by Felicia Day
And all that time I was lying to my support group. I told the ladies, “Sure! I’m writing!” when I wasn’t. Yes, I could have filled all those newfound minutes with actual work, but I had no confidence in myself. I was a fraud. Who was I to pick up a pen and expect anything good to come out of it? I expected perfection as soon as the pencil hit the paper, and since that’s impossible, I couldn’t get myself to start. Then I felt guilty about not starting, which made me want to start even less. And with no game to bury the feelings, I got very depressed. No wonder I didn’t book any acting jobs in the last half of 2006. No one wanted to hire a clinically depressed person to sell snack foods.
Before one Chick-In meeting, I forced myself to work through some of my shame. I picked up a pencil and wrote, “Main character, played by me . . . Codex. Real name Cyd Sherman. Shy. Neurotic. Gaming addict.” Then another few weeks went by, coasting on that feeling of You did some writing! Go reward yourself!, until it petered away into guilt again. Rinse, repeat. Despite that dismal pace, I DID get some work done on the pilot, but it took the whole fall season just to write down descriptions of the main characters. I thought, Don’t worry. Chick-In, I’ll complete this thing by 2050, for sure!
One positive thing through that agonizing, limping process was that I created the kernel of something . . . not sucky. The clichéd mantra when you start writing is, “Write what you know,” so I brainstormed all the kinds of people I’d encountered during my life of online friendships. I wrote down ideas and incidents that made me laugh and wince, and it congealed into a set of six characters (like Friends!) who seemed to go well together. No one was based on one person entirely (my old raid leader Autumna was the closest in the acid-tongued Asian college girl, Tinkerballa), but they all fell into categories of people from my experiences. Clara, “The Mom.” Vork, “The Rules Master.” Bladezz, “The Douchey Teen.” Puck (later renamed Zaboo), the “Overly Enthusiastic and Doesn’t Recognize Personal Boundaries” dude. Building fake people brought me snippets of joy, even though the creative process was absolute torture. And at the end, I looked at the six main characters I’d created and thought, I want to see these people do things together! That was in October. Annnnnnd then I stalled again. I might have started playing WoW. I’m not telling.
I didn’t tell the ladies at Chick-In, either. I glossed over that part at our meetings. They seemed happy when I told them about all the fake progress I was making, so I just kept saying, “It’s going great!” I didn’t want to derail THEIR progress with my backwards momentum. I was thinking about them with my lies. Yeah, that’s it.
Cut to December 20. I went to our last Chick-In meeting of the year. I faced the other ladies in the circular booth (Trina was finally pregnant, yay!), and I decided I had to come clean.
“I’m sorry, but I have to tell you guys something. I haven’t been writing for the last two months. I’ve . . . been . . . playing . . . video games again.” I pulled the tears back into my eyes with sheer brain-suction willpower as I admitted what a jerk I was to the supportive, no-one’s-a-failure-here environment.
“We understand!” “You didn’t have to lie, it’s okay!” “Why did you feel the need to lie? We wouldn’t have judged you!” They were all so nice about it.
Which only made it worse.
“It’s just hard. I start to write something, then I look at it and think, ‘This is gross and stupid,’ so I stop. I can’t write two words down without erasing it.”
“You’re great at writing sketches; think of each scene as a sketch,” said Kim.
“But there are so many of them, and I don’t know what happens next. I can’t think of anything for the characters to do . . .” Okay, there was the breakdown. HI, TEARS! It got estrogen awkward at that point with a lot of hugging.
“You should take the holiday off. Don’t write, try to enjoy yourself.” Jane was so nice, like a Mother Earth priestess. But as wonderful as she and all the supportive ladies were, I left the meeting disgusted at myself. My fears had made me a liar. My friends deserved more from me. I deserved more.
I don’t know if it was a cumulative effect of the breakfast trauma, or a mini aneurysm, but in the middle of the night something inside me snapped. I woke up at 3:54 a.m. with a full-on panic attack and a huge epiphany:
I was going to die someday. I was going to END.
And I know you can say that to yourself a million times, Live for the now!—I mean, it’s the message of half the Ben Stiller movies ever made—but you can’t understand something unless you FEEL it. Deep in your bones.
For some reason that night, I felt it.
A vivid terror gripped me. I was mortal, and I was going to die. I was twenty-eight years old. Old. Near death, in 1557 terms. Every sleep was bringing me closer to the grave, and if I didn’t do something with my life RIGHT NOW, the totality of “Felicia Day” would add up to nothing.
This might sound extreme, but that voice is my day-to-day inner dialogue to myself anyway, just magnified a healthy percent. A milder version accompanies me everywhere I go. It always has. I’ve never been in a car accident, because on every street (especially skinny neighborhood ones) I always picture a child or animal dashing out in front of my car, trying to commit suicide on my front grill.
Anyway, as the cat started to cough up a hair ball in the next room, at 4:00 a.m. on December 21, 2006, I decided that if I didn’t accomplish something huge by the end of the year, I would die a failure.
The next morning, I sat down at my computer and took a deep breath. “I will write a TV pilot before January 1. It may be the worst script ever written, but I will finish it, or . . . there isn’t any ‘or,’ stupid girl. It will happen. This pilot will happen.” And I started typing.
I would love to say that given my resolve, the muses flowed through my fingertips to produce a script of utter perfection. That once I put pressure on myself, I rose to the occasion and found joy in every bit of dialogue I gave my characters.
That is NOT the case.
Every second of writing that script felt like walking barefoot over shards of glass. I would write a bit and then I would sob, wanting desperately to erase what I’d just written. Oh God, that’s not a scene, no one acts like that. I have no idea what to make happen, who should talk next? I hate myself. Then I would force my fingers to type more, every word feeling like I was bleeding from every orifice. I was engulfed with fear of making mistakes, of writing something stupid, of encountering story problems I couldn’t think my way out of. I was, in short, terrified of the process. It was not fun.
What drove me to continue? Sheer obstinate grit.
While everyone else on the planet celebrated Christmas (except those people who don’t, and that’s fine, no insult intended), I wrote. A few times I made myself laugh at a joke I’d written, and then I’d get to the next scene, not know what to write next, and collapse again. Side benefit, in Codex, I was able to craft a lead character as neurotic as I was! Every fear I had about my own weakness, uncertainty about my future, and how others would judge me I poured into her reactions and dialogue. I brainstormed every funny thing that had happened to me while gaming over the years and twisted the incidents ever so slightly to fit the new world I painted. I ate nothing but takeout pizza and Doritos for days, until even my dog thought I had terrible breath.
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, Ki
m 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!”