A few years ago I was surfing the Internet on a Friday afternoon and discovered a contest asking amateurs to make TV commercials for a famous ketchup brand. The prize was several thousand dollars, and your commercial would actually run on television. Instantly I had an idea for a romantic comedy in which ketchup brought two young lovers together. Romance was on my mind; I had recently started dating someone with whom I was very interested.

Then I read the rules, and swore, “Darn it; the deadline is three days from now!”

In order to make a commercial and enter the contest, I had to get a videographer, a video editor, an actor, an actress, and a place to shoot the video. Plus, I had to write a script that would squeeze my creativity into 30 seconds. Then we had to rehearse, shoot, edit, and upload the commercial to a website.

The idea was too fun to waste. I could see it perfectly in my head. In a diner, a woman walks over to a table where a single guy is having his lunch. She asks to borrow his mustard, and as she reaches for it, he grabs her hand and says in flirtatious way, “You didn't come here for mustard; you came for something else.”

 …