Later in this book I write about the many wonders of returning to Gilmore Girls, but here’s an early example of the kind of mysterious and magical thing that sometimes occurred during the filming of the reboot.
This time last year, I was an unemployed actor who’d recently said goodbye to a TV show. There’s always a confusing transition when a show ends, especially one as enjoyable as Parenthood. The end of any job, especially a long-running one, puts you in a kind of fog. I wandered around having trouble making simple decisions, like should I work out first today or drop off the dry cleaning? Dry cleaning first, right? Yeah, that’s the way people normally—no, maybe work out first? You go from having your days completely regimented to everything suddenly being up to you, and it’s jarring. I wondered about things my brain hadn’t had time to ponder while working—like how people do that thing with their hands where they connect their fingertips in a way that makes the heart shape. You know that thing—it’s in ads and on book covers (hi, Sarah Dessen!) and in commercials, and everyone knows about it, right? Well, no one did that when I was growing up. I never saw it before, say, the last ten years. Maybe it just wasn’t a thing where I lived. But I’m pretty sure no one I knew anywhere did it. Could it be possible we’ve been on the planet this long and yet we only just thought of it? And if so, what took us so long? Doesn’t this deep thought just blow your mind? Now you have something to talk about at the dinner table tonight.
The problem is that this kind of ungrounded period isn’t great if you have, say, a writing assignment or three you’re supposed to be working on. I was inching toward the finish line on a few things when I really needed to be footing or mile-ing it in that direction. Instead, my mind meandered over topics such as “Do you ever wonder why people in Los Angeles cross the street so slowly but people in New York City always sort of jog-run?” But life can’t stay a Seinfeld rerun forever. Eventually, whether you’re ready or not, limbo comes to an end because you must meet the deadline, or you have to get back to work, or, at the very least, because the aimless wandering phase is replaced by another actor favorite, the “IT’S OVER IT’S ALL OVER I’LL NEVER WORK AGAIN” phase.
But as Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life began, there was suddenly a pileup of due dates the likes of which I’d never experienced before. First, without much notice, I was back to filming—and not those cushy Parenthood hours either. I wasn’t sleeping in a bison carcass like Leo or anything, but I had suddenly returned to a very heavy workload. Obviously, this book was due. Not to mention the book that was due before this book was due. Then Mae and I sold The Royal We, and now that script was due too. I wished I could get back all the days I’d spent looking at vintage tile tables on Chairish and weighing the pros and cons of what time of day to drop off dry cleaning. Back then I’d had too much time on my hands; now I had too little.
One morning in the makeup trailer I was talking to Dan Bucatinsky, who plays Jim Nelson, the real-life editor of GQ magazine, in the show. He’s also a screenwriter, and his book Does This Baby Make Me Look Straight? is a hilarious and heartfelt memoir about adoption and being a gay dad. For a while we just dished and shared writer woes. I talked about the various projects I was juggling and my worry over making my deadlines. Then I said something out loud that I’d never quite articulated before: “I know I’ll get them done; I just really wish I had a less painful process.”
Dan dipped his chin down to peer at me over his glasses. “Lauren,” he said in a tone that also meant puh-lease, “call Don.”
Remember Don Roos and M.Y.O.B., the show I was on when I first got Gilmore Girls? Don Roos, the co-creator of Web Therapy, the writer of the screenplays Marley and Me and Happy Endings and Boys on the Side? Well, Don and Dan happen to be married. Don is funny and smart and I admire his work, and he’s been a successful screenwriter for a long time. He must be doing something right. So I called him, figuring at the very least we’d have a fun lunch, even if he couldn’t help with my procrastination problems.
I could have easily spent months and years staring at blank documents and staying up all night as I trial-and-errored my way through a few finished pages and many more images of vintage tile tables. But in the magical way that things just kept falling into place over the course of returning to the show, my question was answered on the very first try.
I had lunch with Don, and he explained his way of working to me, a method that’s been so effective he actually wrote it up to give to the many writers he mentors. It’s his variation on the Pomodoro technique, called Kitchen Timer, and it’s transformed the way I write—I now spend fewer hours being way more productive. It gave me structure where there was none. It has changed my life as a writer, and I hope it changes yours too. I love it so much that it makes me want to touch my fingertips together in that wonderful symbol we just invented in the last decade. (But seriously, what took us so long?) KITCHEN TIMER
The principle of Kitchen Timer is that every writer deserves a definite and doable way of being and feeling successful every day.
To do this, we learn to judge ourselves on behavior rather than content. We set up a goal for ourselves as writers that is easy, measurable, free of anxiety, and, above all, fail-proof, because everyone can sit, and an hour will always pass.
HERE’S HOW IT WORKS:
1. Buy a kitchen timer, one that goes to 60 minutes. Or use a timer app. Or tell Siri to start a timer for 60 minutes.
2. We decide on Monday how many hours of writing we will do Tuesday. When in doubt or under pressure or self-attack, we choose fewer hours rather than more. A good, strong beginning is one hour a day, but a half hour is also good, or twenty minutes. Some of us make appointments in our calendar for these hours, as if they are lunch meetings or business calls.
3. The Kitchen Timer hour:
No phones. No texts. We silence ringers; we turn our phones facedown. It is our life; we are entitled to one hour without interruption, particularly from loved ones. We ask for their support. “I was on an hour” is something they learn to understand. But they won’t respect it unless we do first.
No music with words, unless it’s a language we don’t understand. Headphones with a white noise app can be helpful.
No Internet, absolutely. We turn off our computer’s Wi-Fi.
No reading.
No pencil sharpening, desk tidying, organizing.
4. Immediately upon beginning the hour, we open two documents: our journal, and the project we are working on. If we don’t have a project we’re actively working on, we just open our journal.
5. An hour consists of TIME SPENT KEEPING OUR WRITING APPOINTMENT. That’s it. We don’t have to write at all, if we are happy to stare at the screen or the page. Nor do we have to write a single word on our current project; we may spend the entire hour writing in our journal. Anything we write in our journal is fine; ideas for future projects, complaints about loved ones, what we ate for dinner, even “I hate writing” typed four hundred times.
When we wish or if we wish, we pop over to the current project document and write for as long as we like. When we get tired or want a break, we pop back to the journal.
The point is, when disgust or fatigue with the current project arises, we don’t take a break by getting up from our desk. We take a break by returning to the comforting arms of our journal, until that in turn bores us. Then we are ready to write on our project again, and so on. We use our boredom in this way.
IT IS ALWAYS OKAY TO WRITE EXCLUSIVELY IN OUR JOURNAL. In practice it may rarely happen that we spend the full hour in our journal, but it’s fine, good, and right if it does. It is just as good a writing day as one spent entirely in our current project.