Birthing a Cringe Baby

The miracle of embracing hating my own writing

I was recently reading back over a screenplay of mine, and I came across a line I once thought was genius — “What’s poppin’ is this pussy.” Reading it made me feel like someone was simultaneously punching me in the gut and shoving vodka down my throat. I wanted to vomit out every brain cell that was responsible for putting “poppin” and “pussy” in the same sentence. I flashed back to my first scriptwriting class when we did a table reading of a short play I wrote that opens with a drunk guy pissing into a chimney titled The Trickle-Down Effect (just reading that title makes me want to down a bottle of wine and switch to a career in accounting). The more I heard my classmates glaze over the dialogue, the more I physically cringed. I hated myself. I hated my writing. I hated that I ever thought I could be a comedy writer.

Comedy is one of the scariest genres a writer can take on. It comes with instant feedback, whether or not you asked for it. You either get a laugh or palpable pity. I internalized the pity and assumed any laughter was out of pity. I spent so much time writing comedy with a fear of a table reading. And you could see it just as much as I could feel it.

The moment I actually became a writer was when I realized that this horrible feeling could actually be part of my writing brand. What if I could make my audience experience that feeling of needing to look away that is so visceral for me? Isn’t the mark of great writing when your audience can feel your words? Thus, my career as a “Connoisseur of Cringe” was born.

It was the kind of birth where the mom isn’t “glowing;” she is just pouring a gross amount of sweat. And it ends with her shitting on the doctor’s table. But then she gets to hold that baby covered in vaginal fluid. Somewhere deep, deep in the back of her mind, she probably knows that it looks more like tiny Mitch McConnell than a blessed child, but she loves it because it’s an unadulterated extension of herself. And you know what’s a lot more memorable than a cute baby? An ugly baby. Even though no one really wants to hold it, they probably want to stare at it and laugh behind its back, and they can’t look away. I want my audience to wince and cringe at my humor in the same way. I know that they will never forget it because they can feel it.

So, figure out what you want your baby to look like, what your birthing process will feel like, and what reaction you want everyone to have when you ask them to hold it. Lean into all of this, even if it’s unpleasant. People will respect your writing more if you do.