|
Hi, readers. From now on, I am going to recap my week (or an event from my week) from inside the writers’ room, as well as a parallel one from outside of the room. Here we go… In the room… In “my” writers’ room, the writers see every word I type on two different television monitors that are hooked up to my computer… which is both good and bad.
It’s good when I don’t make any mistakes or correctly spell words I didn’t even know I knew; bad when I do the opposite. As a writers’ assistant, you (literally) get analyzed, criticized, and critiqued all day. And if you’re good, they notice the mistakes way more than the non-mistakes. So you may be impressed that you spelled “superfluous” right on the first try, but they’re more focused on the extra “s” you accidentally added to “bus.” That said, my week started out with being snapped at for misplacing a period. It went something like this: “Ariel, get that period outside of the quotation mark!” I politely say it goes inside, while the writer again says it goes outside. Then another writer sides with me about it going inside, but Writer #1 disagrees and glares at us both as though she is saying, “How dare you.” All this makes me want to go outside – as in outside of the room (not inside or outside of a quotation mark, although that didn’t sound bad either at this point). Now, I am all for grammatically correct sentences – but we have bigger problems right now, like how our character is about to solve this murder, not solve the “Where the f*** does the period go?” conundrum (though maybe she could tell us). I remind the writers that I was an English major (Honors English, even), but it’s a no-win situation, at least not for me. “Ariel, we have to think of the character,” Writer #1 says. I was, I think to myself. “Where would she want the period?” Writer #1 adds. What? I wonder. And I say that out loud. Oops. Sometimes, it’s better to just keep your mouth shut (we’ll go over that in a future entry about “Writers’ Room Etiquette”). I get another deadly glare from Writer #1 and put the period outside of the quotation mark, cringe at the grammatical error, and call it a day. Where was “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” when I needed it? Or my fifth-grade English teacher, for that matter? So that’s how my week started – and it ended with a lot of drinking (see below). (And, incidentally, our heroine did solve the murder, but you probably knew that already.) Out of the Room… As a writers’ assistant, like it or not, the writers’ room follows you outside of the office, too. When you go out, everything becomes work: a missing letter in a store’s sign here, a grammatically incorrect phrase there (Apple’s “Think different” comes to mind; I guess that was their point, though). You can’t help it. You become obsessed and want to fix all the words that need fixing, like by adding “ly” to the end of Apple’s “Think different” billboards. So not only is going out bad, but going out on dates – especially with a fellow writers’ assistant (particularly one on a competing show) – is even worse. At first, it’s great. You instantly have a lot in common: You both type for a living, work long hours, and trade ideas on how to take notes more efficiently. And who doesn’t think it’s hot when a guy knows the difference between “it’s” and “its”? You couldn’t write up a better match (you’re already thinking of the cute, comma-ridden children you’ll produce)… or so you think. But then the menu comes and you notice a typo (a lack of a comma before “and” in “beef, vegetables and rice”); he disagrees, saying a comma is not always necessary before “and.” You talk about this for way too long and wonder why you even left work in the first place. You decide you need a drink – if only to change the subject - and look at that part of the menu, full of specials like “Strawberry Sunshine” and “Mojito Madness.” Before you know it, the two of you are pitching on new names for the drinks, one-upping each other non-stop. “Strawberry Sunshine” soon becomes “Strawberry Seduction” to you, “Strawberry Blonde” to him. Though this seems like fun at first, just think -- you haven’t even ordered dinner yet. Try date after date of this (I did), then come talk to me when it never stops and you want to turn him off like you did your computer at the end of the day. I’m not saying all writers’ assistants are awful to date; I’m only saying smart ones are. And that it’s hard to leave your work behind. Like they say, “You can take the writers’ assistant out of the room, but you can’t take the room out of the writers’ assistant.” It’s true. Unless you date a bad writers’ assistant. There’s an idea. Now excuse me while I go make a phone call…
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
|
 - large.jpg)
