15 Layers of Irony

A post about writer’s block? Seriously? Look, I know it’s not exactly original, but I’m at a loss here and I haven’t done a real blog post in, like, a week. Do you understand the self-imposed stress I’m under? Blogging is supposed to be this fun thing I do on the side—and it is fun, but naturally I find a way to get anxious about it. I’ve written about this before: the short version is that when writing is both a job and a hobby, it’s sometimes hard to distinguish work and pleasure.

And while yammering on about writer’s block doesn’t make for the most interesting blog post, it is the only way I know how to get past it. Writing is what I do when I don’t feel like writing. It’s kind of like exercising, except I actually get back in the habit of writing when I say I’m going to. (Let’s have a go at the stationary bike today, self! That is a thing that could actually happen, right?!) This is mostly just me trying to force myself into regular blogging—at least until Comic-Con happens and all my time is compromised. You don’t even have to read it, if you don’t want to. I’m not writing this for YOU.

(Please never leave me.)

I actually keep a list of blog ideas. It’s on the same Stickie note as my, um, ready-to-post tweets. Judge if you must, but I pre-write shit for exactly this reason. There are times when I just can’t think of anything to say, and while most people might accept that as a consequence of being a human with limited creativity and brain capacity, I consider it a serious failing. One of my biggest fears is suddenly losing the ability to write, which is kind of absurd. It’s really unlikely that I’m going to wake up one day without a means of articulating my thoughts—or worse, without thoughts at all. (Or worse yet, without a sense of humor.) Yet despite the ridiculousness of this panic spiral, I am actually a little twitchy just talking about it!

I write through the block, not because I truly need to blog today, but because I need to remind myself that I can. It’s a really simple way to assuage those concerns that I’ve forgotten how to string words together. (Though I may have forgotten how to be entertaining, which is a separate problem I’m going to ignore for the time being.) Writing is a great hobby in that it requires very few tools: you could theoretically do it with a pencil and paper, if you wanted to be all old-timey about it. And for someone like me, who often gets moody and feels overwhelmed with simple tasks, it’s nice that I can just sit down and do it. No preparation. No assembly required. No goddamn stretching.

Of course, making a point is far more difficult. To be honest, lots of my blog posts are unprepared, and I think it shows. I’m not saying it never works, but if they feel unfocused, that’s because they are. This one in particular has no beginning or end: I’m just writing to write. And now that I’ve forced myself back into blogging, I guess I can just stop whenever.

(Now, even.)

Do you want to read my script? It’s not finished yet. I mean, the first draft is, but it’s very much a draft, and I’ve been half-assedly revising it for the past two months. It’s not great—I’m not even sure it’s any good, but there are actual words on the page, and some of them might make you smile. I’ve never written a script before, unless you count the modern take on Frankenstein I wrote in middle school. (The Undiscovered Prometheus. Now there’s a title people will flock to see!) Anyway, I could use some feedback—lots of feedback. So, do you want to read my script?

You can say “no.” I’d totally understand. And I realize this is maybe one of the most frustrating requests, because it’s pretty hard to deny. Saying “no” is an option in theory, but what does that really mean? No, I don’t care about your writing? No, I can’t take the time to read your work? The latter makes sense to me, logically. I am consistently bogged down with too much to read, and sometimes adding just one more piece to the pile is too daunting. But there is a weird obligation to say “yes,” right? There’s an expectation that if you offer to share your writing with someone, he or she is going to accept. And maybe not read it right away (or ever), but at least pretend to be interested. Not that you have to do that. You can say “no,” really!

I’m not even sure I want you to say “yes.” If you do actually want to read it, there’s probably an expectation that you’ll like it. Why would you offer to read something if you expect to hate it? (Unless you totally hate me, and you have a boner for criticizing your enemies. I get that.) I’m not just worried that you’re not going to like it—I’m worried that your disappointment will change your opinion of me forever. You thought I was funny. You thought I was a good writer. But this script, it’s shit. How can you read that and still hold the same opinion of me? I mean, if it’s really bad, you might even resent me for inflicting it on you. There’s a chance things will never be the same between us. So, yeah, I’m not even sure I want you to say “yes.”

