First Draft Episode #267: Jill Twiss
August 25, 2020
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Jill Twiss, #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo and Emmy winning comedy writer on Last Week Tonight, talks about her latest picture book, Everyone Gets a Say, with illustrator EG Keller.
Today's episode is brought to you by Caveday. Caveday leads group focus sessions for a worldwide community every day on zoom. Okay, so Caveday is amazing. Basically you sign up for a three-hour window and you log on to the Caveday zoom and join a group of other people led by a Caveday host to get three work sprints in during that three-hour window.
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This episode is brought to you by Revision Season. Revision Season is a seven-week virtual masterclass in revising your novel led by Elana K. Arnold author of Prince honor winner Damsel and National Book Award finalist What Girls Are Made Of, and more. Each week Elana will send a video lecture and a transcript followed by a series of assignments designed to help you put the week's lessons into practice. A weekly live call, which is recorded if you need to listen later, gives writers the opportunity to ask specific questions. And a private moderated forum provides a space for Revision Season writers to connect with and learn from each other.
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Over the course of seven weeks, Elana's approach with Revision Season seeks to not only actually get into the weeds of the manuscript that you bring to the class, but to enrich and deepen your relationship with revision so that you can move into the next phase of your journey as a writer with more confidence. After going through Revision Season, you'll have Elana's framework and you can use that in all your future projects in any order that works for you.
I am lucky enough to be taking Revision Season for the following session, which begins on September 20th. And Elana has already sent me my zero week packet that came with a video lecture, a transcript, and three assignments I can be ready for when the course begins. If this sounds right for you, there's still time to sign up for the next series of Revision Season which begins on September 20th. Students who enroll before September 1st get $100 off the price of the course. Learn more about Elana and Revision Season and sign up for the course @elanakarnold.com.
Welcome to First Draft with me, Sarah Enni. This week I'm talking to Jill Twiss, #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo, and Emmy winning comedy writer for Last Week Tonight. She's here to talk about her latest picture book Everyone Gets a Say with illustrator, E. G. Keller.
I loved talking to Jill. I loved what she had to say about trying everything at full force all the time. The overlap between writing picture books and writing for late night TV, and feeling helpless about grownups, but hopeful about children.
Everything Jill and I talk about in today's episode can be found in the show notes. First Draft participates in affiliate programs. So that means when you shop through the links on FirstDraftPod.com, it helps to support the show and independent bookstores at no additional cost to you. If you'd like to donate to First Draft either on a one-time or a monthly basis, you can do that at paypal.me/FirstDraftPod.
I hope you've been enjoying the Track Changes episodes that have been dropping in the First Draft feed since April. They are basically a series of podcast episodes meant to inform new and aspiring writers, or people who have been in the business for a while, about the details and behind-the-scenes facts of how traditional publishing works in the U.S. It's meant to empower writers and give them a better sense of how we fit into this larger ecosystem that is traditional publishing.
The most recent episode was about Marketing and Publicity. It seems to have sparked a lot of interest, and luckily it's only part one of two. So there's more information about that coming up. And if you're looking to get even more in depth about the publishing industry, I've also created the Track Changes newsletter where every Thursday, and sometimes Friday, I share more of the information that I gathered in researching for this project.
You can sign up for a 30-day free trial of the newsletter and learn more about both Track Changes projects @FirstDraftPod.com/TrackChanges.
Okay. Now please sit back, relax, and enjoy my conversation with Jill Twiss.
Sarah Enni: Okay. Hi, Jill, how are you?
Jill Twiss: I'm good. How are you?
Sarah Enni: I'm doing so well. I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for having me over.
Jill Twiss: Of course.
Sarah Enni: I am so excited to chat with you today. There's so many things I want to ask you, but we're gonna start with a little bit of bio. So if you don't mind telling me where you were born and raised.
Jill Twiss: Okay. I was born in Redmond, Oregon where my dad was a smoke jumper. He jumped out of airplanes into fires, and fought them... he didn't just jump out of airplanes into fires. But I moved my whole life. I went to 11 different schools in the 12 years that I went to school. So I lived in Idaho, Utah, Montana, Nevada, Minnesota, Virginia, kind of all over.
