SNL and Other Lessons

"The show doesn't go on because it's ready; it goes on because it's 11:30." 

This is something Lorne has often said about Saturday Night Live, but I think it's a great lesson about not being too precious about your writing. You have to try your hardest to be at the top of your game and improve every joke you can until the last possible second, and then you have to let it go." --Tina Fey 

Thank you, Tina Fey. Thank you, Lorne Michaels. I so, SO needed this right now.

I've been reading Tina's excellent Bossypants and although it centers on lessons in the workplace, that sneaky Ms. Fey is really handing out tiny pearls about life in general. There's a lot of profound stuff buried in her stories about peeing in cups around the office and Kotex commercial parodies.

This is a lesson I particularly need to learn. See, there's a funny thing that happens once you snag an agent and you're out on submission - you find yourself in the midst of crippling self-doubt.

You would think it would be the other way, right? Well, it isn't like that for me, and the other writers I've spoken to have all said it wasn't like that for them either. Instead of this burst of confidence, you are suddenly very, very afraid that your writing isn't good enough.

Personally, mine comes in the form of a constant inner monologue that starts in the morning and doesn't let up until I'm too exhausted to listen at night. These snotty, nasal voices that sound slightly like my 3rd grade teacher, Mrs. Rucker, say things like, "That agent of yours is going to figure out what a no-talent ass clown you are when he reads your WIP" or "Of course your book isn't selling. Who would read such drivel? It's nowhere near the quality of TWILIGHT."

In the interest of being completely honest like I promised, I will admit to you: One, I've stopped reading YA for now because everything makes me feel A) inadequate, B) jealous, or C) ragey and stabby. Two, I have found it increasingly hard to share my WIP with my friends and handing it over to my agent felt like death from embarrassment and shame, from which I was resurrected only to die all over again every day he's taking to read it. (Ken, if you're reading this, I swear to you I am a completely calm, SANE professional. Well, sane anyway.)

This last little revelation is the kicker, and the one I need this lesson for. I need to just let it go. I've always known that my writing is imperfect but now it seems like I'm truly ashamed of that. Before submission it was excusable, natural - but during submission it's inexcusable. It's not natural. You are on submission, dammit. Your book was good enough to get this far. Anything less than that is embarrassing and omg, I simply cannot let someone see my Shitty First Draft.

But it's 11:30. I've done all I can at this stage: I've improved all my jokes, put an arch in the arcs, made the angst angstier. It's time for the show to go on. I need to make it better so that I CAN be happy with it. The only way to do that is to get feedback. And the only way to get feedback is to send it out and let it go. To, in a way, commit to the imperfection. Or at least get over it.

So, live from New York...it's Saturday night! If you're one of my readers, you'll be getting more ALIBI soon, warts and all. I'll be behind the camera, watching you read through it, cringing every time a joke bombs or the audience doesn't clap, but I'm letting it go.

On Writing, On Honesty

I am a huge fan of Natalie Whipple's blog because not only is she incredibly positive and encouraging (note the section of the blog called Happy Writer's Society), but she is also always honest. And she is honest in a way that most writers never are. You see, writers have a lot of complexes, and a lot of pride. We hate admitting that we're not confident, or that we feel lost or lonely. Even though we tout the ol' "writing is a lonely job" adage, we very seldom admit to it publicly. This is, after all, a competition. We are competing for agents, for contracts, for attention, and any sign of an Achilles' heel could have people saying, "They are clearly not meant to be a writer." Most importantly, being honest means that we have to face the truth ourselves, which is ugly and unpleasant. It's much more useful to lie to ourselves because if we don't, we couldn't face writing every day.

But I want to be very, very honest right now, friends, because if just one of you is feeling the same way, then maybe we can be a little less lonely in the world.

I am at a point in my life where it seems like everything is happening at once, converging. A crossroads, I suppose I could call it, if I wanted to use that tired expression. I will finish my MLIS degree in December, my novel is out on submission, and Hubby and I really want to try our hands at the whole parenting thing. But by far the most pressing thing in my life right now, the one that is both making me miserable and lighting the proverbial fire under my ass, is my job. I don't like it. No one likes their job, I know, but lately it's come to a point where I just know that if I don't find something else soon, I'm risking my health and sanity.

I've been having headaches that go on for days that mere aspirin can't seem to knock out. The doc asked me a thousand questions to try to diagnose, and she's worried I might have anemia, but on the forms I had to fill out for my bloodwork, she'd written as a cause for the visit: Fatigue.

What an understatement. I am truly tired. Tired of mouthy kids who were never taught respect. Tired of mouthy parents who were never taught respect (or even, at times, manners). Tired of the war between what should be taught and what we are supposed to be teaching. Tired of having to prove to some bureaucrat who has never been inside a classroom that I am a good teacher. Tired of feeling helpless because parental bullying is far more influential on the school than common sense. Tired of feeling like nothing can be done to stop any of it.

And I realized a few weeks ago that it's never going to get better; in fact, it may get worse. I've been re-reading Stephen King's essential memoir, On Writing. The last time I read it, I was just starting out with my writing, and this reading has been a completely different experience to me. I've found myself sobbing twice now at things that didn't even give me pause on the first read. One thing that reduced me to a sobbing mess was when King found out that Carrie had sold for $200,000, and that he could now afford to be a full-time writer. Only now do I understand the gravity of that, that it isn't about the money at all, but the freedom.

And I'm going to post the second thing I sobbed over because, as you'll see, it's frighteningly apt:

I wasn’t having much success with my own writing, either. Horror, science fiction, and crime stories in the men’s magazines were being replaced by increasingly graphic tales of sex. That was part of the trouble, but not all of it. The bigger deal was that, for the first time in my life, writing was hard. The problem was the teaching. I liked my coworkers and loved the kids—even the Beavis and Butt-Head types in Living with English could be interesting—but by most Friday afternoons I felt as if I’d spent the week with jumper cables clamped to my brain. If I ever came close to despairing about my future as a writer, it was then. I could see myself thirty years on, wearing the same shabby tweed coats with patches on the elbows, potbelly rolling over my Gap khakis from too much beer. I’d have a cigarette cough from too many packs of Pall Malls, thicker glasses, more dandruff, and in my desk drawer, six or seven unfinished manuscripts which I would take out and tinker with from time to time, usually when drunk. If asked what I did in my spare time, I’d tell people I was writing a book—what else does any selfrespecting creative-writing teacher do with his or her spare time? And of course I’d lie to myself, telling myself there was still time, it wasn’t too late, there were novelists who didn’t get started until they were fifty, hell, even sixty. Probably plenty of them.

And that is the scariest thing I've ever read in my life. With that realization came this: I'm ready to move on. Call it defeat if you want. I'm going to call it a new start.