If you do have constructive criticism, please be gentle. Like, really gentle. I know that’s a lot to ask, but I’m already anxious about what you have to say. I might break down if you tell me there’s a misplaced comma. Wow, that puts a lot of pressure on you! Now you don’t want to say anything at all. No, it’s OK, I can take it. I have to learn to take it. If I want to continue my career as a professional writer, I must accept criticism. It doesn’t help anyone if I never hear it—I have to learn from it and get better. It stings, though, no matter who says it and how. I feel insecure about most everything, but I am confident in myself as a writer. And then I hear that unkind word, and suddenly I’m not sure of anything. I’m going to deal with it. I’ll get over the anxiety. But that’s what I mean when I say “please be gentle.”

I’ve made things awkward. Damn it. Maybe you did want to read my script and you were prepared to offer some kind, constructive criticism, and I would have learned a lot from it and revised my work. Your input would have been invaluable. But now you’ve decided I’m too much drama. I don’t blame you. There are a whole lot of neuroses exposed in this word vomit. Please understand, though, that this is how I work through my issues. I have to put them down and explain it all or they will never go away. Writing is the first step to dealing. Still. Ugh. I’ve made things awkward.

So, do you want to read my script? You can say “no.”

“I love what I do—I just wish I could do more of it.” If I had a nickel for every time I’ve said that, I probably wouldn’t care that I don’t earn as much as I’d like to. There are plenty of benefits to being a freelance writer, particularly the freedom to choose assignments and sleep in, but I’ve been craving some sort of stability for years. Of course, my fluid schedule is a luxury I’m still clutching for dear life. It’s not even that I want lazy mornings—I’ve learned to wake up at a reasonable hour with ample caffeine. I just fear too much structure. Well, that and I only like running errands when everyone else is at work. Have you gone to the grocery store at peak hours? It is the stuff of night terrors.

Lately I’ve been picking up more assignments and forcing myself to take on additional personal projects. (This blog is one of them!) It’s nice to be writing a significant amount on a daily basis, even though it does require breaks from Supernatural marathons. (I review TV, so that counts as work, too. Haters to the left.) But I’ve reached a point where I don’t know how much more to take on. I write for four separate publications—or five, I guess, now that I’m blogging a bit for the Huffington Post. Full disclosure: I’ll be crossposting some of these blogs there, so it doesn’t require any more effort, really. But please don’t spread that around. Everyone has been really impressed! Still, four publications, two Twitter accounts, and a personal blog are a lot to juggle. I’ve never missed a deadline, but I have felt my brain protest with extreme writer’s block and nonconsensual naps.

Does it sound like I’m complaining about having too much work? It probably sounds like I’m complaining most of the time. The truth is, I’m delighted to have more outlets for my writing, and I’m thrilled with the response I’ve been getting. (Yes, even the people who think I’m some sort of monster!) I just feel like I have too much to sort through mentally: a diverse to-do list of personal and professional responsibilities, various looming deadlines, and Supernatural is getting really stressful, you guys. (Lest you think I’m wasting time here, I need to catch up on the series before attending Comic-Con next month.) I seldom find myself in that middle ground between over- and underwhelmed. I’m either not working enough, not impressed with what I’m putting out, or I’ve got too much to get done, with a shrill voice in the back of my head screaming, “YOU SHOULD BE WRITING SOMETHING ELSE.”

I’m not sure what the solution to this is. Would a regular, salaried job put my mind at ease, or would I continue to vacillate between “too much” and “not enough”? I will say that being a freelance writer often reminds me of high school and college, times during which there was always something else to do. Moments of relaxation were, well, frequent, but always tinged with the knowledge that I could have (nay, should have!) been working on something for school. Now, as I sit here blogging for the sake of blogging, I’m faced with the same internal reminders that I have actual work to get done. It’s possible that one solid, well-defined gig would help on that level.

Or maybe I’d feel creatively stifled and miss my free-flowing days as a freelancer. I’m pretty sure the best thing for me to do, at least for the time being, is to enjoy this feeling of mild stress. Yeah, I have a lot to do. I can’t just dick around online all day. (Well, I can. I just have to have Microsoft Word open, too.) I’m overwhelmed by the amount I have to accomplish, but I’m also excited! LET’S DO THIS. I can write for my four publications and maybe take on another column elsewhere and blog for myself/the Huffington Post and catch up on TV shows in preparation for Comic-Con and revise my pilot script and write jokes for Twitter and clean my apartment. No problem. I just need a really good organizer.

