FINAL DRAFT 1

Maddy Gross
Creative Writing
When Youll Admit Youre A Writer
You sign up at the organization fair to write for your universitys comedy sketch show,
but you say youll only do it if you dont get into any a cappella groups. You wont get into any a
cappella groups. Youll show up at your first writers meeting and suggest one bad joke about
beanbag chairs, then take it personally when six people out of about a dozen dont laugh.
Remember who they are. Youll pay special attention to their laughter now.

Less than a month later, youll have the worst day of your life (unless you count your
brothers first suicide attempt). On this day, you will wake up hungover, get dumped by the boy
who two days ago said I love you for the first time, and learn that your friend Matt has been in
an accident. Hes in a coma now. Youll remember how he got you through your first heartbreak.
Youll wish more than anything he could talk you through this one, too.
But for whatever reason, youre alive. Youll take this feeling as pressure: pressure to
actually get living, instead of spending your days in your dorm, slowly accumulating layers of
dust, both regular and Cheeto. The pressure

to do something will build.

So youll end up just desperate and just ballsy enough to pitch your own sketch. Youll
pitch a one-pager, a bumper, intending to create the smallest target for criticism. But people
laugh. Holy shit, they laugh. For that moment, you rule the room. You are funny and witty and
beautiful and people certainly didnt try to run you over with shopping carts in middle school,
dammit. Every beautiful actor and tired writer around the U-formation of wooden tables will be
your friend for the night. Youre hooked. When your sketch gets the green light to be produced,
youll be so happy, you actually call your parents.
Your dad is excited to hear that youre happy. Your
mom is relieved. At least one of her
kids has to be happy. Your brothers third suicide attempt shoved you into the good kid role by
default. You cant be sad, so you dont. You dont feel at all. Sometimes, you sterilize the bad

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feelings with equally bad vodka, but dont worry. Youll go through a lot less Smirnoff once
comedy becomes your new drug of choice.
Three months and three produced sketches

later, youre on top of the world; you own this

shit. Matt isnt dying and your heart isnt broken and you never got bullied in middle school.
You are funny and witty and beautiful. Out of curiosity and a little bit of cockiness, you sign up
for a creative writing class. A tiny part of you wants to break out of your self-imposed box, in
which youre only a writer if you put the word comedy before it. On the first day of class,
your laughter-whore heart sinks when you realize this kind of writing is going to deal with the
F-word: feelings.
For the fiction unit, youll write a thinly-veiled short story about your brother, who might
as well have killed himself already, and how your mom and dads love tasted like leftovers. You
will realize how many of your sketches have abandonment jokes. Swallow this realization as if
you baby-barfed in your mouth. People will find humor in your shitty short story. You dont
even realize you left it there.
Youll assume the poetry unit will be easier, yet youll end up writing about laundry,
burritos, infertility, anacondas, and your brother who might as well have killed himself already.
You wont know how to take it in class when no one laughs. You wont know how not to want
them to. Meanwhile, youll start your takeover of your sketch shows writers room. You know
head writer is a fairly powerless title, but youll crave it, twice as hard as you did when you got
that first laugh. Youll learn why funny is funny and how to explain it to writers. To an audience.
To those whose laughter makes you funny and witty and beautiful.

You will turn 20. Your friend Matt will die. You will feel guilty for aging in light of this.
Despite its oddity, you will see nothing funny about his death by freak bike accident. You will
run out of jokes. Youll repeat my soul is dead over and over to your friends. Youll look at
them pleadingly after you say it, expecting them, somehow, to laugh. You need this to be a joke.
You will miss Matts funeral and feel sorry for yourself as you sob into a pia colada over spring
break. Since youre out of jokes, you write long, arrhythmic poems on the subject. This is your

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way to extract your feelings like rotting teeth. You refuse to feel, but hope that maybe an
audience will.
There will be no audience when you break down in your dorm at 2 p.m. There will be no
audience when you break down outside Chick Fil A at 2 a.m. No one will laugh, no one will cry,
but youll pull out your phone and hastily type a note in the notepad. This is where youll sort
everything out: in snippets of melodramatic poetry and crude prose. For better or worse, you
have words now. They dont bring back Matt. They dont un-break your heart. They dont scrub
out the coffee-grounds taste of your parents leftover love. They dont un-depress your brother
who might as well have already killed himself.
But youre a little less afraid of the F-word. You have a place to feel, alone yet openly
and safely. Sure, you still need laughter to season the leftover love with (you need it like
goddamn heroin), but no one has to laugh when you tell them your soul is dead. Youre okay
with the uncomfortable silence. And when anyone asks you what you do, you tell them youre a
writer.