Tina Fey Fantasy

I like Tina Fey. In fact I think she is brilliantly funny, talented and frankly I’m totally envious of her career. As great as she is, there is a narcissistic part of her that thinks I’m equally as funny and talented as she. Maybe not today, as she has honed her craft over the years, but perhaps we had the same skillful seeds within us.

And I have such an ache in my heart for the writing I am not doing and the success I do not have which I attribute to the fact that I am not disciplined enough. A liberal psychopharmacologist readily prescribed me Concerta, a medicine for ADHD which I would have downed by the fistful ten years ago, I think. Now it makes me slightly speedy and feels like cheating. But if it got me to where I wanted to be…But I have not taken it in months so I remain unqualified to speak to its verity and powers it may or may not have had on my once budding writing career a decade earlier.

Two nights ago I dreamt I left a dinner of preschool parents to tell Tina Fey of my passion for writing and how much I wanted to be a sitcom writer. “I know, I know,” I said when she asked me if I knew of the demands and the salary. In my dream the salary was paltry and I dismissed the demands not thinking of my husband and kids. She told me if I really wanted to write to prove it to her and she told me to write a spec script for what seemed like the Pamela Anderson sitcom but then evolved into 30 Rock.

I sat in her office or apartment which had an incredible view of the pyramid at Museum of Natural History and some bluffs (it was a dream) until three in the morning as she guided me on plot development. “Now write it for tomorrow,” she said scribbling her phone numbers.

I hesitated briefly then acknowledged that success required sacrifices, including but not limited to postponing sleep or hobnobbing with the class parents. I felt empowered, opportunity within my grasp.

And yet I still have not looked at the rough draft of my novel hibernating on my computer.

When I awoke in the middle of the night last night, I briefly debated if I should seize the quiet and fire up the laptop. That thought lasted but a minute.

Writing is like exercise, the more one does it, the easier it is to continue, the better one, or at least I, feel and then it becomes addictive. While I can satisfy my sugar cravings, I cannot satiate this one.