Talking as Fast as I Can

by Lauren Graham

  The interview was conducted more like a scene from Law & Order in which I was the perp and he was trying to trap me into making a confession. He opened up his notebook and methodically went down his list of questions.

  HIM: On page 9 of your book, Franny has trouble with her curly hair. I read that you’ve had trouble with your curly hair.

  ME: Yes, well, a bad hair day is sort of something many women can relate—

  HIM: On page 11, Franny waitresses. Have you ever waitressed?

  ME: Yes. Many actors, when they’re starting out—

  HIM: On page 39, Franny has an audition that doesn’t go well. Have you ever had an audition that didn’t go well?

  ME: Yes, well, it’s a book about a girl who wants—FINE! I DID IT OKAY? JUST HANDCUFF ME NOW.

  Fairly quickly I felt he’d written the article before I ever showed up. I don’t mean this literally, but he might as well have. He’d decided that my fiction was nothing more than a bunch of thinly veiled diary entries, and therefore deemed it unworthy—not “real” writing. I could have just stayed home in my pajamas.

  I didn’t need him to pat me on the head and tell me I’d done a good job. I didn’t even need him to like what I’d written. But this wasn’t supposed to be an article reviewing the book. This was supposed to be an article about the process and how the book came to be, and I found it strange that he’d come prepared mostly to dismiss the accomplishment itself.

  “Thanks for doing this,” I singsonged in an overly cheery tone as he left.

  “Don’t thank me until you’ve read it,” he grumbled over his shoulder.

  What was it I’d encountered that day, and those other times? Why would anyone assume I’d need help with, or take credit for, something that wasn’t my work? Was it…sexism? In my Hollywood life, the sexism is so rampant that it’s easy to spot. Every single feature film I’ve ever done was directed by a man, for example. Women who are hotter than me get parts I am up for all the time. What am I going to do—sue the Screen Actors Guild because I’m not Megan Fox? It is what it is. I do what I can to effect change within the system. But this brand of condescension was something new, and seemed woman-specific somehow. Maybe it had to do with being an actress, a job some people think is full of pretty dumdums. Male actors don’t seem to face the same bias. Even though my former boss Ron Howard practically grew up on sets, when he was first starting out as a director I doubt anyone ever asked who “helped him” direct Tom Hanks in Splash.

  In contrast, a few months after the book was published, I got word that Ellen DeGeneres’s production company, AVGP, wanted to option it for television. There were discussions about who should write the script. Some advised me to stay open to suggestions, that to give the book its best shot at being made into a TV show it should probably be adapted by someone who’d actually written a TV script before. This made complete sense to me. But when I sat down with Ellen and her producing partner, Jeff Kleeman, and asked whom they were thinking of to do the adaptation, they looked at me funny. “You,” they said, like it was the most obvious answer. That one word opened so many doors.

  Now, that script was a delight to work on, but it didn’t get picked up at the CW, so both opinions about who should write it probably had merit. But that experience led to a chance to write a pilot the next year, and that led to a feature agent at my agency taking an interest in me, which led to the opportunity to adapt the book The Royal We with my producing partner and husband, Mae Whitman. When Mae and I went to pitch the book to Terry Press, the head of CBS films, Terry looked at me and said: “Who’s going to write it—you?” I nodded, and she said “Okay,” giving me another first chance to do something I’d never done before.

  I guess what I’m saying is, let’s keep lifting each other up. It’s not lost on me that two of the biggest opportunities I’ve had to break into the next level were given to me by successful women in positions of power. If I’m ever in that position and you ask me, “Who?” I’ll do my best to say, “You” too. But in order to get there, you may have to break down the walls of whatever it is that’s holding you back first. Ignore the doubt—it’s not your friend—and just keep going, keep going, keep going.

  Oh, and in case you were wondering, writing Someday, Someday, Maybe in the first place led to the book you’re reading right now. And all of those other writing assignments, plus the filming of Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, are why the next novel is taking so long. But don’t worry. In the meantime, you can pre-order my next book, Monkey Doodles, coming soon to a store near you!