Sarah Enni: That is wild. I want to ask about how reading and writing was a part of growing up for you, because I can imagine... I moved, not that much, but I moved as a kid too, and books were sort of the constant. How was reading and writing a part of your growing up?
Jill Twiss: I think that's definitely true for me. I think I read... actually, it sounds like I'm 400 years old, I'm not. But I lived in places at times where you couldn't get TV.
Sarah Enni: Oh!
Jill Twiss: So my dad worked for the forest service. And so we often lived in places that didn't necessarily have even grocery stores or things like that up until I was like 10 years old. So books were kind of how I watched TV. I think they still are for me. I read, and did read, everything. I would read my dad's fishing magazine. When I finally moved to a real town and discovered the library, I would check out literally 25 books at a time. Because it felt like a thing that was so magic that I couldn't believe it was true. And I was like, "As soon as they figure out this racket, they're not gonna let me do this anymore. So I better get in all the books I can before something happens."
So yeah, I think I read like in quantity, maybe more than quality. But it was just the first thing I did every day. The first thing I did every time I moved, I would find a bookstore or a library as soon as I moved to places that had those.
Sarah Enni: That's amazing. I love that. And was there any, this is kind of pre-college age, were you doing any creative writing for yourself?
Jill Twiss: Not really other than in school. I realize now a big theme of my life is I was secretly always a writer and I never had any idea. None. In so many ways, that was how I dealt with things. I remember, it's strange that I ended up later - spoiler alert - writing for television because I remember telling people, "Oh, I know how to get an A in classes. You just read what the teacher writes and then you copy their writing because they obviously think their writing is very good. So if you just copy what they do, then you will get A's!"
And I now go like, "Oh, you were just writing for a TV show in your childhood." But I never realized it. It wasn't a big thing I did. It was just I used to write, this is in college, but I would write stories and just post them in the dorm bathrooms. It was just how I coped with like the weirdness of college. When I got dumped, I wrote a novel that I never showed anyone. And yet it was well into adulthood before I was like, "What if I'm a writer?" I think it was a world where literally everyone in my life knew I was a writer years, and even decades, before I did.
Sarah Enni: That's so funny. Okay. But let's talk about what you did get into, which is performance. I want to ask about comedy and performance, but I'm wondering if they kind of developed together or how did you get into that and find a voice for yourself comedically?
Jill Twiss: I have been, if there is a theme to my life, it is that I try everything at full energy and force and see what pans out. So in college, my major was political science, but then I also had a major in music. I was a clarinet player. My major was clarinet, but I never intended to be a professional clarinet player. I thought I was gonna go to law school, got accepted to law school and then kind of had a panic.
I sort of went, "Oh, I think I would love law school. I don't think I would love being a lawyer." And I saw this sign that said touring children's theater. And I didn't know, or think, about the fact that you could audition and not get in something. So I was like, "Great, I'm gonna do that."
And I went and auditioned and luckily did get in and went on tour with a theater company for maybe a year and a half and ended up saying, "Well, if I'm gonna do this, I might as well do it in New York, because if you're gonna do a thing, do the biggest version of that thing and see if you can do that."
So I moved to New York to be a musical theater actress. I kind of fell into stand-up comedy because a lot of people suggested it to me. And was doing both of those things full speed ahead until I kind of realized that stand-up comedy made me scared all the time. I did six years of it, and I did it to the point where I was doing like eight shows a week. And I was just physically ill all the time. I was so scared.
And that was the point where I was like, "If you're not happier when people clap, maybe you're a writer. Maybe the thing you enjoy is writing the jokes and not telling the jokes." And that was sort of my big revelation.
Sarah Enni: I'm interested in you forming your comedic voice. I'm interested in people around you suggesting that you try comedy. I think about you moving around a lot as a kid and how humor can sometimes be a defense mechanism or a way to fit in. How did your comedic voice come to be?
