New Girl (Tuesday Meeting & Lillypads): Movies about Writing

This brings us to the end of the “New Girl” blogs by looking at two episodes from the final season. The season takes place three years later with Nick and Jess returning from a European book tour, Cece and Schmidt raising a precocious girl named Ruth Bader Parikh-Schmidt, and Aly and Winston are pregnant (which makes Aly very grumpy).

In the episode Tuesday Meeting, Nick is in the middle of a writer’s block. His latest book is not meeting with the high standards expected by his publishing company, but he’s trying to cover that up with new social media shots and using a great deal of fake confidence. All of this bravado is replaced by Nick burning his manuscript after his editor tells him to start a new series.

Nick and Winston run into Schmidt whose daughter hasn’t slept in days, meaning Schmidt and Cece haven’t slept in days. Nick is in search of new ideas outside of the Pepperwood Chronicles. The friends try to rebuild his inspiration by telling Nick that he wrote good quotes in his idea notebooks when really they stole the first thing they found from the Communist Manifesto.

In a Three Men and a Baby moment, they all work for hours trying to get Ruth to fall asleep. Meanwhile, Jess and Cece are going to a lunch where CeCe keeps falling asleep and Jess is considering leaving her new job because it’s nothing but busy work. Nick tries to tell Ruth a story at her request and he starts giving colorful versions of childhood memories. He decides that this will be his new book.

In Lillypads, the main plot is a delightful romp of attempting to get Ruth into a prestigious preschool. Seriously, this whole thing is a brilliantly written example of how amusing yet terrifying children can be.

Nick’s plot line involves him going to the bar that he used to own in order to write. In order to meet his deadline, he hired a man to punch him in the face if he doesn’t have 20 pages by a certain time. Of course, he found this gentleman on Craigslist and Winston points out that he would have punched him for free.

Winston comes to Nick for help with being on the stand as a police detective then realizes that he’s given Nick a way to procrastinate. Winston makes a nice speech here.

“Nick, you procrastinate when something is important to you, because deep down, you don’t think you’re good enough to get it done . . . So, of course when you get the opportunity to write something about your own life, the first thing you do is choke. You know how I know? Well, because for some reason, I’m your oldest friend. So I hope you get punched in the the face today. I really do. And then maybe you’ll finally see that you are good enough to be everything you want to be.”

I’m just gonna leave that nice thought there.

New Girl (Fives Stars for Beezuz): Movies about Writing

When we left the on-going saga of the “New Girl” characters Nick and Jess, Jess had runaway from Nick and Nick was finding new success being a writer. Spoilers ahead. And here we go.

This episode involves Jess about to tell Nick she wants to give their relationship another chance, but at a reading of his book he tells fans that the two main characters based upon him and her will never get together. His audience of teen readers are instantly crushed as he goes into an explanation about how adult relationships are complicated and he can’t force second chances between characters based on real people.

Heartbroken by his explanation, Jess pretends she is not back in L.A. and hides out at the house of Schmidt and Cece. She makes plans to move away and be away from the complicated adult relationship. She also get involves in the Winston and Aly B story about contacting Winton’s dad. “You can move with me to Portland!” Jess tells them and Winston responds with a resounding no. “Portland hella white”. All of this goes on through the chaos of discovering that Cece is pregnant and everyone accidentally found out before Cece.

Meanwhile, Schmidt goes with Nick to meets an editor and publisher interested in the Pepperwood Chronicles. The editor is more willing to make the deal if Nick kills off Jess’s character in the next book, a moment that makes Nick run to find the real-life Jess.

The episode does have a happy ending for what no one was sure would be the show finale (they get one more season). But I’m more focused on the interactions between Nick and the publisher that signs him. Their first encounter is very unprofessional and Nick downright rude.

Then when they have the meeting in the man’s office, Nick tells him in no uncertain terms that all of the publisher’s ideas are bad and asks if he’s ever done this before?
Yet, in the final season they are in business together. Pepperwood as a series became so popular that Nick’s publisher and his husband accompany Nick and Jess on European book tour! How? How would that possibly be a thing? How would any agent, publisher, or editor ever once allow a writer to speak to them like that and in up in business together for three years? I thought this show was supposed to take place in the real world, not cuckoo-bananas writers do whatever they want world.

Image property of Fox

New Girl (Socalyalcon vi): Movies about Writing

Nick is preparing for the Southern California Young Adult Literature Conference and Jess is helping him. I wanted to do this episode as a blog especially because conferences, library appearances, and conventions are the indie-published author’s bread and butter.

