Unscripted Lives

Moreover, they try to put the writers' cause in front of viewers. Scheft appeared in a sketch with Letterman, reciting a lengthy list of the writers' proposals, on the night the show returned.

"It's an unspoken thing," Scheft says. "All the writers and the staff feel an obligation because, let's face it: We got picked out of the line, essentially. We're fortunate."

The Novice

Simon Rich 's r¿sum¿ is pretty short. He graduated from Harvard last January, and his first book of humor stories was published in April. In August, he became the youngest and least experienced member of "Saturday Night Live's" writing staff.

Rich, son of New York Times columnist Frank Rich, is part of the Harvard pipeline that has fed TV comedy-writing staffs for years (such series as "The Simpsons," "South Park" and "SNL" have long been havens for Ivy League-educated writers). Like Rich, several "SNL" writers are alumni of the Harvard Lampoon, the school's famed humor magazine.

"The Lampoon is one of the few places where people without a lot of experience talking to other human beings can sit around and use their encyclopedic knowledge of 'The Hogan Family' and 'Who's the Boss?,' " says Rich. "The people who work there aren't great at getting dates, but they're very skilled at watching TV and programming their TiVos."

Much of Rich's work for "SNL" never made the final cut, but a couple of pieces (written for hosts Seth Rogen and Jon Bon Jovi) were produced.

Then almost as soon as it started, it was over.

"I got incredibly lucky," he says of landing on "SNL." "It was really fun for a very short time. I did it so briefly that it feels like a weird dream."

He's eager to get back to work, but he understands what's at stake. Someday, he observes, "I might be out of a job. But the jokes I've written may still be earning money for someone. It would be pretty unfair if we didn't get our fair share of that."

Two Generations

Courtney Simon and Kate Hall see the strike from opposite ends of a writer's career arc: as a veteran and as a rookie. They also are mother and daughter.

A legend among soap opera aficionados, Simon, 61, has acted in and written "daytime serials" since the early '80s. At one point, she simultaneously wrote one soap and played a character on another. She's received four daytime Emmys and three nominations for her writing on "Guiding Light," "General Hospital" and "Another World." At the time of the strike, she was turning out scripts for "As the World Turns."

Hall, 30, was a self-described "lost soul" who wasn't sure what she wanted to do after college. Among other things, she'd worked as a receptionist in a Manhattan office. When she decided that she wanted to follow her mother into TV, she spent three years churning out speculative scripts that went nowhere. Finally, in June, she got her big break -- a writing job on "All My Children," the long-running ABC soap that her mother wrote for, and performed on, more than a decade ago.