Winning is too many things

My in-laws were surprised at how loud I was screaming. I was standing in their sitting room, in Skerries, in Ireland, watching the USWNT defeat Germany in the Olympic semi-final. We’d had to find American tv channels so I could watch. When Sophia Smith scored, I yelled so loud I made the dog upset.

About halfway through the match, Julie Foudy mentioned that the final was on Saturday in Paris. Then, I said out loud, tentatively, disbelieving, “If they win, maybe I’ll try to go to the final.” Everyone heard me, but no one paid me any heed. As soon as the match ended, I whipped out my laptop, furiously trying to navigate the French-language Olympic ticket resale site. Bingo. There were plenty of tickets available. My mother-in-law couldn’t believe I really meant it. Neither could I.

I was going to abandon my family to watch a soccer game.

If you think about it, there shouldn’t be any difference between watching a sports game on tv versus in person. It’s not like the difference between listening to a band live versus on a record. Unlike a concert, where you can dance and hear differences in the performance, sports are results-oriented. Your team either wins or loses. You could argue that it’s easier to see the players on tv. Why is it “exciting” to be ata championship game?

This is what I was wondering as I strolled through Passy in the 16th arrondissement, on my way to the former home of Mbappe, Parc-des-Princes.  The neighborhood was totally abandoned for the Olympics. I felt like I was in a very pretty zombie movie. I’d spent a considerable amount of money, flown away from my only free weekend with my husband’s family on our trip to Ireland, and likely given up my two-year journey breastfeeding my kid. Other than the fact that it was fun, why was I doing this? What was the point? Did watching the Olympic women’s soccer final live versus at home make any difference at all?

The game happened. Here are the facts:

  • The USWNT beat Brazil 1-0.

  • Marta retired from international football.

  • Alyssa Naeher made a game-winning save.

  • The United States stood on the podium and received gold meals around their necks.

We need to take our time to celebrate, of course. But once all the parties end and the sheen of happiness fades into the shape of what comes next, another question hangs in the aftermath: how did we do so poorly in the World Cup, and then win the Olympics? It’s an astonishing turnaround. Was it coaching? Did Emma Hayes fix the problems? And most importantly: what happens to the “the world has caught up” narrative?

The overwhelming story of the tournament seems to be that yes, Emma Hayes makes all the difference. Emma was able to come in after eight training sessions and bring home a gold. If this is what she did with the team in two months, imagine what she can do in two years?!

This is what we believe now because we won. When you win, you own the narrative. We didn’t win because Brazil got tired in the second half, surely. It’s not that we got lucky that two of their players went down. It’s not that Emma had a healthy Mal Swanson and mostly healthy Tierna Davidson, and a Crystal Dunn who was a bit further away from childbirth than in the Vlatko era. The margins weren’t that thin- right? Right?!

After our World Cup loss, the biggest narrative was that “the world has caught up.” There was a perception that the US had been so dominant in women’s soccer because our country diverts more resources to girl’s sports and collegiate women’s sports because of Title IX. Of course this is a little bit true, but I always thought it was overblown. It was an easy thing to focus on after a devastating loss, because how great is that? That women are getting uplifted throughout the world, and women’s soccer is more and more competitive? I agree that’s nice. But I don’t really think that’s what happened. I don’t think the world had as much catching up to do in the first place. I think sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. The US happens to win a lot, largely due to luck. There are so many factors that go into winning, it’s ineffable. It’s something about sports I find unsettling. Like all of our chat about coaching and lineups and formations is a bit like QAnon. We’re looking for things that aren’t there. Because winning is too many things.

Which is why my initial question stands: what does it mean to watch your country win an Olympic gold medal in person? Why the hell did I care enough to travel to be there when it’s really just margins of difference that produce the result? This is not rhetorical. I really wasn’t sure.

My thoughts turned to my daughter. The one I’d unceremoniously left back in Skerries. Why do I love her? I don’t know. I think it’s because I spend a lot of time looking at her. I watch her every move. I’m obsessed with what she eats and when she sleeps. I’ve poured so many of my resources into her.