Nick spends too much time deciding what he’s going to wear for an outdoor, tented event. I’ve never done that. Never ever. Ever. Okay, I have, but I live in a state will unbearable weather. You need to pick a top that will breath, but not show the sweat of the 110 degree weather.

The look of this made-up convention is legit. Rows of booths with single tables and different color schemes with people milling about, some in costume. As is it 2021 and there has not been one of these events in almost a year for me, I got weirdly nostalgic looking this over-crowded TV mimicry of what is essentially a chunk of my life.

What the TV show does not reveal is the strain of selling in an environment with people who are all in the same boat as you. There’s the conversations, the elevators talks, the short pitches, and the awkwardness. The wonderful, business awkwardness.

Image owned by Fox

New Girl (Young Adult): Movies about Writing

Let’s power through some more of these Nick as an author episodes of “New Girl” for the month of January. This episode has a lot going on (Schmidtt is hiring an assistant based on pretentious qualifications, Cece is starting the moving process, and Winston finds out his cat has been cheating on him with another family), but A-plot involves Jess trying to get her students to treat her the same way they did as a teacher now that’s she’s their principal. She finds in when she overhears several junior high girls discussing their love of Pepperwood after reading the copies Jess left in the school library. Quick note - again, how are these books surviving a single reading as we know they were just printer pages glued into cardboard?

Nick is going through writers block, yet is not welcoming the idea of catering to teenage girls. Then, when the young ladies express why they love his book, he gets excited about writing once again. However, Jess has to come to terms that her students want to discuss some heavy and adult subjects around her because of the book’s content. Wait. Why did she put copies in her school’s library? Are there angry parent phone calls? I feel like there would angry parent phone calls.

As a writer watching this episode, I get how the excitement of these young fans breaks Nick’s block. However, I don’t really agree with him bouncing ideas for future books off of them. That could get into some legal gray areas like fan fiction does.

As for Jess’s experience through this, she becomes “too cool” because she’s not the member of school staff who is roommate’s with the kids’ favorite author. Of course, she loses all authority and has to punish Nick and his tween girl fanbase. Nick then convinces the students to apologize for their behavior. This isn’t so much about writing, but I feel this is good lesson about dealing with teenagers.

Image belongs to Fox

New Girl (Glue): Movies about Writing

In the next episode in the saga of Nick Miller, writer, we find Nick in the attempts of self-printing. I am going to keep this one very short because otherwise my rants about the sheer ridiculousness of it will go on until doomsday.

Nick receives a publisher rejection and falls into despair. Reagan suggests self-publishing and printing the book himself after she finds a bookstore to sell them. Not in a normal, send to a professional printer and order a set number of copies way. Nope. That’s just too easy for a sitcom. Jess and Nick decide to MAKE THE BOOKS THEMSELVES! This involves a lot of glue that they get high off of the fumes from and then silliness is abound and sitcom shenanigans continue in their scripted sitcom ways.

I’m not focused on the shenanigans. I’m focused on the reality of this entire freakin’ scenario! Let us begin with the idea of a local bookstore agreeing to sell a book through a phone conversation and then requesting thirty copies! No bookstore would request THIRTY COPIES of a first-time author’s work unless it was part of a publishing/agency deal and no publisher or agent would take that risk with a first time author. No consignment allows for thirty copies. Especially from a small, local operation. They can’t afford to lose that much shelf space. As the owner of the bookstore saying in the episode, “Please, buy things. We’re dying.”

Let me explain the reality of the consignment process for those writers who have not delved into this yet. It usually starts with a contract that includes a long list of rules and conditions. These conditions generally includes a length of time they are willing to carry the title, information about what they will do with your unsold copies (do they get sent back to you, do they clearance them out, is there an expense for you to come get them, etc.), and how much they make off of the sale’s price of each copy sold. This document will then ask you to give all of the book’s information like the title, summary, author’s name, publication date, and ISBN. I don’t want to be condescending, but my point about the ISBN is going to come up again later, so I’m aware that most writers know what that is yet I’m going to explain it. Also that was a really long sentence that I’m not planning on fixing. The ISBN is like the social security number of a book. Only your title has that specific number and it is number you purchase or your publisher purchases for you as a part of your book. No book is legitimately published without out and technically does not exist in the sales world if it doesn’t have one.

