I was maybe eight or nine years old when I started writing stories. I’d fill notebook after notebook with my careful loopy cursive, letters fighting to stay inside the lines. I drew pictures to complement my little tales, clunky illustrations in the style of Japanese anime (of which I was youthful fan). What the stories themselves were about I have no idea anymore, but I was big on the Sweet Valley Kids series and later, The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, so they were probably along the lines of kid drama and mysteries.
As I remember it, writing in those days was pure delight. I was too young to understand writer’s block, so I never encountered it. And it didn’t really matter if what I was writing was good or truthful – in any case, how would I have known if it was or not? As long as I was telling a tale I thought was interesting, I was happy.
Alas, we all age out of that innocence.
As we get older, we’re presented with the rules and standards of the world: It’s supposed to be done like this, not like that. Those over there are good, these here are bad. These examples and ideas form the scaffolding of our existence, helping us to structure our thinking and behavior. They also affect how we create, and to me writing is and always has been an act of creation. So it became important to learn things like grammar and figures of speech, and styles and traditions of writing. I was told that by learning the foundations, practicing, and experimenting, I’d become a better writer over time.
I like to think I did get better. But just as that apple of knowledge got Eve kicked out of paradise, my learning more about writing made the process a lot less idyllic. Experience breached that once-blissful and unadulterated childhood mental garden. These days, writing is work. Not just in the literal sense, although I do write a lot for a living. But even getting an essay like this together can feel like pulling teeth.
Don’t get me wrong; I still love writing. There’s nothing quite like taking my tangled thoughts and lining them up, letter by letter, into ordered rows of words, sentences, and paragraphs that then – by some miracle! – turn into pictures inside someone else’s head. It’s what makes the act of creation feel like magic.
It’s just that magic doesn’t come free.
I’ve been thinking about creating lately because I’m deep in a project at work. If you know me or if you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while, you’ll know I work for a daily news podcast at the Wall Street Journal. For the past couple of months I’ve been immersed in a new series we’re trying to air in May, and the experience has been a stark reminder of how much effort goes into these narrative shows: The research, the outreach, the dozens of interviews. And that’s before the onerous process of actually taking everything we’ve gathered and transforming it into coherent episodes that also somehow need to be accurate, engaging, surprising, and beautifully produced.
Quick caveat: The privilege of getting to use my imagination and creativity for a living still surprises me most days, and I am so grateful that my whole job is to tell interesting, important stories in a medium I find captivating.
But at the end of the day, even creative work is still work. Here’s generally how we make a podcast series: Early on, we write out our “north star” – the central idea of the series, the question we’re trying to answer. Then we estimate how many episodes it’ll take to get that answer. (Does this really need to be an eight-part series? Or can we do it in four?) Then we come up with a rough outline for each episode, identifying characters we want and what their purpose would be in the greater narrative. What is each voice bringing to the story? We reach out to those people, interview them. All the while keeping an ear out for the best tape: The zingers, the surprising or funny anecdotes, the emotional moments.
Then, what our team calls “tape time.” Each producer gets assigned an episode, and they select the tape they think should go in that episode, arranging it in an order that more or less makes narrative sense. We listen together as a team and give notes. Those notes become the basis for the script. We send that script to the fact checker, the lawyers, our executive producer, and any editors or reporters from the print side of the Journal who may have been involved or have some expertise on the subject. At some point we come up with a title, a tagline, and artwork. Once we’re satisfied with the script, the host records all the lines. The producer pops them into the episode, and the engineer – who’s been composing music this whole time – scores and cleans up and beautifies. Then there’s at least one more round of edits just to make sure we didn’t miss anything.
Then we do it all again for episodes 2, 3, 4… you get it.
For this project, we’re smack in the middle of the process, about three weeks from dropping our first episode. I spent six or so hours this week on a video call with a producer and an editor on our team, the three of us doing nothing but rewrite a single script. How do we transition from this super personal story to the business plot? Can we somehow show the stakes higher up in the story? Should we cut this voice out entirely? Do we need a comment from the company here? Is that the right word for this sentence?
This process sometimes makes me want to tear my hair out. I stare at the script, stand up, sit back down, pace around, go out for a walk, rummage the pantry for snacks. I obsess over sentences that don’t sound quite right, and hum our remixed theme song under my breath all day. I quail at our hubris – who do we think we are? why should we be telling this story? – and question everything: My skills, my value to the team, my worth as a human. And then I go back to my desk and keep working.
That there is the “magic” of creating as an adult. The part where, after we’ve gone through the frustration and fear of failure and banging our heads against the wall, we go back to the work at hand and power through. And I’m using writing and podcasts, but this is true for anything that starts as nothing and becomes something: art, music, dance, events, computer programs – hell, even spreadsheets.
It’s not always worth it. Sometimes what I create falls short of my expectations, or it doesn’t get the attention I think it deserves. Sometimes I realize I made mistakes I can’t take back. But despite all that, I’m still drawn to creating again and again. And I think it’s because in my heart there’s a still little girl who’s scribbling happily away, unmindful of what the world thinks or says. In the end, it’s her I’m trying to keep alive with every story I tell.
Small victories 🏅
Dylan and I have booked both our venue and planner for our wedding! It sometimes feels bananas that we’re reserving all this stuff almost a full year in advance. But then I look at our to-do list for the next 11 months and remember that there’s a lot on it. So it feels great to check things off!
Hot mess recs 🔥
Sam agrees wholeheartedly that any creative pursuit involves both pain and pleasure. And since she and I have been devoting more time to other writing projects, she’s been making her way through Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott. It’s a riot, filled with helpful advice and a raw honesty. For example, Anne writes: “[G]ood writing is about telling the truth . . . But after a few days at the desk, telling the truth in an interesting way turns out to be about as easy and pleasurable as bathing a cat.”
Our household’s latest TV fixation is Tokyo Vice, a series based loosely on the real-life exploits of journalist Jake Adelstein. Adelstein was the first foreigner hired to work at the Meicho Shimbun, one of Japan’s largest newspapers. The show follows Adelstein as he tries to cover the Japanese mafia in the late 90s and early 2000s. The (bilingual) dialogue sometimes veers toward the hokey, but it’s a nuanced drama that has all the things: Action, suspense, romance, steamy sex scenes, immersion in a seedy underworld, and – naturally, it’s the 90s! – lots of cigarette smoking. I was also impressed to learn that the actor who plays Adelstein learned Japanese in four months (!) for the role.
Despite the teasing, indecisive weather (I held off packing away my sweaters another week because the temperature dropped suddenly last weekend 🥶), spring is upon those of us in the United States. Which means ‘tis the season for lawn games! I recently learned to play a delightful one called Kubb (pronounced KOOB, I believe) – it’s Swedish, it involves wooden blocks, and literally anyone can play it. Highly recommend!
Send us a note 💌
What gets your creative juices flowing, at work or elsewhere? Maybe you write poems, or collage, or refurbish furniture, or make gorgeous slide decks! Whatever it is, we want to hear about it – who knows what you’ll inspire? Send it over to goshdarnmess@gmail.com.
Until next time!
Jess