Commence three days of sobbing.
After a while, I was too paralyzed to decide anything at all. I woke up every single morning filled with dread, knowing I was going to have to sit down at my laptop and fail again. It’s hard to understand how someone can get so incredibly depressed about the act of typing letters together, but I did it! That Stay Puft Marshmallow of Doom hovered over me for months. I destroyed a keyboard with my tears once. No joke: the left set of keys just stopped working. Okay, it was a combo of snot and tears and some Doritos dust, but same difference. Anxiety bled over into every aspect of my life (it wouldn’t be the last time; hello, last Thursday!), and I had to be coaxed through the process by gentle and understanding friends.
Eventually, I got a version of the script done, and others around me helped me make it better. It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t the best season, but we got through. And the year after, I wrote our fifth and BEST season in just ten days on vacation in Hawaii. So . . . that turned out better. (My inner muse loves them mai tais!)
Fast-forward three years, that same “You can’t do it!” spirit returned with a vengeance. Hey, are you feeling happy or confident? Let’s fix that! It was spring of 2012, in the middle of the Geek & Sundry launch, and amongst THAT storm of learning-curve ridiculousness, Kim and I were locked in months-long negotiations with The Guild cast to return the next season. I couldn’t start writing the script with the possibility I would have to eliminate one of the main characters if one decided not to return. That put me, even before lifting my pen, into a state of panic.
“What do you mean we need to draft another version of the contract?”
“One of the cast’s managers has a comment about the overtime provision.”
“That will take another two weeks! Cancel the season, I don’t want to write it.”
“Felicia, calm down.”
“I can’t calm down! I have a script I haven’t started that I need to finish! Give them whatever they want; I’ll pay it out of my own pocket! Oh God, heart attack.”
This attractive shrill tone in type has NOTHING on my attractive shrill tone in person. But I’d never learned how to deal with problems any differently. I grew up ruled by constant anxiety, and when my fears proved a tiny bit possible, even just a hint, I panicked and lashed out at myself and everyone around me. All in all, a real treat to work with! Many times, people in my life, including Kim and my Guild director Sean Becker, who headed most of the show after season one, tried to get me to enjoy the process of making the show, but underneath I couldn’t let go of the idea that my dysfunctional anxiety was the REASON for our success. Like broody writers and their penchant for hard drinking. The idea that we could succeed without my obsessive problem-anticipating skills never sunk in. (To be super honest, I think I was just too proud to admit I had a problem. Denial is strong with this one.)
After two months of freaking out and bashing my head against the wall and pulling the plug on the season many times over, I finally found a theme in one of the guest characters I had created, Floyd Petrowski, a superstar game designer, who inspired me to write.
FLOYD
When I first started doing this, there were no stakes, no pressure. I did it because I loved escaping and creating things. Then we got successful and people loved us. But now . . . it seems like they’re tired of what I do. And I can’t think up anything different enough for them to like me anymore. Total failure-ville.
(DOESN’T SOUND PERSONAL AT ALL, RIGHT?!)
In the end, my character Codex helps him deal with his own anxiety and confronts his internet critics to remove what’s blocking him in order to be able to create. Too bad I couldn’t figure out how to write her into my own life, too.
Bit by bit, I stole enough time over the summer to write the script. But it wasn’t fun. Instead of living the last creative days of my show with joy, they were filled with desperation. Because underneath it all, I knew the end was coming. I infused anxiety into every scene, like when I was hard-core into knitting and promised everyone I met I’d make them a scarf, even if I didn’t like them. So I’d sit at home, knitting resentment and frustration into each row. “Why did I tell that random girlfriend of a colleague I’d make her a scarf out of CASHMERE?! I don’t even know her last name!! Knit, hate, knit, hate, knit, hate!”
As we shot and edited the show, every episode we completed felt like a nail in the coffin of my career. The closer we got to completion, the larger the gaping mental chasm of “Who is Felicia Day after The Guild ends?” grew. Paranoid thoughts plagued me day and night.
I’ll never make anything this good again.
Existence, what’s up with that again?