This imaginary consignment of Nick’s book is also including a reading of the book the same night as the deal was made. What bookstore is going to ask for a reading from a new author that they have never met AND request that reading be the same day as the consignment? In the words of the tenth Doctor Who, “WHAT?!” You need time to advertise that crap! To build an interest and get people to come to the reading. Plus, most small bookstores don’t ask a new author to do a local reading until they’ve seen the book. Maybe we’re suppose to assume there was a cancellation becuase realistically no one should be coming to Nick’s unplanned, unadvertised, unknown book reading.

Now for the actual assembly of the book, a process as I stated previously Jess and Nick do themselves using printer paper and glue. HO-LY SHIT IS THIS UNREALISTIC!!!! The first time I saw this episode, I needed a drink. Upon re-watching, I need a sedative.

First, they literally just printed thirty paper copies of what looks like a 800 page book! That would cost more than just sending it to the printers. Plus, did the check their margins? Widows and orphans! DID THEY TURN OFF THE WIDOWS AND ORPHANS! I NEED TO KNOW THIS FOR MY OWN SANITY (see Sidney Reetz’s formatting guide if you are uncertain of what I speak). How are the pages staying together? They didn’t do them in folded chunks like a real book. It just looks like a stack of paper. Did they glue every sheet of paper together at the edge? Or did they just straighten the stack and glue the whole thing to the (what looks like) card stock cover?

Oh and let us discuss that cover. They have a drawing of a lobster in either crayon or colored pencil (it’s actually a good drawing, but it makes the book look more little kiddy or like one of those business books that are trying to trick people with common sense disguised as jargon). Then they have pasted on the title, the spine, and Nick’s name. The back cover is blank. No blurb (how will anyone know what the book is about?), publisher, and NO ISBN! How will the book be sold without an ISBN? No bookstore would take this! Nick would barely be able to sell that book out of the back of a creepy van without an ISBN! I mean, he could try, but most readers aren’t into creepy van purchases.

I said I’d keep this short so I’ll stop ranting now. Nick sells his first book to a 12 year old (then remembers that he wrote a graphic sex scene), Jess looks at pop-up books while high, happy ending, blah blah blah. Plot line to be continued.

New Girl (The Cubicle): Movies about Writing

Time to continue the tale of NIck Miller of the sitcom “New Girl” and his attempts at becoming a published author.

When last we left our slacker hero, he’d returned from New Orleans with his first completed manuscript about detective Julius Pepperwood. The episode entitle “The Cubicle” involves Nick trying to convince his girlfriend, Reagan, to actually read this finished product. There are of course other things happening in the episode. Jess is feeling guilty that her current boyfriend has to pay for hospital bills for an accident that was technically her fault. Cece is running her modeling agency from the loft living room (yes, she and Schmidt bought a house but they spend most of season 6 renovating it). And Winston accidentally recruits Cece’s only client for the police academy.

The episode starts with Nick suggesting he use Cece’s new client to be on the cover of his book and everyone agrees that the male model would make a great Gator. Reagan then asks why no use a real gator. The table gets very gaspy as they realize that she hasn’t read the book or she’d know that Gator is Pepperwood’s best friend… and a man, not a reptile. Winston declares that she must clear the next 24 hours. Nick says it’s no big deal, but the rest of the roommates peer pressure Reagan into take a hard copy of the novel and start reading.

Nick tells her, “Don’t feel any pressure to like it, even though I spent 7,000 hours writing it.” I tried calculate this into days which would mean he spent several years on it. This would he mean he was probably working on it off and on since season 2 (which is a common practice for me and several writers I know). Or the number was an exaggeration and I did math for nothing.

Anyway, he’s clearly nervous about her reading it and she’s clearly not very keen on reading it. They look for ways to put off her quiet time with the giant novel by helping Jess with the medical bill issue. Eventually, she goes back to reading and Nick starts by staring at her the whole time. Realizing he shouldn’t be doing this, he exits the room, then instantly comes back in when he realizes Jess is fighting with her boyfriend in the living room. When comes back to the bedroom where Reagan is reading she’s fast asleep with very few pages of the book turned. He then goes to hide in Cece’s cubicle and is joined by Jess.

“I’m taking the gin with me, though. Alcohol is kind of a cubicle for the insides.”

“Nick, you’re like a drunk Maya Angelou.”

“Not the first time I heard that.”