It’s May 18, 2011, my three-year anniversary of graduating from Berkeley. I’m not gonna lie—I kind of thought I’d be way more successful by now. I think we all did. I won’t lament the economy I graduated into, because, you know, that’s been done to death. Obviously things would have been easier if I’d finished school at a time when jobs were more readily available. Or hey, some time before print journalism became obsolete. JK, you guys, but seriously, dying industry.

I’m not necessarily dissatisfied with where I am in my career right now, because I’m lucky enough to write regularly and have my writing published by some awesome publications I really admire. (Humblebrag? Brag brag?) It would be nice to have even more regular work (or a salary or benefits), but it’s kind of my b for choosing a notoriously tough-to-break-into career. Being a journalist was always hard. Being a journalist in this day and age is a suicide mission.

I’m not even sure what I expected exactly, aside from vague delusions of fame and fortune. (They’re not that vague. I’ve already got some memoir titles lined up. Holler at me, publishers.) And I definitely haven’t given up hope yet, despite my penchant for cynicism. But there is something disconcerting about the date—I can’t not get a little mopey on my three-year graduation anniversary. And that’s only on the career end. We won’t even talk about the personal side of things. (Did you know some of the people I graduated with are getting married and having babies? Guh-ross.)

Whatever. It’s just another day, right? It’s not like tomorrow my aspirations will be any different than they are today, or that I’ll suddenly feel either more professionally secure or professionally anxious. My graduation itself wasn’t all that special—an archaic, overly long symbolic ceremony that didn’t make me feel like any more of an adult. (Weirdly, moving my tassel did rush me through puberty!) So why should the anniversary of melting in my black robe and listening to an exceedingly boring commencement speech mean anything?

I guess the worst part is thinking about where I’ll be a year from now. (If I’m blogging here to lament my four-year anniversary, please convince me to make something of my life. Thanks!) My career path could change a lot over the next several months, or maybe not at all. Such is the excitement of being a freelancer. I’m always on the lookout for new opportunities, but they don’t always present themselves. And while I’ve mulled over taking on new writing jobs, I’m reluctant to give up what I have now.

Good thing today is the first day of the rest of my life! That always makes me feel like I have plenty of time to figure this shit out. I’m going to be 25 this year, and while that seemed really, really old to me at some point, it now strikes me as distinctly young. When I think about how much time I have ahead of me, I feel something resembling hope. But when I reluctantly turn my mind back to 2008, it’s hard to convince myself much has changed.

Maybe I should just be celebrating. I’ll take myself out to a nice dinner, celebrate my BA in English. You can put a lei on me and tell me how great I am. I’ll let you take my picture. And I’ll focus on everything I’ve done, instead of how quickly time passes and how much I still have to do. Besides, the world is ending Saturday.

Do you want to hire me to write for you? Seriously, you can. You do have to pay me, though. I know a lot of people these days are willing to write for free, but I do that enough on my own, and I kind of like earning money for my work. I’m super old-fashioned like that.

I’ve wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember, which in my mind is kind of cool. I never went through a fireman or astronaut stage, probably because I’ve always been afraid of fire and space travel, respectively. But it’s nice to have a passion at an early age and to stick with it. I’ve never had doubts about writing—doubts about the quality of my work, sure, and doubts about the form it would take, but never about what I wanted to do with my time. Even when I’ve flirted with other career options, I’ve always assumed I’d be able to work on a book on the side. Adorably naïve, right?

Right now, I’m a freelancer, meaning I write whenever someone is willing to publish me. As much as I love what I do, it’s getting to a point where I feel like I need to step things up to the next level. The flexibility of freelance writing is great, but it’s not always regular work, and a worrier like me needs some level of consistency. I’ve never had a salary or job security—these are terms that are actually kind of foreign to me. And sometimes that’s OK: I write for the love of writing, not the big dollars. But I’m turning 25 in a few months, and that seems like an age at which I should have some of this stuff sorted out, whether or not my generation is aimless by definition.

So what are my options? The idea of getting a day job and writing on the side is not an attractive one, though I understand it may be a necessity. Writing might not seem like hard work—and it generally doesn’t feel difficult while I’m doing it—but it does require a lot of mental energy and discipline. These are qualities that, while tough to quantify, are often in short supply after eight hours in an office. I worry that a day job wouldn’t leave me with the time or energy to do the writing I want to be doing. But if it came down to an absolute need? If I had to get a day job to keep writing? That would be an easy (albeit whine-worthy) choice to make.