Jill Twiss: I don't know. But I think a lot about why people are funny. What makes things funny. And I was never a class clown person. I was never particularly loud or fun, to be honest. But what I always was an outsider. Not in a sad way for me. I, for the most part, enjoyed moving and going to new places. But I think one way, or one kind of comedy, is observing what is weird about the human condition. And it's really hard to see it when you're in the middle of it, but I was never in the middle of it. I was always on the outside. So I think it was always a thing where I was able to observe what's weird about the world.
I remember, I feel like this was the first joke I wrote, and I was like five-years-old and I literally used it in my stand-up comedy routine when I was like 28. This joke is not gonna go over well, but just to explain, I remember saying to my dad like, "How come the best hunters are the ones that shoot the biggest animals? Shouldn't those be the easiest ones to hit? I think the best hunters should hunt bees." And it was just a way of going like, "Things are weird. Stuff is weird. And I feel like we don't acknowledge it."
And that's just kind of a thing you have as an outsider. I still will go to a football game and go like, "Why are they doing the wave?" I never have that moment where I fit in and go like, "I love doing this thing everyone else is doing!" I'm always going, "Why are we doing this?"
Sarah Enni: I think that's a good way to encapsulate what a lot of great comedy is. And that's an interesting different perspective on having moved around a bunch, you then have a clarity of seeing how things are different place to place.
Jill Twiss: Right. I think for a lot of people comedy is a defense in that bad things happen to them or something like that. I don't personally feel that way. For me, it doesn't feel like a thing where something went horribly wrong. My parents have asked me that cause they're like, "Why are you into comedy?" But I think it's just, for me in particular, just having an outside perspective on the world.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. I love that. And it helps, we'll get into it, but I think it might be helpful for writing kid's books too. I read a story that you signed up for a standup comedy class on September 12th.
Jill Twiss: It's true. 2001 is the relevant part of that story.
[Both laughing]
Sarah Enni: Yes. Thank you. Can you talk about how that came to be?
Jill Twiss: Although I don't think I can explain it in any logical way. People had, again, told me for a long time I should do stand-up comedy. And I very clearly, and meant it, said, "Absolutely not. I would never. That's the scariest thing I can think of." There's something lovely about being unexpectedly funny and there's something terrifying about walking up on stage and announcing to the world, "I'm hilarious! Love me!"
And I had no interest, or I thought I had no interest. I lived in Manhattan when September 11th happened. Obviously my problems were the least of the problems that happened. But for whatever reason, my reaction and everyone around me had an insane reaction. Whether like I had a friend who just bought like $700 worth of groceries, just people did weird stuff. I slept with my shoes on for like three months.
But the other thing I did is September 12th I was like, "Well, I'm not gonna not do things I'm scared of." And I went and I signed up for a stand-up comedy class and they were like, "Well, it starts tonight." So I went, "Okay." And I showed up and they said, "Well, you don't have to perform because you didn't even know about this." And I was like, "No." And I went up there and I told this story about my dad walking across South Dakota, which he did do, it was not a fake story. I have a weird dad who's the best.
But I did that and I went, "Oh! Maybe I do this for now."
Sarah Enni: That's amazing. That is an amazing reaction to have in a way to take back power in some way, shape or form, which is great. And so I kind of want to hear, I feel [chuckles] just imagining you being on stage, being like, "I love comedy and I hate standing here saying it out loud." I mean, what do you think you learned? What was the process over those six years of defining your voice, or coming to realize what you did and didn't like about it? I'm interested in what that journey was like.
Jill Twiss: It's weird because I really enjoy performing and I really enjoy writing. And for some reason, it's not even that I don't enjoy performing stand-up comedy, it's that I hated every other part of it. I hated every other part of my day. And the only part where I was calm was maybe the part where I was doing stand-up comedy, but that's not great. I think a big thing for me was figuring out that I didn't really want the audience to be involved.
They would not even heckle, like interrupt. They would exist. And I'd be like, "What? I wrote these jokes. Why are you involved?" And that's a pretty good sign that you're more into the writing than you are into the idea of having that audience there for you. I make myself sound like just a horrible person. I was perfectly nice to my audiences and I did have a good time.