Nick and Reagan finally discuss her falling asleep on his book and she confesses that she’s never like fiction. But she also tells him that she wants to keep trying to read it. Nick agrees to read some of it out loud to her and she smiles, saying she’d like that. It’s a nice compromise where she still shows interest and he is hopefully able to do some editing (this isn’t a judgement I’m just always looking for ways to multitask).

This whole episode was about caring about the opinions of significant others and coming to terms with the artistic aspects of sharing. For me, it’s easier to have a stranger read my work then someone I love. Of course, I still want that person to buy my work. Let’s not be crazy here.

Image belongs to Fox… or Disney… or someone

New Girl (House Hunt): Movies about Writing

Continuing the journey of Nick Miller from New Girl (for the start of this plot line go back to the blog New Girl: Eggs).
This episode is all about changes of setting in adult life and a minor plot of it involves how those changes can lead to a successful writing endeavor. So yeah… This will be a short one.

While Jess watches her friends move on with their lives being serious long distance relationships and buying houses (hence the title), she struggles with the realization that (spoiler alert) she is not over roommate Nick. Nick has been away in New Orleans with his girlfriend Reagan (played by Megan Fox and I was weirdly impressed). When he shows up at home a month early, he’s excited to tell Jess something. Feeling far too awkward for excited attitude she flees. This is then followed by the usual sitcom shenanigans.

By the end of the episode, Jess decides she can avoid Nick forever when he reveals that he was writing 200 pages a day “by hand” in New Orleans (then the wind blew the pages away so he started over on a computer). And so Nick finally finished his first legitimate book in season 6 of the show.

The point I want to make in this episode and why I’m including it in this blog can be broken into 2 ideas. First that Nick was inspired by the change in scenery to finally finish something he started several seasons earlier. This is sometimes true for a specific book or even some writers. The other is - his pages blew away and HE STARTED OVER. That’s always the woooooorrrrrrrrsssssssstttttttt. It makes you feel like giving up and wanting to blow something up at the same time. Something big. That would would make a loud bang. But the show pointed out how he started again and learned that maybe he should back up files on a computer (but I don’t trust computers so I generally also back them up on a usb drive and send them in an email to friends…but that’s just me).

New Girl (Pepperwood): Movies about Writing

Time to continue the sage of Nick Miller’s writing career on “New Girl”. If you are wondering what I’m talking about, check out the previous blog New Girl (Eggs).

In this episode, Jess is feeling triumphant when one of the adult students in her fiction writing class finally comes up with some decent (albeit repetitive) imagery. At first Nick scoffs at this saying, real writers don’t need classes or need to read (which is why he has yet to write anything decent). He also calls the story “amateur hour” due to the simplistic font. This made me laugh and took me back to the simpler time. When I was twelve and trying my first hand at writing a novel, I stuck mainly to Time New Roman, but there were so many pretty fonts to be used in-between. Comic Sans, Papyrus, Baskerville, and Chiler all must have looked like they were trying to gang up on the reader and shout “Boo” with the way these random fonts appeared. Sigh.

Nick reads this student’s story and instantly feels concern when he realizes that the violent description of the main character stalking then killing a large-eyed deer is talking about Jess. She rights this off as him being dumb so Nick does the Nick-thing and comes to her class. He announces himself as “Julius Pepperwood, ex-cop, ex-marine, from Chicago”.

Before going on I should point out that this episode isn’t so much about the writing process as it is about finding inspiration for writing. As usual, spoilers ahead.

Property of Fox

After Nick makes a murder board of drawings the student has of a large eyed deer covered in blood, Jess gets upset that he’s going ruin the only relationship with a student she currently has. The pair go to the home of this student using less-than-stealthy techniques. They are instantly freaked out by the man’s mysterious locked shed and large duffel bag. Of course, this leads to hilarious misunderstandings, discovering that the student is actually working on a graphic novel and Jess had the look he needs for the victim character.

At the end, Nick actually starts writing a new novel based on their investigative teamwork - about Julius Pepperwood, zombie detective and his partner Jessica Night. This is going to be the basis of the rest of Nick’s work throughout the show and lead him to a successful writing career (hey, it’s a TV show and it could happen).

The common theme between both the writing student and Nick is the idea of taking inspiration from life, then learning when it’s TOO CLOSE TO LIFE. Nick even states that the character of Jessica Night is a “work in progress” suggesting he’ll make her less like his real-life friend as he goes (he doesn’t, but the point is the inspiration).

Some writers love taking directly from life. Some like taking directly from experience. And some like amalgams, drawing inspiration from various people and experiences to help create something original. Even in a zombie detective novel, real life experience or observation needs to be drawn upon to make a good story.

