Lauren in Edinburgh: chapter two
Hello again! Welcome to episode two of Lauren in Edinburgh (A spin-off of Emily in Paris, not written by a forty-year-old man with zero clue as to how young women actually talk or act).
Dare I say I feel as if I’m pretty much settled, at least I feel that way today. I could feel differently tomorrow and that’s perfectly normal! Something people forget to tell you when they make their TikToks about packing up all of their belongings and moving to some far-off land is that it’s not all sunshine and roses when you first move somewhere. Especially Scotland… because it rains a lot. Kidding. It rains a lot less than I thought it would. As I’m sitting here it’s blue skies and the kind of cold that makes a Floridan want to put on four layers. But I’m tough, so I’m only wearing three. Should I write an entire blog about the weather? That is what you’re here for after all, isn’t it?
Seriously though, here’s a little thing I learned recently. That old cliche of being comfortable with the uncomfortable, there’s actually some validity to it.
One of the things I’ve realized since starting my MA Screenwriting Program at Edinburgh Napier University is: it’s good to be nervous. Dare I say, it’s even necessary. And nothing is more nerve-racking than sharing your writing with a brand new group of people who you really desperately want to like your work (and be your friend). In the words of Michael Scott, “I want people to be afraid of how much they love me .” But not really. But maybe just a little.
Anyway, one of our first assignments was to write a two-minute comedy sketch that we’d have our peers read aloud in front of the whole class. While I love attention, (you might’ve gotten that from the opening line where I treated this blog like it was a TV show about me in Grad school) I was very nervous about this. My dream is to be a comedy writer, so having to share my comedy sketches with my peers is scary, to say the least. My worst nightmare is to share an idea I think is funny only to get crickets. My worst, worst nightmare is that I get pelted with tomatoes and everyone tells me to leave the country. My best nightmare is that the whole class boos when I enter the room. Most people would find this very sad, but I find it very funny. I digress. . .
There’s so much fear that comes with writing something you feel really represents who you are as a person, your perspective, your sense of humor. When that class finally came, I was so nervous. More than I wanted to be. I sat there waiting for my name to be called as I watched my peers’ sketches be performed and met with laughter. There were a few sketches I wish I’d written and I just thought to myself, Oh shit, you’re not that funny. They’re not going to like it. They’re not going to get you. They’re going to think you’re too weird.
My name was called and I picked two people to go up and read it out. They fully committed to it and people laughed! Hallelujah. There were no crickets present and I was tomato stain-free. I was surprised even though I felt proud of what I’d written. I got great feedback and as a result, I felt a bit more confident.
I realized afterward just how much I was overthinking things. When I first wrote the sketch I was happy with it. But when I sat there in class I couldn’t shake the feeling that it wasn’t good enough.
I completely forgot the fact that this was a class, and that even if my sketch was only funny to me, it would not make me a failure. Although it would have haunted me for years, that’s for sure. The more deeply I thought about it, I realized that my overthinking was a symptom of anxiety I have about wanting a career in the TV industry, especially as a woman interested in writing comedy.
There’s this invisible pressure to be funny because some people still think women aren’t (none of my loved ones think like this, thank God).
Even though my friends and family couldn’t be more supportive, there is a part of me that thinks I’m going to say or write something wildly unfunny and somehow give validity to that bullshit of a belief. But if this exercise taught me anything, it’s that as soon as I focus on the things that make me laugh, and notice what makes other people laugh, that pressure fades away.
After that class, I realized that I put all this pressure on myself to succeed because my goals seem so huge, and a lot of the time, really out of reach. So much so, that any failure feels like a setback. When in actuality, me being nervous or finding out an idea I had isn’t working, or script I’ve written needs work, are all just helping me grow.
