You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) (19 page)

My friends tried to get me to take breaks: “Come to the mall. Let’s go to old-lady Jazzercize class. Get out of the house for a few hours!” but the awful disciplinarian in me chanted,
FAILURE, FAILURE!
and I couldn’t. I was too scared to stop. (The mental abuse was overdramatic and awesome!)

I wrote every minute, up until the evening of December 31, 2006. At 7:45 p.m., I finished the first draft of my untitled sitcom script about gamers. Thirty-nine pages. And as I typed the words “The End,” it was the proudest I’d ever been of myself. And I started sobbing.

My boyfriend stood in my office doorway. “Congratulations! Do you want to go out to celebrate?”

“No. I can’t go out now.”

“Why not?”

I sobbed, “I’m . . . too . . . happy.”

I’d accomplished my goal. But I had to be ruthless with myself to see
the task through. Joan Crawford–wire-hangers bad. But you know what? I don’t regret letting that horrible person inside bully me at all. I finished something
for once
, and it was worth every second of suffering through that terrible, forgot-to-buy-relatives-a-present holiday season.

If ideas flow out of you easily like a chocolate fountain, bless you, and skip to the next chapter. But if you’re someone like me, who longs to create but finds the process agonizing, here’s my advice:

–
 Find a group to support you, to encourage you, to guilt you into DOING. If you can’t find one, start one yourself. Random people enjoy having pancakes.

–
 Make a goal. Then strike down things that are distracting you from that goal, especially video games. (Unless it’s this book; finish reading it and THEN start.)

–
 Put the fear of God into yourself. Okay, I’m not religious. Whatever spiritual ideas float your boat. Read some obituaries, watch the first fifteen minutes of
Up
, I don’t care. Just scare yourself good. You have a finite number of toothpaste tubes you will ever consume while on this planet. Make the most of that clean tooth time. For yourself.

The creative process isn’t easy, even for chocolate-fountain people. It’s more like a wobbly, drunken journey down a very steep and scary hill, not knowing if there’s a sheer cliff at the end of it all. But it’s worth the journey, I promise.

I sometimes look at successful people and think,
I could do that! I could be there. I WANT to be there!
, coveting the end result without understanding the WORK that preceded it. I wanted to
have written
a script, but I had no idea how to get there. Thank goodness, I had people who encouraged me to attempt it, or I never would have been brave enough to try. I owe it all to the Chick-In ladies for their support; I needed it.

I celebrated the New Year with a script in my hand and thought,
I can’t believe I did it!

So . . . what do I do now?

- 7 -

Web Series: A DIY Journey

I guess we can borrow some cameras, stand in front of them, and say the words typed in the script. Is that how this “filmmaking thing” works?

“Walk me through this slowly. People can talk to each other while they play video games?”

“Yeah. You just install separate voice chat software while you play.”

I was sitting in a fancy office, looking out onto a beautiful view of the Hollywood sign. A producer sat across from me. She was a friend of a friend of someone’s yoga teacher and was literally the only person I could get to meet with me about making
The Guild
as a TV show. I was pretty sure her blonde highlights cost more than my monthly car payment.

“And the characters are all playing the same game? At once?”

“It’s based on World of Warcraft, a very popular online game.”

She smiled and nodded. Like when you’re pretending to understand something by smiling and nodding but have no clue about what the other person just said. I do that a lot about sports.

“Uh, so what did you think about my script? Did you like it?”

She looked down and started flipping through the pages. I noticed her nails were painted silver. I thought about making a Wolverine joke, but I didn’t think she’d get it.

“There’s so much vocabulary here I don’t understand. Like, what does ‘gank’ mean?”

Definitely a “no” on the Wolverine joke.

“It’s a gaming term that means ‘kill.’ ”

“Can’t you just say ‘kill’?”

“Well, that’s not authentic. I don’t want gamers to think I’m a poser.”

“Oh, I don’t think that matters.”

She laughed. I noticed her teeth were perfectly white and, through no fault of her own, she was making me feel like a peasant.

“Okay. But if I tweak that stuff, do you think my script could become a TV show?”

“Well, some of the writing shows me you’re very funny . . .”

“Thank y—”

“But this is just too inside to appeal to anyone. Why don’t you try to write a spec script for
The Office
? Try to get staffed on a show?”

I shifted uncomfortably. “I was hoping to do my own show. THIS show. And writers on staff don’t get free dresses for awards shows. Because you know,
The Guild
would totally win awards if you made it!”

I laughed. She did not join in. She just stood up and proved to be at least a foot taller than me and had no need for Spanx under her pencil skirt. I decided I hated her.

“Well, try taking all the gaming stuff out, and let’s circle back later!”

