When plans change (and change and change)

Oh, hi friends!

Sometimes circumstances will force your hand. 

Maybe 100-degree-and-humid temps will keep your indoors.
Maybe your downsizing company will send you back on the job market.
Maybe you’ve suddenly gotta move, or you’re graduating, or a project falls apart.

Navigating these circumstances isn’t easy! (Understatement.)

But one thing is almost always true: the circumstance, no matter what it may be, is temporary.

You will get a do-over. And you get to choose when to start.

Follow the leaves
Follow the light
Follow the palm fronds
Into the night

Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

Well, this is perhaps the best bit of writing advice I’ve heard all year, a response from Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman-Palladino:

What did you learn from “Roseanne” that you brought to your later shows?

Always make the big small and the small big. And it’s not about the plot, it’s about the people. That’s what “Gilmore” always was, and I feel the same way with “Maisel.” It’s a bigger show conceptually than “Gilmore” because you’re in a time when women had different obstacles to overcome than they do now, even though a lot of the obstacles are still the same, unfortunately. The truth of what the characters are feeling has to be the most important thing you put out there. I learned that on “Roseanne,” and I’ve taken it with me through my entire career. 

(Plot is my biggest bugbear when writing scripts and plays, but her conviction that you should write people-first is heartening to me. Btw, I wrote a Gilmore Girls spec before the Netflix reboot existed. It’s a lil' dated now, but here it is!)

Btw, did you know Mindy Kaling remade Four Weddings and a Funeral into a TV series for Hulu? Available on July 31. Yeah, some of these lines are cheesy. And yeah, I’ll eat 'em up like they’re Humboldt Fog on a sesame cracker.

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Thanks, as always, for reading.

Love, Kara