  Later in this book I write about the many wonders of returning to Gilmore Girls, but here’s an early example of the kind of mysterious and magical thing that sometimes occurred during the filming of the reboot.

  This time last year, I was an unemployed actor who’d recently said goodbye to a TV show. There’s always a confusing transition when a show ends, especially one as enjoyable as Parenthood. The end of any job, especially a long-running one, puts you in a kind of fog. I wandered around having trouble making simple decisions, like should I work out first today or drop off the dry cleaning? Dry cleaning first, right? Yeah, that’s the way people normally—no, maybe work out first? You go from having your days completely regimented to everything suddenly being up to you, and it’s jarring. I wondered about things my brain hadn’t had time to ponder while working—like how people do that thing with their hands where they connect their fingertips in a way that makes the heart shape. You know that thing—it’s in ads and on book covers (hi, Sarah Dessen!) and in commercials, and everyone knows about it, right? Well, no one did that when I was growing up. I never saw it before, say, the last ten years. Maybe it just wasn’t a thing where I lived. But I’m pretty sure no one I knew anywhere did it. Could it be possible we’ve been on the planet this long and yet we only just thought of it? And if so, what took us so long? Doesn’t this deep thought just blow your mind? Now you have something to talk about at the dinner table tonight.

  The problem is that this kind of ungrounded period isn’t great if you have, say, a writing assignment or three you’re supposed to be working on. I was inching toward the finish line on a few things when I really needed to be footing or mile-ing it in that direction. Instead, my mind meandered over topics such as “Do you ever wonder why people in Los Angeles cross the street so slowly but people in New York City always sort of jog-run?” But life can’t stay a Seinfeld rerun forever. Eventually, whether you’re ready or not, limbo comes to an end because you must meet the deadline, or you have to get back to work, or, at the very least, because the aimless wandering phase is replaced by another actor favorite, the “IT’S OVER IT’S ALL OVER I’LL NEVER WORK AGAIN” phase.

  But as Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life began, there was suddenly a pileup of due dates the likes of which I’d never experienced before. First, without much notice, I was back to filming—and not those cushy Parenthood hours either. I wasn’t sleeping in a bison carcass like Leo or anything, but I had suddenly returned to a very heavy workload. Obviously, this book was due. Not to mention the book that was due before this book was due. Then Mae and I sold The Royal We, and now that script was due too. I wished I could get back all the days I’d spent looking at vintage tile tables on Chairish and weighing the pros and cons of what time of day to drop off dry cleaning. Back then I’d had too much time on my hands; now I had too little.

  One morning in the makeup trailer I was talking to Dan Bucatinsky, who plays Jim Nelson, the real-life editor of GQ magazine, in the show. He’s also a screenwriter, and his book Does This Baby Make Me Look Straight? is a hilarious and heartfelt memoir about adoption and being a gay dad. For a while we just dished and shared writer woes. I talked about the various projects I was juggling and my worry over making my deadlines. Then I said something out loud that I’d never quite articulated before: “I know I’ll get them done; I just really wish I had a less painful process.”

  Dan dipped his chin down to peer at me over his
glasses. “Lauren,” he said in a tone that also meant puh-lease, “call Don.”

  Remember Don Roos and M.Y.O.B., the show I was on when I first got Gilmore Girls? Don Roos, the co-creator of Web Therapy, the writer of the screenplays Marley and Me and Happy Endings and Boys on the Side? Well, Don and Dan happen to be married. Don is funny and smart and I admire his work, and he’s been a successful screenwriter for a long time. He must be doing something right. So I called him, figuring at the very least we’d have a fun lunch, even if he couldn’t help with my procrastination problems.

  I could have easily spent months and years staring at blank documents and staying up all night as I trial-and-errored my way through a few finished pages and many more images of vintage tile tables. But in the magical way that things just kept falling into place over the course of returning to the show, my question was answered on the very first try.

