Up until I was in college, I didn’t even really realize that TV writing was a job I could have. It took being a pre-med student, not loving it, realizing that “not loving pre-med” could literally kill someone, and then a lot of soul searching for what it even is that I loved doing. The summer after my first year of college, I read a book of essays by my favorite writer, Nora Ephron, and thought, “She writes funny things? That’s a way to live your life?” and started writing humor essays and Shouts & Murmurs style pieces then. I saw that so many humor writers had gone on to write television and, when I did my research, realized that that was my ultimate goal — to write comedy for television.
What advice do you have for college students who are looking to pursue the television industry?
The advice I often give to young writers is to write as much as your schedule permits. I used to say, “Write for several hours every day,” but then the response was often, “What if I don’t have time to?” “What if I have a job or am going to school?” “Please stop holding up this Starbucks line, nobody asked you to talk about writing.” To which I say, “What is a line but a crowd in single file waiting for advice?”
The real, other, advice is to reach out to people in the industry whose work you love. One of the best things I ever did was reach out to writers and producers who were making my favorite shows and writing my favorite humor pieces or essays and told them how much I loved what they were doing. Reading and engaging with the work you enjoy, studying them as much as possible, and then practicing as much as possible (for your situation) are what helped me the most and made me obsessed with what I’m doing, in a kind of weird scary way.
What was your first job in the industry? What did you learn from it?
My first job in the industry was as a Staff Writer on the Netflix show Friends from College. Since it was my first ever entertainment job, I learned about every part of making a show from it – breaking stories, writing outlines, writing jokes, etc. It was definitely a surreal experience going from just writing alone in my bed to writing on a full staff, learning from some of the funniest people in the world.
Something you wish someone had told you about the industry?
THERE ARE GOING TO BE MANY SNACKS AND WATCH YOUR SODIUM.
What is your writing process like?
My writing process for New Yorker humor pieces were pretty methodical. I would wake up super early, around 5 or so PST, because that’s 8 am EST and news is simply bustling. I would comb through headlines and find some that a lot of people were talking about, and I tried to come up with a take for them (for example, my piece “Leaving The Trump White House Mad Libs” was a response to every news article about another staffer leaving the administration) that would resonate in some capacity. Then, I’d write a draft of it and send it to Emma Allen, the brilliant editor of the Shouts section of the New Yorker. She would edit the piece, show it to me within an hour or so, and then later that day (depending on the piece’s timeliness) it would be published online. A lot of my writing process is deadline driven – I like to work within a certain timeframe because it’s easy to agonize over a piece. At a certain point, you just have to get your writing out there.
What is your favorite thing that you’ve ever written?
Unfortunately, I have a very annoying cop-out answer to this which is that everything I’ve written over 48 hours ago makes me cringe like I’m rereading a diary entry from puberty. Hopefully, I will grow out of this.
What shows made you fall in love with television? What shows are you currently loving?
A few shows that made me fall in love with television were 30 Rock, Parks and Rec, Friends, Everybody Loves Raymond (honestly makes me laugh so hard) among so many others. Currently, I’m obsessed with Atlanta, Detroiters, Kimmy Schmidt, and the show I’m working on right now called Speechless on ABC (which I am allowed to say because I only just started working on it this season which means I am still in the window of being its superfan).
Unsung Heroes 