Of course, as Nick points out, Zombies don’t really need detectives since they are already dead. Work in progress.

New Girl (Eggs): Movies about Writing

Time for another TV show - “New Girl”. I’ll probably do a few blogs about this one as I have quite a few comments about various episodes.

For today, though, I’m just focusing on “Eggs” from season 2. For those unfamiliar with the show: it’s about a quirky teacher named Jess (Zooey Deschanel), who lives with recovering douchebag/OCD overachiever Schmidt (Max Greenfield), former Eastern European basketball player/idealistic weirdo Winston (Lamorne Morris), and eternal screw-up bartender/potential love interest Nick (Jake Johnson. Other regulars on the show include Hannah Simone playing Jess’s model best friend Cece, who Schmidt pines for, and occasionally Damon Wayans Jr. as Coach, a former roommate uncomfortable with Jess’s outward displays of emotion. Not sure if Coach is in any of the episodes I’m going to be covering here - by Damon Wayans Jr. is hilarious in this show. Just saying.

The episode itself is about being an “adult” and a sense of creation. That description makes it sound semi-deep, but you’ll see what I mean. The whole thing opens on Jess and CeCe toasting their gynecologist friend and her wife announcing that they are pregnant. Nick sits with them, getting steadily more uncomfortable as the discussion turns to how many eggs the women have remaining and chances of getting pregnant being more difficult after 30. The main plot of the episode becomes about Jess freaking out that she’d going to miss the chance to be a mom. In addition, there’s a whole side plot about Schmidt banging his boss (Carla Gugino) which is funny, but really has no bearing on this blog. Apologies to Schmidt’s gross plot line.

The other large event within the episode Nick being inspired to finally write the zombie novel he’s been talking about for a long time. This burst of energy comes from him seeing Winston at his new nightly radio station job, amazed by how responsible and “take charge” his friend suddenly is within his own life.

Here is one of the best writing jokes in the episode is placed. Nick accuses Winston in doubting his ability to finish a novel. Winston replies “Sometimes I get the feeling that you don’t want to write.” The audience is treated to a flashback of Nick with scraggly facial hair subtly pushing a laptop to the floor and throwing his hands up in defeat when it breaks.

This is a truth of writing. One of the hardest parts is STARTING. Just sitting down and staying focused to complete an entire plot. Scene will come to you and there will be this feeling of invisibility. Then, you hit a wall. More experienced writers will usually skip that wall and continue with what they can to keep the pace going, returning to problem areas later. But when a lot of people write a first novel, they the let the walls block them completely. I like that show was trying to make a joke about both what a slacker Nick is, but also how difficult starting a large project can be.

Winston promises to be the first to read Nick’s novel and attempts to encourage him by saying “Just sit down and write!. You ain’t Hemingway.” . Nick misinterprets this as needing Hemingway-like adventures in his life for writing (said adventures starting with doing research, because Nick knows very little about Hemingway). His answer to this is to drag Winston to the zoo while shouting “real life experience” and taking shots from a flask, dubbing it “writing fuel”.

Quick shout-out to Winston in this episode. Besides being my favorite character on the show (just watch an episode where he tries to do a jigsaw puzzle - it’s amazing), Winston is the only other character besides Jess who is really good with emotions. In this episode, despite that he should be sleeping days for his new job, he goes with Nick on this unrelated-to-zombies zoo journey because he wants to show support. Luckily, I have Sidney Reetz and Kira Shay for this and generally they provide me with non-Hemingway related booze and encouragement (because I’m allergic to whisky and I think Hemingway was an ass).

Eventually, Winston calls out Nick for just being “drunk at the zoo”, messing with his “adjusted schedule”, and being scared of actually finishing anything. This results in Nick staying awake for 14 hours typing up “Z is for Zombie", his first finished novel which includes the dedication “To Winston, have a nice summer”. Winston declares it is the worst thing he ever read and Nick admits that the word search he included in the novel has no words in it.

Still, the roommates all declare that they are proud of Nick for at least finishing the damn thing. Winston starts to read it allowed, and like many first first drafts, it’s awful. Actually, it’s even worse than most first drafts, but everyone has to start somewhere.

Overall, I’ve said most of what I wanted to say about writing how it’s depicted in this episode already throughout this blog, but just to repeat - boo procrastination, yay encouragement, and don’t put crossword puzzles in zombie novels until they have something to do with the plot.

Image owned by Fox