I love the USWNT. I have watched them for hundreds of hours since I was thirteen years old. The players slowly change over time, but it feels like one continuous family tree to me, as old favorites remain and new players become old favorites. I have watched them fight for equal pay, and become champions in the face of a country that would like them to please go away because they are women, because they are gay women, because they are black women. Sometimes when I think about cheering out, “Go Crystal! Go Crystal!!” I tear up at the fact that I’m yelling a woman’s name, because in 2008 I had a man in a bar in the East Village tell me to“fuck off” when I asked him to put on a women’s sports game.

I watch the USWNT’s every move. I love them like I love my daughter. I’m not saying I love them as much, but I love them in the exact same way. I can’t tell you why I love them more than some other team. I just do.

I definitely could have watched this match at home. I would have been just as happy with the win. But there’s also a few things I know now that I wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t been there.

Here are a few things that aren’t facts, but are still true:

  • Alyssa Naeher saving a ball with her hand like that— she jumped SO quickly. It was astonishing.

  • When you cheer, the players can hear you. And maybe if you cheer a little louder, and a little more, you can help them win. Brazilian fans are great at cheering, so this felt like a huge responsibility.

  • It was very, very hot. I felt the same heat the players felt. I drank water during the hydration breaks, too.

  • USWNT fans are generally very, very kind. When the line for the women’s room was absurdly long, none of the men cared when the women used the men’s restroom.

  • The second the whistle blew, “Born in the USA” blasted around the stadium.

  • Rose didn’t know what to do with the poster they handed her on the podium, and her teammates had to tell her to put it on the ground for the pictures.

  • Naomi Girma was the last player to leave the podium. She lingered, soaking it all in.

  • Marta climbed into the stands to take pictures with fans. She stayed for a long, long time. I left the stadium before she stopped graciously taking photos, and I stayed for a really, really long time.

  • All the Instagram pictures of athletes in front of the Eiffel Tower— it was special in Paris. I got what it was like to stand there. The Olympic Rings nestled among the metal beams were oddly poignant, all-encompassing. The Games had a good vibe. Paris was, surprisingly, bought-in. On my flight home, everyone had been in Paris for the Games. It was collegial. And we all agreed: this had been fantastic.

  • When the whistle blew, and we were champions again, I cried. Because if they can do it, so can I.

I can’t really tell you why I bought plane tickets to Paris. I can’t tell you why it’s important that I was there. But I can tell you for sure that I don’t have words for how much it meant to me.

You Will Come Up With Something

Anxiety.  Writing.  The best of friends!  I have piles of journals that I un-ironically filled with writing about how hard it was to write. 


Why does writing make us so anxious?  I doubt aspiring bridge engineers spend days procrastinating on a bridge design because they’re anxious about if they’re “really engineers.” (Engineers: please let me know if I am wrong about this.)  For me, and I know I’m not unique, there’s a whole mess of different reasons.  Fear of failure and fear of success.  Bad work habits.  Fear of change.  The fear of accessing difficult emotions through your characters.  The fear of moving to Los Angeles.


Most of the time, these anxieties lead to the same place: procrastination town.  There’s plenty of productivity blogs with hacks to beat procrastination and I could write about a bunch myself.  (A few years of therapy is the best “productivity hack” I’ve ever found.)


But I want to point out one reason for writing anxiety that I rarely see mentioned in these places.  Probably because it’s so obvious it sounds almost too dumb to name:


The fear that you won’t be able to come up with anything.


It’s not that you’re worried what you’re going to write is bad (though you’re probably worried about that, too).  You’re worried that you won’t be able to write it at all.  But I promise- you will come up with something.


Last month I was given a writing assignment. Three years ago, I would have freaked out.  I would have cleared my schedule so I had ALL THE TIME to work on it, then thought about whether or not I could actually even do it the entire time, then do it at the last minute.  It would have felt awful.  But this time, I figured it would probably take me a week to complete.  I worked on it for a week.  I finished around when I thought I would, and I handed it in.  I had virtually no anxiety about getting it done.  Why couldn’t I have just felt that way the whole dang time?


Because I didn’t always know that I would come up with something.  Now, I’ve done it enough times to know that I will. 


When bridge engineers want to engineer a bridge, I doubt they’re worried that they’ll be able to “come up with something.”  Because they’re going to come up with a bridge.  The same is true with stories!  But it’s much harder to see stories that way.  Because stories are a little bit magical.