It's also just at some point you do have to say to yourself like, "There's not even the potential of health insurance here." I enjoy working. I enjoy having some idea of how I'm gonna stay alive. And it's not so much that I needed complete security, but just looking ahead and going, "The best case scenario in the entire world is that I sell out theaters. And at that point I still don't have some guaranteed version of anything."
In order to have health insurance, for example, this was before Obamacare. I would have to get a sitcom and that would not be being a stand-up comedian. So it was like every end version of stand-up comedy for me was actually not doing stand-up comedy.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. That's a really good point. And it is a very practical way of thinking about it. But were you drawn to writing for TV? Was that in the back of your head?
Jill Twiss: It wasn't only because I didn't know it was a thing. It didn't occur to me that I had these options. I didn't know these jobs existed. It eventually became a thing as I got into the comedy world and I realized like, "Oh, late night is a thing that I would enjoy." And I remember not knowing, I didn't have an agent, I had no idea how to get into it. And I remember seeing an article about Conan, I think. It was about Conan writers and how they wrote their monologue jokes, where they would get, I'm sort of making this up, but this is about what it was. That they would get to work at like 9:00 AM, have a meeting or something, look at the news. And then from 10 to 12, they would frantically write monologue jokes. And they turned in their first set at noon.
And I would go, "Well, I can do that. I don't know how to get anyone to read anything, but I know that for two hours every day I can sit and I can my monologue jokes about the news, and that will be a thing that I can do so that when I have a chance, when somehow I figure out how to get someone to see this, then I will know how to write jokes. I will know how to write the kind of jokes that you write for TV."
So that's what I did. I just did that until I figured out, or as you'll probably ask, eventually someone found me. And, I just tried to find things to hone what I thought the skill might be.
Sarah Enni: That's amazing. I love that this is like a degree of self-teaching and commitment. Right? And kind of proving to yourself, like you said, not doing anything halfway. I very much admire that.
Jill Twiss: Yeah. I think it's just, I like to have a plan. I like to have a thing I can do. And I also like to work very hard. I think I am at my least stressed when I have a lot of work to do. And somehow just waiting to be discovered is a really, really stressful thing for me.
Sarah Enni: Yeah! I mean, not to be, not to expose myself too much as a total control freak, but that's what it strikes me as is like, well, in those moments, if you're waiting, you don't have control. And that is a terrible feeling.
Jill Twiss: It is. And some people deal very well with it, but I'm always like, "Well, let's just have a plan. Let's have 47 projects going and I don't know which one is gonna be the thing. And maybe musical theater is gonna take off, but also I would like to be ready. I think that perhaps I'm good at writing jokes. And I would like to know how to do it on purpose about things that don't inspire me." You know? "So let's force myself to learn how to do that in case I am ever given the chance."
Sarah Enni: I love that. I'm not sure how long you did that exercise, and I'll ask about this when we get to actually writing jokes for six years, but there's some degree of proving to yourself not to be precious about what you're writing, right? Like it's a uh... what's the word I'm looking for? A renewable resource.
Jill Twiss: That's such a good point. And I think such a great thing to tell newer writers, or not even newer writers, but writers that aren't doing it as a job. Even having done all of that, to skip ahead just a little bit, when I started at Last Week Tonight, I would think of it like, "Oh, I found the joke. I did it. I won!" Like, "Here was the setup, and then I found the joke." And then they'd be like, "Great. Write 10 more." And I would be like, "No, I feel like you don't understand that I have in fact found the joke. So like, why would there be more jokes? I did it. I found it."
And the thing you learn quickly is, you can write infinity jokes. You really can. It's at times exhausting. It's at times, not at all fun. But you can learn to write jokes as a skill and to realize that the goal isn't always to choose the first joke, or the funniest joke. Sometimes the goal is to choose the joke that most makes the point you want. Or choose the joke that someone else wants to tell.
And that's not your problem. Your problem is to generate jokes about the things you need to generate jokes about.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. Well, let's get to Last Week Tonight. How did it come about? It's a very unique story for you, I think.
