your plane is late and this puts a crink in any travel day.

As we walked through Duty Free, we noticed that next to the word Dublin was only Gate B. So we went to Gate B. With lots of time to kill, we slept a little, read, deeply considered buying a bag of M&Ms that would feed Guam. I walked around, and cast occasional glances at the pub. But something dawned on me at about 14:45 – we were still only Gate B. No number, no late notification, nothing. Just Gate B.

We felt as if we were lost at the end of the world. This is because the lack of information enhanced an already eerie atmosphere at the airport. These days the airports are slender on staff and as a result they are a shell of their former selves. Shops are gated off, cafes shut down, their chairs stacked on tables. The vending machines are dilapidated, the check-in desks are almost nearly all dark and quiet. It’s as close to the post apocalypse as you might get without actual zombies running around. So not only did we not have a gate number, there was nobody at all to ask. Information desks were empty.

The best thing about writing is that you learn something every time you do it. This is true whether it’s information or style that you happen to be learning. Some of my best evolutionary periods as a writer have been when writing a format that’s new to me.

About 7 years ago I got a job writing at Sparknotes. This involved writing humorous short listicles on literature. Sounds right up my alley, yes. However, each section had to 1. be six sentences at most, 2. be funny, 3. convey a lot of information, 4. be an enjoyable read to our target audience, which was teenage girls. This meant my entire catalogue of M*A*S*H references and Johnny Cash jokes were as useless as a bag of popcorn in combat (as were tortured metaphors).

So what I once thought would be right up my alley was a lot harder than it seemed. However, I learned to write for audience and edit down to the demi-glaze of a paragraph. In the end, I developed a whole new level of skill. And plus, I now know that I can make teenage girls laugh.

In a recent moment of insanity, I decided to pitch a screenplay to a director. In an act of almost blatant cruelty, she accepted it and then, in a war crime act, asked me to write it.

“Wait. Write what?” I thought.

It hadn’t occurred to me that she would actually want me to write the film. And so in what can only be described as a mix of horror and terror that we’ll call terrhorr, I sat down at my computer and began writing this screenplay. Fun fact: did you know that a screenplay is made up almost entirely of dialogue!? And with that dialogue and some of your “imagination” a screenwriter is expected to tell an entire story!? And that story is meant to be told in 95 pages most of which is dialogue that’s rarely more than a line? Nope, it’s true.

But wait. There’s more.

I recently apparently drank a waterglass filled with peyote and when I had come to, I had accepted a job as a copywriter for an investment firm. Though I don’t do drugs, it’s the only explanation I have for why I would do this. Now I write copy, emails, SMS templates, and, oh it should be mentioned, I have no idea how to do that!

I sometimes sat alone in my kitchen looking at my computer and wondering what had happened. I never had the answer. But I got to work. And I get to work.

And then, here’s the thing, I am getting better. The first draft of my screenplay was a whopping 180 pages (yes, that’s literally double what it should be). The second draft was 140, the third 120, and now on draft four or five, we’re at about 105. Concepts and edits that were once out of my realm of understanding I have adapted to and can now deal with. Amazingly, what has happened is the creation of an almost-passable screenplay. The evolution is amazing to watch.

At the same time, I find that my brain sometimes now locates the language of corporateese, a language I was an A1 beginner in just two months ago. Not only that, business email structure has become second nature and I have a whole new appreciation for the versatility of verbs.

In sum, don’t be afraid to try new things. You never know what it’s going to lead to and how it’s going to help you.