A good story is good precisely because it obscures how it was made. That’s the reason I wanted to make stories in the first place: they seemed like magic!  Like they must have emerged from the head of the author fully-formed.  Writing was impossible because it was literal magic; you had to be a wizard to do it.  


I wonder if there’s some number of stories that you finish and you suddenly get the sense: oh yeah!  A story is like a bridge!  You build it beam by beam.  You need to have certain things to make it structurally sound, and every bridge is a little different so it takes some time to figure that out.  And then you make the bridge pretty or particularly useful or emotionally gratifying by adding fun architectural touches and cool lighting (or, you know, whatever makes bridges exciting).  Is the number three stories?  Ten stories?  For me, it was about eight years of writing, most of the beginning and middle of that time taken up by not writing very much due to anxiety.


Of course experience doing a thing makes doing it easier.  But I do wish someone had said this to me.  You need to sit down and do the work.  Once you finish some stories, you’ll feel more confident that you can do it.  A little bit of that writing anxiety can slip away, making it easier to write, making it less anxiety-producing.  A virtuous cycle.  You will come up with something.

Secret Sauce: Jony Ive

Another episode I wrote for Secret Sauce dropped this week! It’s the second one here. This was my second arc for Wondery, and this time it was all about Jony Ive and Steve Jobs. The research was fascinating- the Walter Isaacson Steve Jobs book does a really compelling job of asking whether or not someone has to be cruel to be a genius. I think the answer is obviously no, of course, and I’m happy that it seems like society has moved away from the answer possibly being yes in the years since the Isaacson book was published. That’s not at all Jony Ives’ deal either- he was kind of a quiet leader, it seems to me. It was a very cool writing challenge for this particular episode, trying to piece together how to keep the narrative interesting when Jony Ive had success after success after success in the years I was writing about. I think it came out nicely! And as always, it was a joy working with the hosts Sam and John, as well as my good friend Marina, who wrote the other episodes this season! Take a listen here.

Secret Sauce: Airbnb

I’ve been working on a new writing adventure in 2021, and I’m so excited that I can finally share it! My good friend Marina and I were hired to write for a new show on Wondery called Secret Sauce. It’s hosted by two young entrepreneurs, and tries to look at successful businesses and figure out the keys to their good fortune.

Let’s just say that I’m not exactly….a savvy businessperson. The cutthroat startup world is definitely interesting, but not something I have any first hand knowledge of. As a writer, I don’t have a ton of experience even working “normal” jobs. So crafting a narrative around a behemoth like Airbnb was really outside of my comfort zone. And you know, I really enjoyed it! It was so interesting to find that almost all the same things that apply to fictional stories still applied. Plus, I always love working in the audio space, which adds another layer of fun challenge to the project. Here’s my first episode, and I think it came out great!

Getting Through That Awkward Phase

I’ve been teaching pilot-writing for a few years.  My approach is generally that writing the script is the best way to learn how to do it.  But I also do some lecturing about structure and character and story.  I have a new thought about why this is inadequate, but why it’s hard to teach around that inadequacy.  Maybe it will help you!

One of the hardest things about writing is simply knowing what your idea is.  And when you do know what it is, getting that idea onto the page clearly is very hard.

On the flip side, really great scenes often disguise what the writer is trying to make clear.  In most scenes, as in real life, characters communicate via subtext and subtlety. 

So screenwriters have to do two things at once: know clearly what their idea is, and communicate this to the audience via textured, interesting subtext. 

As a teacher, unlike as a writer, my job is, at first, to get beginners to write “bad” but very clear scenes.  They’ve got to be able to express what they mean first.  As a long-time sketch teacher (scenes only, no story structure), I know how valuable this is.  Then I have to tell students to stop doing that, and make the scenes have subtext.  And that’s a very difficult pivot!!!  

The second step is confusing after learning to do the first step.  I’ve learned this recently as I’ve now been teaching a few of the same students for more than one class.  I can see their progress! They know what they have to say and they’re saying it!  But I see them getting stuck on this step and psyching themselves out.

It’s true that as you get better at writing, you kind of just do this all at once.  But how to explain that?  The writer part of me wants to say: eh, just do it.  But the teacher part of me isn’t satisfied with that.