Jill Twiss: Yeah. It's a really cool situation where a lot of things came together. I will tell the slightly longer version, just cause I think it's really interesting. While I was doing musical theater, and while I was doing standup comedy, I was a standardized test tutor. I tutored SATs and ACTs and LSATs because I was a really terrible waitress. I did that for like three weeks in New York. I was like, "Whoa, I'm a great Midwestern waitress and a really bad New York City waitress. Maybe I need to find another job."
And I happen to tutor a kid whose mom worked for Letterman. And he did really well, thank goodness, on the test. And so I had the nerve to ask his mom if I could submit a packet. And she said, "Yeah, I can get them to read it." This was not too long before the show ended, so I think she knew it was not gonna work out. But I asked everyone I knew if they knew anyone who could read over my stuff first.
And so I was introduced to a woman named Laurie Kilmartin, who is, and was I think even then, a writer for Conan. And I sent her some stuff and she said, "This is great. Send me more." And I sent her more and she never spoke to me again. And I went, "Oh, I guess that I'm very bad at this." I did send the Letterman packet and never heard anything about that.
Cut to, honestly probably five years later, and I got an email from a woman named Nell Scovell, who was the co- writer for the book Lean In with Sheryl Sandberg. She was a writer for the Simpsons. She created Sabrina, The Teenage Witch. And it said, just some version of like, "I've been looking for women who need to be writing for television. I've asked around, I asked a woman named Laurie Kilmartin if she knew any women who should be writing for TV and she immediately said your name."
So it turned out, Laurie had not thought it was terrible. She just didn't have any way to help me until she did. So I said, "Yeah, all I want is to write for TV. That's exactly what I want. What's going on? How do you do that?" And Nell said, "I can't get you a job, but I can get your stuff read. That's all I can do. But that's a thing that I want to do to help if you have stuff." And so I wrote a packet sheet. She told me about a job at Last Week Tonight With John Oliver. And I wrote a packet for it.
Sarah Enni: Can we just pause with that part to say this was when Last Week was being developed, right? Cause it wasn't on air yet?
Jill Twiss: Right. The show didn't exist yet.
Sarah Enni: And then what is in a packet? What kind of things are you putting together?
Jill Twiss: It depends on the show, of course, but the whole point of a late night packet is that you are generally writing it specifically for the show. So when you're writing for narrative television, you usually can write like a pilot that's your thing, and just send that out to all the shows. That's not true for late night. For late night, they really need to know if you can write in the specific voice of the host.
So every show will have its own requirements. And there's a good chance you're gonna have to write a new packet every time you apply for a show. So what they're asking for is what they think the show will be. Generally, you're gonna write some monologue jokes, for most shows you'll write some sketches. For this, some of it was guessing what the show was gonna be because they didn't know and I didn't know. And it was just to write a couple of pieces that I thought would be good on a show he would do.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. Which is so interesting. And obviously, you must've been familiar with John Oliver from the Daily Show. And he does have a distinct voice, not just cause of the British accent, but his comedy has a particular kind of bent to it. I mean, how did you prepare for that? And did you read it to yourself in a British accent? What did you do?
Jill Twiss: I don't think so. It's very weird how good of a fit it was because I didn't have any idea what I was doing. I think a lot of it is that there is a lot of overlap between our voices, weirdly. We don't have a lot in common. I think another part of it though is that yes, I'm doing his voice, but also he was doing my voice at some point. When you get to come in at the beginning of a show, you get to shape the voice a little bit.
So I would like to think that those of us that started, and those of us like people that are currently working there, he adopts a bit of their voices too. And so it was kind of a collaboration. But I remember wanting to write comedy about South Sudan and going, "Well, I'll just do that." And now I look back and go, "That was insane. Why would I do that?" And coincidentally, it turned out to be something that was relevant to the show, but I didn't know that. It's just that there was a real overlap in the kinds of things we wanted to write comedy about.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. Well, and you said that you went to school for political science too.
Jill Twiss: Right. Yeah. In college, I interned in the Senate and in high school I interned in the house. I, for a while, very much wanted to get into politics. So politics has always been a big interest of mine.
