I Also Enjoy a Nice White Russian

It makes me crazy to dwell on things that are not as I would have them, yet which I am powerless to change. Exhibit A: AMPTP driving the WGA to strike one week after I started as a writers' assistant.

I must have had thirty or forty conversations about this between November and January. Most of them began with someone enthusiastically observing how great it is that I landed this job. Some of them (usually with striking writers) began with an expression of regret at the terrible timing.

In both cases, I would nod and agree, and say "I'm trying not to think about it, but I'm sure it will all work out." I tried not to despair, but I also tried not to fixate on some distant future point when all would be well. I tried to live by the principle expressed in "The Big Lebowski": The Dude abides.

Now we're back at work and it is finally sinking in: I'm a writers' assistant. On frickin' "Mad Men."

Dear God. How did that happen?

How. Did. That. Happen?

If you're not me, or someone like me, my shock might be hard to understand. Let me try to explain.

In order to write for television, several things have to happen. First, you have to realize that writing for television is actually something that people do. I myself did not figure this out until 2001. (Yes, I am dumb.)

Second, you have to figure out that you, personally, want to write for television. This typically takes the form of compulsively writing spec scripts and entering them into contests. Some people win these contests and are instantly yanked into the industry through a training program or the like. (The biggest of these is the ABC/Disney Fellowship, which comes with generous year-long stipend and typically leads to an assignment on an actual show. It is hugely competitive, but it has launched a number of successful writers, including Jane Espenson.)

Most people, however, don't win anything with their spec scripts, except maybe credit card points at the copy shop. At this point, you have to figure out some way to not give up. This is harder than it sounds. Giving up is pretty easy. It doesn't cost anything, you can stay right where you are, and you never have to kill yourself meeting another deadline. Except for the part where it makes it impossible for you to ever write for television, giving up is awesome.

Not giving up sucks. It's expensive, time consuming and feels dangerously like wasting your life. It usually involves moving to Los Angeles (or New York, if you fancy yourself a comedy writer.) Worse, it usually means doing something which is not writing for television, in hopes that it somehow leads to writing for television. I managed to combine these two things by moving to Los Angeles to attend USC, but that's not an option for everyone.

Step three, not giving up, is terrible, but it's a walk in the park compared to the fourth thing that has to happen in order to write for television:

The Waiting.

Nobody is going to pluck you off the street and install you on a writing staff. You can work on your stuff and keep submitting your scripts and meet with your writing group, but mainly, you have to Wait. And it's not like Bay Cities Deli, where you take a number and you get called when your turn comes. You could Wait a week, you could Wait a year. There's no way to know.

Every day, you're working as a waiter or an office temp or a barista. In your spare time, you're writing. But mainly, you're Waiting. And the Waiting can kill you. It makes you move back home with your parents. It makes you take a well-paid day job which leaves no time for writing. It makes you consider business school.

And that is why my new job shocks me. Because working as a writers' assistant is the easiest Waiting there is. All day, you work with writers. You listen to them talk and write down their ideas. And you get paid to do it -- as if you wouldn't do it for free, or possibly, even pay them.

(It really is like paying a drug addict to attend an all-you-can-shoot heroin banquet.)

It feels to me like a bolt of good fortune that rocketed out of the heavens and into my front lawn without warning.

From the outside, I gather it looks a little bit less like random good fortune. I've heard more than one person observe that my willingness to work for free is shockingly rare among my peers. And, among people who will work for free, I'm told it is hard to find individuals who can do the same task over and over without additional instructions -- what one former consultant-turned-assistant called "retention of processes."

In any event, I continue to think that I owe this job to the generosity of my boss and the folks who recommended me, with just the lightest sprinkling of luck. And I am hugely, inexpressibly grateful for this chance to prove myself. I don't care what happens next, or if these leads to something else. I'm doing what I love, and that's all that matters.