The Writers Guild of America strike, which has shut down production of TV and movies since November 5 and, more to the point, turned prime time television into a depressing swamp of reality contests and second-string series, may soon be over.

The excitement picked up yesterday when Michael Eisner – who was ousted as the CEO of Disney three years ago, mind you – said on CNBC’s Fast Money that “it’s over.” Deadline Hollywood Daily, the well-sourced go-to site for news on the strike since the first rumblings, points out that the strike is, in fact, not over, but things are looking promising. The WGA will hold meetings with writers in NYC and LA on Sunday to tell them the details of the proposed deal. DHD says the meetings are expected to be “very long and very contentious,” but if both coasts finally agree that the new contract terms are generous enough, then the strike will be called off.

As a professional underpaid writer, I certainly hope that the WGA has managed to squeeze a bigger piece of the pie from the studios. The problem with writing, as a way to make a living, is that no one thinks writing is very hard. After all, forming sentences is literally one of the first things you learn in school, right after “stand in this line and don’t butt ahead.” You’re reading this, and does it look like it was hard to compose? Well, it wasn’t, but this also isn’t an especially good example of the craft.

The fact is, writing is like playing guitar: It’s easy to learn the basics, but it’s incredibly difficult to learn to do well. This blog has and will continue to disparage and nitpick at the scripts of our favorite shows, but that’s not to say we don’t appreciate the vision and imagination it takes to breathe life into Lost or to completely re-invent Battlestar Galactica. And when that writing makes enormous sums of money for the people who said, “A group of people stuck on a mysterious island is a great idea; I’ll give it a good time slot and have my marketing people work on an ad campaign,” the source of those ideas should be compensated for it too.

But I digress. What’s truly important is how soon TV will be good again. The optimistic L.A. Times says that writers could go back to hammering out scripts on Monday, and new episodes could air again just four to six weeks after that. My Name is Earl showrunner Greg Garcia even said that his writing team is “kind of ahead of the game,” and other sitcoms are expected to move fairly quickly. While unmitigated crap like The Bionic Woman (and underappreciated gems like Journeyman) will forever be viewable only as incomplete-season DVDs, some shows that might not otherwise have been renewed, such as Reaper, will get a second chance. So to the writers we say: Don’t fuck it up. We’ll be watching.