Sarah Enni: Well, that certainly helps for this particular show. So I'm interested in whatever you can speak to about developing the show. I'm so interested in it. I remember when Last Week came out and it was this very new thing. It was HBO. It was once a week. We were all like, "What's it gonna be?" And you were on the ground floor with that. What was the process of deciding what the show was gonna be like?
Jill Twiss: I can't speak too much to any of the specifics of the show just because that's not my place. But for me as a writer, a big thing for me was learning how to write on purpose. I went through a lot of like, I never drank coffee before I started writing comedy for money. I went through a lot of like, "Oh, what are some tricks I can do to get three more jokes out of me?"
And that, I feel like, was the first two years of my life writing comedy professionally was just going like, "Well, if I write on this couch and then I switch to a different couch, my body will think it's a new day and then I can get out four more jokes."
Sarah Enni: And that worked?
Jill Twiss: It works. Anything you can do to get one more joke. But I don't know if this is true for everybody, but I feel like it is. Where you realize there's a very big difference between writing comedy because something inspires you, and writing comedy because it's due in an hour. And you have to find your way to do that.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, which is like a super power, I feel like.
Jill Twiss: It's a skill though. It really is. It's a thing that you can learn. But it's a lot of trial and error and it's a lot of asking other people, I think, like, "What do you do when you don't have a joke and you know that a joke has to go here? Literally, what do you do? When you sit down, what words do you type? How do you keep typing?"
Sarah Enni: Yeah. It's so interesting. But I'm so interested in, and I'm so grateful to talk to people like yourself who have had these kind of unique success trajectories, because I'm interested in how it impacts your life. No one really knew what was gonna happen when John Oliver broke off from The Daily Show and start his own thing.
But I believe it was the first year when the show won a Peabody and then it went on to win like every Emmy ever for a long time. So you've won, I'm looking at a couple of Emmys right now. I think you won some with the show. It just had an amazing response and people really connected with it right away. And I'm really interested in how that impacted you? Whether you felt pressure? I mean, what was it like to have that response?
Jill Twiss: Entirely surprising for me, I can only speak for myself. Thrilling just in the way that like, honestly, mostly for my parents. It's not something I think about very much. And honestly, it's not something that makes any difference in my life. There are, I am embarrassed because I live in a studio apartment so there's nowhere to put Emmys that people don't have to look at them.
You do not have closet space, you know? So that's the way it is. But the big thing is my parents can brag about it. And I think when you're a person who was gonna go to law school, but didn't go to law school, and your parents were lovely about it, but they probably would not have preferred it. It's something very nice to be able to be like, "No, look! I have a trophy." Like, "This must have been okay."
And I gave them an Emmy, so they have it. It has gone to my mother's Bunco game, it has gone to my father's Rotary Club meetings. It is the most loved, I believe, Emmy in the history of Emmy's. If I could give one recommendation to anyone in the world, if you win anything, give it to your parents. You will never feel more awkward than when you show off your trophies. And you will never feel more proud than when your parents take them everywhere.
And that's where I feel like mostly the success has impacted me. Just in that I feel a little bit safer and a little bit more listened to. I feel somehow I'm probably as good of a writer as I ever was, perhaps better. Cause I've done a lot of work in six years when I worked there. But more than that, it's just that like, "Well now I have someone to vouch for me. Now I can pitch a thing and people believe me." And that's the big difference. I don't think there's much else there that has made my life different.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. This may or may not be the same thing. But when my first book came out in 2019 and I was so careful to be like, "Don't expect anything." You know, I'm lucky enough to have enough writer, friends that I was like, "This isn't going to solve your emotional life." You know? And I'm in therapy being like, "I know I'm gonna be the same when it comes out."
Jill Twiss: So smart.
Sarah Enni: But then, surprisingly, it kind of solved some of my emotional life.
Jill Twiss: That's amazing. I love that.
Sarah Enni: Having the book come out gave me a lot of what you're saying. I was like, "I have something to point to that is external that I can be like, "This isn't a pipe dream. I haven't been lying to you about how I've been spending my time. I really have been doing this." And just to have something manifest, I think calmed down a really anxious part of my brain and body. Which was unexpected cause everyone had been like, "You know, whatever, don't put too big of stock in it." But like you're saying, it's like, "This vouches for me in some way."