“Sure!” I realized with a sinking heart that this was it. My last chance. The project I put my soul into was never going to be made. The script would just become a check mark next to “Life To-Dos”
and nothing more. As I left that room, I knew I would be leaving my dreams behind with it.

I stood and started to exit, then decided to turn back. One last time. Emboldened.

“Hey, can I get the name of your eyebrow person?”

In early 2007, after I finished rewriting my original script two dozen times, to the point where I thought,
Wow, this is absolute literary perfection!
I did the most stereotypical thing you can do with your first screenplay: I showed it to any fancy-pants person I knew, convinced they would read it and turn it into the next
Friends
. I was so confident that I started visualizing the ad campaign that would run on the sides of buses during premiere week. Me, posing with that wry, “Wow my friends are crazy, but I love ’em!” side look to the audience? You know the one.

But back then gaming was not a mainstream hobby. (Is it now? I can’t tell, my head is buried so far up the anus of the culture.) And ONLINE gaming was something that especially made civilians think,
Nerd Poison!

I couldn’t believe people in show business were so uncool. The idea that it might be the reverse never crossed my mind.

Until I got rejected. A lot. Then it started to sink in.

A few weeks after my soul was shattered into a million zillion pieces (not to be overdramatic), I went to my women’s support group Chick-In, and I whine-cried a lot. Afterwards, two of the members asked if they could read my script: Kim, who got me into the whole writing thing, and Jane, director and Chick-leader. I didn’t see any harm in showing it to them. After all, no one else in the universe was going to see my brilliant world come to life. Ever. Sadface. With that attitude, the meeting was sure to be productive!

The three of us stayed late after the next Chick-In to discuss.

“What did you think?” I asked. Part of me didn’t want to hear what they thought. I wanted to grab the scripts out of their hands and run to my car without saying good-bye.

Which wouldn’t have been weird at all.

“It’s amazing! I laughed out loud. These characters are a hoot!” Jane had the sweetest way of talking, and I calmed down. Compliments are like Valium to me.

Kim chimed in and agreed. “All that time you spent gaming was worth it! The characters are so real. I don’t understand everything they’re talking about, but . . .”

Ugh. “Of course not! No one does. All the producers I’ve shown the script to say it’s incomprehensible.” I allowed myself to be severely depressed again. That was quick.

Kim threw out the next sentence delicately, like she was fishing for a skittish trout. “I have a crazy idea. Have you thought of doing this project for the internet?”

I stared at her. “Huh?”

BACKSTORY SIDE TRIP

YouTube was created in 2005, the year I forced myself to write
The Guild
. Yes, it’s weird to think that before that year, there was no YouTube. It feels like it should have ALWAYS existed, allowing us to share Taylor Swift covers with as much ease as breathing. There was Heaven, then there was Earth, then there was YouTube, right?

Shortly after it launched, Kim filmed a parody Japanese TV show short,
Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine
, that was as charming and odd as it sounds, and uploaded it to the service.

The video went viral, and at the time of our Chick-In meeting, she was in the middle of selling her show to a big company to make more episodes. So early. EARLY on, Kim was a planter of the first sprouts of web video. And that’s why she thought the internet was the perfect place for
The Guild
.

I didn’t know that, so I just stared at Kim.

“I don’t understand. I thought YouTube was for kitten videos and chunky light-saber teens.”

“No one gets this story who isn’t in the gaming world, right? Where are the people who WILL understand it? Online.”

“Huh. Good point. Gamers ARE online 24/7. I’M online 24/7.”

Kim and Jane said together, “We know.”

“So, uh . . . WE would make this? By ourselves?” Then it hit me, and I felt a heart-racing panic attack coming on.

For the record, I am not a risky person. If I was reincarnated from
an animal, it was definitely prey. A cute one who lives in a herd, like an antelope. Or a dik-dik. What Kim was suggesting terrified me. My basic makeup did not allow me to boldly leap into self-actualization. I preferred to sit at home and complain about no one in Hollywood understanding me. That felt safer.

And Kim could sense that I was freaking out. Because I said, looking freaked out, “The idea of doing that freaks me out.”

“I shot
Gorgeous Tiny
with one camera in the back of my garage. This wouldn’t be much more complicated!”

Jane jumped in. “I can direct, we can split the costs three ways, it’s perfect! This is what Chick-In was born to do!”

I looked at Kim and Jane for a long beat, then a strange sunrise crested through the two hemispheres of my brain.
Could it, indeed, be that simple?! . . .

Yes, it could.

It felt like for the first time in my life, I had the power to decide something this big and make it happen. Without anyone’s approval, without permission, without any external motivation like getting an A in a math class. I could do this because I WANTED to, even if it was scary and might go up in flames.

In that moment, I realized that I had been missing an amazing truth:

No matter what you feel is holding you back in life . . .