I once got advice from a very good writer who said that she does a first draft of a scene where everything that needs to happen happens without subtext, and then she goes back and “makes it good.”  I think I’ve said several times to students, “Make it sparkle!”  “Put icing on the cake!”

But what does “make it sparkle” mean?  Once you get to that step, how do you achieve that on the page?  It’s definitely harder to explain than structure, which is maybe why so many of the big books focus on that instead (books like Save the Cat).  Make the dialogue better? It’s a bit instinctual.  The things that make great dialogue and subtext are things like: understanding your character, understanding human psyches, understanding the poetry of the way a person talks, the poetry of what a person wants, understanding yourself.  Sometimes I want to give useless notes like: go to therapy if you can afford it or live a few more years.  Listen more.  Be more open to the world. “Make them sound different,” is the lazy, easy way of saying that, and it’s maybe the best I can do.  Think like an actor?  That’s more advice than pedagogy.

This is a growing pain in the life of a screenwriter, and my hope is that by even pointing this out, I can help some folks who are in this awkward phase feel better and push through to sparkle-town!  I’ll do more thinking about how to teach “make it sparkle” more clearly!  As of now, all I can think to say is that it’s instinct, it’s fun, it’s adding something surprising and (in comedy) delightful to every scene.  And if you’re still in phase one, getting ideas clearly onto the page, that’s good, too!  You have to learn how to do that first of all.  And a lot of the same things apply: know yourself.  Think about people.  Keep writing. 

Villains

I’ve been thinking a lot about villains this week.  

I’m writing a big fantasy story that needs a great villain.  And I’m completely stuck on it.

As I conceive of him now, my villain is power-hungry.  He wants to enslave humanity.  Simply because he is selfish and wants the power and can do it if no one stops him.

When I explained the villain’s plan to my partner, he said, “Sounds a little Voldemort-y.”  That was not meant as a compliment.

I think right now we tend to value villains with motivations that make sense. 

Malthusianism has been used a lot to justify a villain’s actions lately.  Richmond Valentine in The Kingsmen and Thanos in The Avengers are two examples.  Killing half of the world’s population isn’t the right solution to climate change, but you can logically understand how these villains might arrive at this conclusion.

The greatest villain in recent memory is Black Panther’s Killmonger.  At times you wonder if he isn’t the hero.  His anger is justified.  How could he not be angry?

For years, I have believed this to be true- the more the audience can understand why the villain is doing what they’re doing, the better and more interesting the story.  Even Dan Brown summarizes this succinctly in his Masterclass (I admit I am a Masterclass dabbler): “Every villain needs to have his own morality.  If a villain spends part of the novel killing people, you need to give him or her believable reasons for doing so.  Make the reader understand exactly what desperation or belief has driven him to it.”

Voldemort represents a cliched villain to my partner because Voldemort doesn’t have a consistent reason for what he’s doing or what he wants.  He wants power because he wants it.  He wants to construct differences in those weaker than him to consolidate that power.  He sits in dark castles and plots how to take over the world.  Muahahahaha. 

But what if selfish, greedy, purely “evil” villains are the only thing that make sense to me now?  There is a pure, hungry evil in the world, and it is far scarier to me than a logical villain.

I didn’t viscerally understand this five years ago, but I see now that the fight against evil is never over and that the opponent cannot be logically reasoned with.  Power is the belief.  I don’t need to understand why the racist, capitalist villain does racist things.  They are not justifiable.  It’s not based in something psychological that their parents did to them when they were kids.  The system we live in produces some selfish people and that system helps them consolidate power by oppressing others and that is evil.*

Do justified villains and purely evil villains come in and out of fashion depending on how close we are to the precipice of totalitarianism?  I suppose Sauron would say yes.

I’m worried that if I make my villain a bigoted, power-hungry, selfish monster that he will read cliched, or one-dimensional, or hack.  But right now, that feels like the only villain I can write.  Has anyone else been struggling with their villain?  Do you think we’ll see a change in our villains to more pure evil in the coming years?  

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*(Killmonger was such a great villain because he knew this.  He may belong in his own very special villain category.  I hope one day I will be a good enough writer to find a villain even nearly as good.)