  I had lunch with Don, and he explained his way of working to me, a method that’s been so effective he actually wrote it up to give to the many writers he mentors. It’s his variation on the Pomodoro technique, called Kitchen Timer, and it’s transformed the way I write—I now spend fewer hours being way more productive. It gave me structure where there was none. It has changed my life as a writer, and I hope it changes yours too. I love it so much that it makes me want to touch my fingertips together in that wonderful symbol we just invented in the last decade. (But seriously, what took us so long?)

  KITCHEN TIMER

  The principle of Kitchen Timer is that every writer deserves a definite and doable way of being and feeling successful every day.

  To do this, we learn to judge ourselves on behavior rather than content. We set up a goal for ourselves as writers that is easy, measurable, free of anxiety, and, above all, fail-proof, because everyone can sit, and an hour will always pass.

  HERE’S HOW IT WORKS:

  1. Buy a kitchen timer, one that goes to 60 minutes. Or use a timer app. Or tell Siri to start a timer for 60 minutes.

  2. We decide on Monday how many hours of writing we will do Tuesday. When in doubt or under pressure or self-attack, we choose fewer hours rather than more. A good, strong beginning is one hour a day, but a half hour is also good, or twenty minutes. Some of us make appointments in our calendar for these hours, as if they are lunch meetings or business calls.

  3. The Kitchen Timer hour:

  No phones. No texts. We silence ringers; we turn our phones facedown. It is our life; we are entitled to one hour without interruption, particularly from loved ones. We ask for their support. “I was on an hour” is something they learn to understand. But they won’t respect it unless we do first.

  No music with words, unless it’s a language we don’t understand. Headphones with a white noise app can be helpful.

  No Internet, absolutely. We turn off our computer’s Wi-Fi.

  No reading.

  No pencil sharpening, desk tidying, organizing.

  4. Immediately upon beginning the hour, we open two documents: our journal, and the project we are working on. If we don’t have a project we’re actively working on, we just open our journal.

  5. An hour consists of TIME SPENT KEEPING OUR WRITING APPOINTMENT. That’s it. We don’t have to write at all, if we are happy to stare at the screen or the page. Nor do we have to write a single word on our current project; we may spend the entire hour writing in our journal. Anything we write in our journal is fine; ideas for future projects, complaints about loved ones, what we ate for dinner, even “I hate writing” typed four hundred times.

  When we wish or if we wish, we pop over to the current project document and write for as long as we like. When we get tired or want a break, we pop back to the journal.

  The point is, when disgust or fatigue with the current project arises, we don’t take a break by getting up from our desk. We take a break by returning to the comforting arms of our journal, until that in turn bores us. Then we are ready to write on our project again, and so on. We use our boredom in this way.

  IT IS ALWAYS OKAY TO WRITE EXCLUSIVELY IN OUR JOURNAL. In practice it may rarely happen that we spend the full hour in our journal, but it’s fine, good, and right if it does. It is just as good a writing day as one spent entirely in our current project.

  6. It is infinitely better to write fewer hours every day than many hours one day and none the next. If we have a crowded weekend, we choose a half or quarter hour as our time, put in that time, and go on with our day. We are always trying to minimize our resistance, and beginning an hour on Monday after two days off is a challenge.

  7. When the hour is up, we stop, even if we’re in the middle of a sentence. If we have scheduled another hour, we give ourselves a break before beginning again—to read, eat, go on errands. We are not trying to create a cocoon we must stay in between hours (the old “I’m sorry, I can’t see anyone or leave my house—I’m on a deadline” method). Rather, inside the hour is the inviolate time.

  8. If we fail to make our hours for the day, we have scheduled too many. Four hours a day is an enormous amount of time spent in this manner, for example. If on Wednesday we planned to write two hours and didn’t make it, we schedule a shorter appointment for the next day. We don’t add an hour to “make up” or “catch up.” We let the past go and move on.

  9. When we have fulfilled our commitment, we make sure we credit ourselves for doing so. We have satisfied our obligation to ourselves, and the rest of the day is ours to do with as we wish.

