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It is a truth universally acknowledged that everybody’s got a script in L.A.
I never forgot this fact after moving away but was immediately reminded of it when I hopped on a plane to LAX and saw a knock off Jacob Elordi fight our flight attendant about putting his laptop away for takeoff. He spent the flight furiously scrolling through Final Draft and flipping back and forth between his script and a pitch deck. Maybe he was working under a deadline, but I was getting secondhand anxiety just watching him.
I didn’t come to LA to work on a script or a job. I came for fun. Included in “fun” would be networking, interviewing, and talking shop with a lot of incredible people. The first few days of the trip these things had me on a high. I talked about my prospects – a promising recent interview, a script I’ve had brewing, a novel that’s almost ready for a wide release, and a year of solid employment.
Two years ago, a fellow assistant told me, “Life is just headlines” on the side of a film set in Bensonhurst. It struck me as incredibly profound. If life is just headlines, I was arriving in L.A. with good ones. It felt good to have good things to report over coffee and “lunch on the lot.” I handed my ID to the woman manning the Universal Studios gate and drove onto the lot feeling like I owned this town. I zoomed from one coffee meeting to the next in an adorable red rental car, confident in my career and ability to use my driver’s license. Being back in L.A. made me think about just how much I’d grown from being a fresh USC grad schlepping everywhere on the bus.
But like most highs in this town, mine didn’t last.
After a week in the City of Angels I started to question if my headlines were all that significant. If I was any different from every other assistant in this town with a script collecting dust in a drawer. In a year of what seemed like career highlights, I hadn’t been writing all that much. My promising interview didn’t pan out. I started to look out at the city as I sat stuck in traffic with the melancholy of Robert DeNiro in Heat.
If you haven’t seen the film, trust me that it is no way for a hot girl on vacation to behave!
My secret hope for my trip was that it would help me start writing again. I would restart this Substack in the place I began it. I would find inspiration walking around by the ocean under a clear sky. The spirit of Didion would possess me after I experienced driving on the freeway with the windows down. Watching the sun set behind palm trees, I’d finally come up with an idea worth writing down.
“When did I stop being interesting to myself?”
This is what I wrote in a notebook while sitting in the garden of the Getty Center Museum. In truth, I’ve never stopped being interesting to myself. Anyone who went to coffee, brunch, dinner or drinks this week can tell you that I always find plenty to talk about when asked how I’m doing.
“When did I start to fear what I have to say won’t be interesting to all of you?”
This isn’t the right question either. Fear never stopped me before. Not when I was writing about graduating, moving away from L.A., going to theater openings, getting my own apartment, learning to drive, and getting stuck in a three-foot Verona hedge maze.
“When did I stop wanting to share myself with you?”
Maybe that’s the real question. When did I start experiencing life and feeling as though those experiences were only mine? When did I lose faith in my ability to build on them, bend them, or break them down into something sort of resembling art. What have I done to kill my creativity? Where, along the way, did I lose the joy I used to find in writing?
The only answer I can come up with is that comparison is the thief of joy.
I fear I’ve become self-conscious in the worst kind of way as a writer. I’ve looked at my writing lately and only seen it as a means to an end. A means of “making it.” I compare my headlines to other people’s so inevitably whatever I’ve been writing never feels like enough.
The other day, I spent the afternoon at Stories, an adorable bookstore and coffee shop where I found an old essay collection by Tennessee Williams. I bought it and sat down to read in the back garden. After one essay, I set the book aside to open an email full of script notes that immediately killed my mood before I’d even read them. Some of the notes were good and some I disagreed with. Intellectually, I knew I should use what could help me and leave the rest. I’d never met the person giving notes. They weren’t personal.
And yet, I sat in traffic at sunset on my way back to my friend’s apartment taking every word personally. Letting myself get stuck on them and wallowing in feeling like a failure in spite of every positive word that was said. I came home and ranted to my friend.
She reassured me, comforted me, and ended by saying, “maybe if it’s not fun and you don’t want to do it anymore you shouldn’t.”
Her words stopped me. “It’s not fun right now, but I still want to do it.”
If I didn’t write, I’d be letting myself down. I’d be giving into fear and giving up one of the great loves of my life out of embarrassment to be one more person with a script in L.A.
So yesterday morning, I went out to the beach, struggled to find parking, read how the success of The Glass Menagerie thoroughly depressed Tennessee Williams, and then set about writing again. I bought a coffee somewhere I could sit and forced myself to start, because I’m the only one who can save myself from this ridiculous form of self-sabotage I engage in from time to time.
I came to L.A. for inspiration, and I found it. This city has never been kinder to me.
I spent a beautiful afternoon basking in sun at the Getty and then another at Griffith Observatory. I had a spiritual experience looking into the eyes of a whale breaching the ocean on a boating tour around Ventura. Then, I had an equally significant experience looking into the eyes of Connor Storrie when he asked me if a WeHo parking lot pay station was broken. I swam, soaked up the sun, and found a perfect vinyl copy of Pet Sounds, all without getting a parking ticket.
Tennessee Williams writes, “It is only in his work that an artist can find reality and satisfaction, for the actual world is less intense than the world of his invention, and consequently his life, without recourse to violent disorder, does not seem very substantial.”
I have to disagree. I think instead, writing allows me to enjoy my life. To make sense of it and recognize just how substantial and magical it can be. Once I put it all down in print, I realize just how pointless comparison is.
I’m more than just another L.A. writer with a script.
I’m a New Yorker with a substack too.
Recommendations for This L.A. Era:
The Getty (basic but I’d never been)
Driving up the hill to Griffith with a moody romantic song blasting though your speakers.
Island Packers whale watching tour!
Stories Books and Cafe on Sunset Blvd.
Hitting the beach in January
Bridgerton Season 4
Rockaway Records (they’re appointment only but have incredible, rare stuff for collectors)
Record Safari
Uncle Bill’s Pancake House in Manhattan Beach
Spending time with friends <3