Jill Twiss: Right. And I think that that's nice to have if you have that option. I think perhaps, especially as a woman, there are a lot of, not necessarily all men, but there certainly are a lot of people out there with arbitrary confidence. And there's something really nice about going... because I do regularly, and I mean regularly, like at approximately 3:00 PM every day go, "Oh my God, I am a terrible writer."
I always joke about this, but it's very true. I will go, "Did I write a joke or a sentence? What even is this right now?" And it happens every time I'm like five hours into writing anything. And I suddenly go, "I'm very bad at this." And I would happily tell the world like, "I don't know, I can't write anything." And then there is just this tiny external thing that goes, "No, you must be able to do this." Like, "You must. You can't have tricked everyone this long."
So there's a good chance that as terrible as you feel right now, you're gonna go to sleep and tomorrow you'll go, "Oh, yeah, maybe I can write. Maybe that was a joke or maybe it was a sentence and sentences are okay."
Sarah Enni: I love that. It's very cool that you got to be a part of something so unique and special and building this really fantastic thing that gave a lot of people a lot of sanity when they needed it most... just speaking for myself. I want to talk about Marlon Bundo. First of all, can we just talk about how did you... who is Marlon Bundo and how did you learn about him?
Jill Twiss: Sure. Marlon Bundo is our actual vice president, Mike Pence's, actual bunny.
Sarah Enni: It's the only endearing thing about the Pence family is this bunny.
Jill Twiss: They had some good pets with some good names and that's not nothing. It's almost nothing, but it's not nothing. And I have a personal obsession with good animals with good names. I love naming animals. I have had a Google doc on my computer for years just called good names for animals and I don't have any pets. So I've always been very into good animals with good names.
So of course I was very into Marlon Bundo who had, and has, a very good Instagram. And at one point I saw a press release that said that the Pence's were writing a book about Marlon Bundo and I felt, and this is embarrassing, like weirdly territorial. Like somehow I deserved to write that book, which is objectively insane.
But nevertheless, I was like, "No, they don't get to write a book about Marlon Bundo. I want to write a book about Marlon Bundo." So I sent an email with a pitch, "Why don't we write a book about Marlon Bundo?" And weirdly my bosses said, "Okay." And we had a quick meeting. That was just the question of, should this be an actual children's book? Or should this be one of those sort of adult books that's parodying looking like a children's book?"
Sarah Enni: Like Go The F To Sleep.
Jill Twiss: Yeah, exactly. And we kind of felt like, "Why not make it a real children's book?" And that was as far as we got, and I left the meeting with no assignment or anything. And I just kind of went, "You know what? It's a lot easier if they have something to look at." It's a lot easier if I write something and they go, "Oh, now that we see that, not that. Now that gives us a better idea of what we want."
It's like if someone says like, "Should I get this shirt or this shirt?" And then you go, "I think you should get that shirt." Like the minute you say it, "They know what shirt they really wanted." And they're like, "No, I don't know what you're talking about. I always wanted the other shirt." I thought that was what would happen. So I quickly wrote a story.
We kind of had always known that Mike Pence has always been pretty anti-gay marriage, pretty anti-gay adoption. And so I knew, and my bosses knew, that we wanted Marlon Bundo to be gay. As the real Marlon Bundo obviously is.
Sarah Enni: Of course.
Jill Twiss: I truly believe. And so I just went and wrote a book. And I sent it to them that night, just going like, "Hey, I just wanted you to have a thing so that you could have some idea what you didn't want." And they went, "Oh, we'll publish that." And that was, we probably changed several words, but very little. I now know, having published books since then, that this is in no way at all how books get written. It is absolutely not how they get published, but it is how that book got published.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. This is such a unique story and such a beautiful anomaly, right, in kids' books. But I truly love that this picture book that went on to be enormously successful, it took all of like a day to kind of come together.