  10. A word about content: This may seem to be all about form, but the knowledge that we have satisfied our commitment to ourselves, the freedom from anxiety and resistance, the stilling of that hectoring voice inside us that used to yell at us that we weren’t writing enough—all this opens us up creatively.

  Good luck!

  Don Roos

  Don’t you hate it when one of your friends starts dating someone fabulous, or gets a cool new job or an unexpected promotion, and they’re so excited and happy and they can’t stop talking about how lucky they are and how amazing everything in their life is, and generally just won’t shut up about it? That’s what me telling you about the experience of doing the show Parenthood is going to be like.

  Lauren, please. You could never be as annoying as that.

  But allow me to try.

  We already know that I have a very special relationship that blossomed at work, which may seem like good fortune enough, but it doesn’t stop there. I also fell in love with every other cast member there. As TV siblings, we didn’t really resemble one another, but I so enjoyed the days we spent together, and the dance parties on the set with Peter and Dax Shepard and Erika Christensen. My pretend in-laws Monica Potter and Joy Bryant and Sam Jaeger were, as people and actors, a fun and impressive bunch. The kids of Parenthood were gracious and sweet and smart, each and every one. Craig T. Nelson and Bonnie Bedelia were perfect as our fearless leaders—I grew up admiring their movies, so getting to work with them was even better. And I have a very special bond with my TV children, Mae Whitman and Miles Heizer; when we go out to eat, we still call it “family dinner.”

  I loved the writers and directors and my boss, Jason Katims, who was the person responsible for establishing this wonderful environment in the first place. Our assistant directors (ADs) kept the schedule running smoothly, and were kind and funny and pretended not to notice if I was late for my call time. Larry Trilling, one of our executive producers, is a guy I knew from college, and he became an even better friend at work. The whole place truly had a family feel.

  Our cameramen were also vital to the success of the show. They helped illuminate our work by focusing on behavior they found interesting: someone’s hands drumming nervously on a table, a subtle eye roll between spouses, Zeek puffing gleefully on his cigar. In most cases our scenes were shot proscenium style, meaning the action took place on one plane, with two or three cameras filming across from us, almost as if we were on stage. This gave the actors an incredible amount of freedom—mu
ch more than a regular television setup allows—and it made room for a great deal of collaboration.

  Well, the people may have been great, but we’ve all watched enough Access Hollywood to know that the work hours that go into making a sixty-minute show are grueling, right?

  Sorry. Can’t help you there. The hours on Parenthood were some of the best I’ve ever had. Within the excellent framework of the scripts we were given, we were also allowed some freedom with regard to dialogue. This meant we never got bogged down in having to do take after take, needing to say every single word exactly as written. This was especially helpful during our large family dinner scenes, and added to the texture of what a big family sounds like—people talking over each other in a messy, authentic way. We were aided in this by the work of our excellent sound department. I had to go in and rerecord a line maybe three times in six years, which is remarkably rare. In fact, everything ran so well, and we finished early on so many days, that in our last two seasons they actually cut a whole day out of our production on each episode, yet we still managed to finish at a reasonable hour. I wrote an entire book in my trailer during my free time. Monica Potter launched a beautiful line of home goods. Dax Shepard wrote and directed a film. Joy Bryant started a clothing line. Erika Christensen cycled seventy million miles across the city. We had satisfying jobs that also gave us room to grow, travel, and have lives.

  To an exceptional degree, there was thought and care put into our well-being. The catering was excellent. Some days we had a vegan chef, on other days a Hawaiian poke bar. There was a smoothie station and freshly baked cookies every day at lunch. Once in a while we’d have an In-and-Out truck (awesome burgers), Kogi truck (Roy Choi’s tasty Korean fusion tacos), or Van Leeuwen artisanal ice cream cart as a special treat. There was a costume parade on Halloween, carol singers at Christmas, and on our last day of the year a mariachi band during lunch to send us off.