Tiny Personal Hell OTW: Writing

I'm at first draft war with myself

Welcome to Welcome to Hell!!!. This is a newsletter/blog/whatever of sometimes deep (but mostly dumb) thoughts on life & stuff, irregularly authored by Emmy-losing comedy writer Alison Zeidman.

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Well well well, if it isn’t everything once again just getting worse and worse. Elon Musk now has a trillion+ dollars instead of the trillion+ kicks to the face he actually deserves! There was a UFC cage match on the White House lawn, which would be hilarious if it weren’t so embarrassing! The Knicks won the NBA fin—

Just kidding on that last one. Don’t kill me Knicks fans and all of New York City that’s joined the bandwagon, I’m happy for you guys. Have fun out there!

But New York City isn’t the only person, place or thing that deserves a little treat. We do, too! And wouldn’t you know it, I have one for me/us, in the form of a few paragraphs that take a refreshing break from the real hells of the real world to indulge in complaining about the tiny, personal, relatively inconsequential hell(s) “ruining” my individual world.

Tiny Personal Hell(s) of The Week

• I’m writing a first draft. ‘Nuff said.
  
  ….OK, if you are not a writer, maybe not ‘nuff said. So here’s the thing about first drafts: They are painful, horrible, scary, insurmountable things and the only way to get through them is to just not think too much and just spew ANYTHING down on paper as quickly as possible. Writers sometimes refer to the first draft as the “vomit draft” to take some of the pressure off — the idea is that it’s not supposed to be good. Even if you’re rewriting absolute garbage gobbeldygook, any rewriting is automatically 1 billion percent less painful than starting from a blank page, even if you know what you intend to put on that page.
  
  I’m currently adapting my favorite pilot script into a novel and I think I’m making good progress and I like what I’m doing, but a first draft is still a first draft. Generally I try to just plow straight ahead until the entire thing is written before I go back and rewrite, but last week I took a few days just spending time with the chapters I’d already drafted and man…I forgot writing could be fun.
  
  But if I’m ever going to finish this story, I have to finish this story.

  Fortunately, going back over everything gave me some new ideas for the “third act” (I don’t know if there’s a name for what they call that part in books) and I now have a clearer plan for those story beats that I think is a lot more organic and character-driven than my original plotting. So I’m actually somewhat excited to get back to first drafting.
  
  Another helpful thing: Last week I came across the writer/director Zach Cregger talking about his version of getting through the “vomit draft,” which in short is to pretend that he’s hired a really stupid, tiny little elf to write his first draft for him, and he’s not paying it very well so he’s getting what he pays for, and he titles it “elf draft,” and then his job, writing as the elf, is to write the worst possible version of the scene.

  I’m not doing the elf part, but I am enjoying the mindset shift from not just “this doesn’t have to be good yet” to “YOUR JOB is to write the shittiest possible version of this.” I’m finding it to be a really effective self-jumpstart. And a lot of the time I end up failing, because I wind up with stuff I know I’ll actually want to keep and expand on…which is of course the whole point! Objects at rest stay at rest and objects in motion stay in motion, yadda yadda yadda.
  

And now for some stuff that’s pretty good, actually:

• Bitching & Mourning, my podcast with Becky Robison (fellow dead-parents-haver and author of My Parents Are Dead: What Now?) launches this Sunday! It’s Father’s Day, but it’s not like either of us had any plans. Listen to the trailer here or here or wherever else you get your podcasts. If you love someone who’s dead and have ever had to deal with grieving or handling post-death logistics in modern day America, then this podcast is for you.

• My novelized chapter of The Dark Night is the latest episode of The Novelizers podcast, hosted by the incomparably funny Dave Hill. Read by the very talented Lane Moore, who did a fantastic job. Listen here!

• We’re not even officially, technically any number of days into summer yet, but I’ve already given up on trying to fight the heat and humidity so I gave myself a little DIY shag cut over the weekend because I was feeling stupid too impatient to wait for a real haircut appointment brave. I think it turned out pretty well actually, but if you see me out in the streets and disagree, please keep your mouth shut or open it up only to lie to me!

• Since it’s already so disgustingly hot here in Philadelphia, Peggy’s rainbow-colored cooling vest is back, and this year’s debut coincidentally but conveniently fell on the first day of Pride. To all my friends and family celebrating: Happy Pride! We love you and Peggy says “you’re welcome!” for being an ally.

• Currently watching: Tim and I finally watched Pluribus and of course it was great. Give Rhea Seehorn all the awards. We as a people are so blessed that Vince Gilligan had a mid-life crisis that spun off into so many great TV shows.

• Currently reading/recently read: Coffin Moon by Keith Rosson, The Leftovers by Tom Perrota, The Elements of Eloquence by Mark Forsyth, Dr. No by Percival Everett, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, Miles From Nowhere by Nami Mun, Riding in Cars with Boys by Beverly Donofrio.

• Currently listening to a lot of: Thelma & The Sleaze, a band I saw on a poster outside a venue in Atlanta last year. I looked them up because I thought the name was fun, and it turns out their music is pretty fun too!

OK that’s it, time to end abruptly with no special sign-off or cute little callback or anything at all that would tie this all together. Bye!