Obviously writing full-time is my ultimate goal, and I’m still not really sure how unrealistic it is. Right now I have four freelance jobs at varying levels of consistency: TV.com, the SF Bay Guardian, io9, and the SF Chronicle. (Yep, two honest-to-blog newspapers!) I write jokes on Twitter every day. I blog about three times a week. (Like I’m doing right now. So meta.) I have one pilot written, but it needs to be heavily revised. I have one short story written, but it needs to be heavily revised. And I’m not sure where all of this leaves me. I’m enthusiastic and (mostly) proud about my work. Added up, however, it doesn’t equal a career.

I think I’m good at what I do. I think I get better every day. I also think that journalism has taken a hit over the past decade (not exactly a controversial opinion) and that making it as a writer as harder than ever. I’m not anywhere near giving up, but I may need to at least reevaluate my ambitions. Unless of course you just want to hire me to write for you. Which would solve my problems and also get me stop bitching. It’s win-win, anonymous reader.

I get to interview a lot of people for work. I like doing it. When I was in high school, I dreaded interviews, because they were never with celebrities but with city officials or, worse, other students. “What do you think of the new block scheduling?” High school, man. I started the entertainment section of our paper when I was 16, and I quickly set up an interview series. Naturally I didn’t get to do any of the interviews.

College was a different story. When I worked at the Daily Californian, I was able to interview lots of people I actually wanted to talk to, some with Oscars and Wikipedia pages, even. The first major interview I did was a press junket in L.A. for The Ice Harvest and Brokeback Mountain. Don’t worry, no one remembers The Ice Harvest. The interviews were press conference style, which intimidated the shit out of me. You had to get up and say your name and outlet—I can barely order a sandwich without fumbling. I sat in the front row, but I didn’t open my mouth during the first press conference. Once Jake Gyllenhaal and Ang Lee arrived for Brokeback Mountain, I decided I needed to ask something, if only so that Jake could be tricked into looking at me. (Totally worked.)

When people ask me now if I still get starstruck, I’m always a bit taken aback. It’s just not really an issue anymore. I get excited about talking to big names or people I personally admire, but I’m never anxious. I guess that’s because doing interviews became work—work that I enjoy, but work nonetheless. When I went to my first junket, I felt like I’d just won a contest. (Actually, I had. My editor at the time made us all submit reasons why we should be picked. She ended up choosing me because, “I figured you wouldn’t flail over Jake Gyllenhaal.”) But as I did more and more interviews, I came to understand it as my job, and that took a lot of the pressure off. You have to kind of distance yourself from the fanboy mentality. There is nothing wrong with being a fanboy—it’s just not appropriate in that context.

Being starstruck isn’t something you can consciously control, and no, telling myself that celebrities are people, too  has never really helped either. If I don’t feel it, it’s because my focus is on getting the job done, and that mental energy is enough to suppress the feelings of, “Oh my God, Ewan McGregor is touching me.” I try to have fun during my interviews, but I do take it very seriously, and I’m always disappointed by other journalists who don’t. Asinine questions aside, the easiest way to piss me off during a press conference or roundtable interview is to bring a pile of DVDs to have signed. It’s not Comic-Con, OK? (But if it is Comic-Con, different rules apply. We’ll talk about it in July.) I don’t pretend that the people I interview are my friends, and I don’t treat them like golden gods either. You have to find the middle ground: they’re talking, you’re listening, you’ll use what they’ve said to write an article—I think that makes you colleagues.

It’s funny how much of it is about context, though. I went to a festival screening last night and Parker Posey was waiting in line outside. You guys, I lost my shit. Internally, but still. Because she’s Parker Posey, and I didn’t expect to see her there. I wanted to go up and say something, tell her how much I love her in well, everything, but that seemed lame. By which I mean, I couldn’t work up the courage. Part of it was not wanting to bother someone when she was off the clock, but there was more to it than that. When I’m straddling that line between journalist and fan, I want to make sure I don’t slip too far to one side.

That having been said, if you’re Parker Posey, and you’re reading this, I would love to interview you.