Jill Twiss: Right. If I could recommend anything, it's the thing I just railed against, which is arbitrary confidence. The thing that I was most sure about is that no one would ever read it. And that made it very, very easy to write. Nothing has ever been that easy since. I now have written two more children's books and they were truly agonizing in every way.
But that one, because I was so sure that the first thing that would happen is that they were gonna be like, "Obviously not this book." It was very easy. It was a breeze. I looked at some kids' books and then I went like, "What would I, if I could say anything, what would I love to say?" And I just wrote it. And it was easier than anything I've ever written and will ever write again.
Sarah Enni: That is amazing. It also is very sweet and very fun. I highly recommend, and I'll link in the show notes, to the New Yorker review comparing the actual book that the Pence's did go on to publish. A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo is your book and his is something about Marlon Bundo and the vice president. But the New Yorker review of it is wonderful. She has high praise for your beautiful book and then is also like, "This other book is a real drag."
Okay. So now we're at the stage where you've pitched this story idea, your bosses are like, "Yeah, let's do it." You wrote the book and then what happens next? What was the publication journey to get to the end?
Jill Twiss: I don't know most of it because, again, very different than publishing a book in the traditional way, I have since learned. I know that I pitched it in probably October and the book came out in March. Which is, I am now fully aware, not at all how books happen. But we looked, I believe, at some portfolios and chose an illustrator who is a lovely, incredibly talented guy named E.G. Keller.
And he also, I now know, is incredibly fast because he had to do those drawings so quickly. And then it just went straight to getting printed, I think. I think that we have a version where there's a couple of misplaced commas that didn't get fixed until the second time around. But everything was a guess. We didn't have any idea how many might sell. It was also a big secret. So that was a big part of it.
I couldn't tell anyone. I actually signed with an agent entirely separately from the book because I couldn't tell her I had that book. She was basing it on a young adult novel that I was looking at writing and I'd written a sample chapter for her and she's like, "Yeah, I want to sign you. I think you're great." And then I had to call her the night before it came out and say like, "I'm so sorry, but I need you to know that I have a book coming out tomorrow and I can't tell you anything else, but, uh, I'm really glad that you liked me before this!"
Sarah Enni: Yes. Oh, I definitely want to get into that, your very unique agent journey. But, I mean, that of course happens with extraordinary circumstance like this, that the publisher is able to do what they need to do to get it going. But in the case of Marlon Bundo as well, when the book did it's like Beyonce drop of suddenly being in the world, it was also featured on the show that night and then like rocketed. I mean, what was that experience like? Did you guys have any idea of what the response was gonna be like?
Jill Twiss: We had, I mean, I assumed someone would buy the book because my boss at the time, John Oliver, is incredible and I knew people watched our show. I knew they would buy the book.
Sarah Enni: Well, if people will go to the FCC website and write...
Jill Twiss: Exactly, but we absolutely had no idea. I'm not sure numbers, I guess I should say also that a big part of this is that all of the proceeds for the book were going to the Trevor Project, which helps LGBTQ teens mostly, I think, or kids and to AIDS United. Specifically because those are marginalized groups of people that Mike Pence has not been great for and we wanted Marlon Bundo to help those people out.
Also all the proceeds for the book were going to charity and I think that was a great reason people bought it in addition. But yeah, I believe that they sort of got together and decided the right number of books that they thought they could sell in, I don't know, the first year or something. And I think they sold out in like the first five minutes.
Sarah Enni: I read that 180,000 copies were sold within 48 hours.
Jill Twiss: Oh my gosh. So crazy! And I didn't even know, like what's a normal amount of books to sell. I didn't know any of that. And I still don't know how many books we've sold, but it is in the hundreds of thousands, I know. And I know that certainly that was not at all what we expected. And there was a bit of a mess in having to print a whole bunch more books than anyone had planned to print. Good problem to have. Cause there were a lot of people that had to wait for books, so I'm sorry,
Sarah Enni: Worth the wait. So let's backtrack and talk about the fact that you were already sort of having conversations with a literary agent about this YA book. I'm interested in how that came about. You kind of books on the mind it seems like at this time.
Jill Twiss: Yeah. I mean, other than my revenge novel... I guess if I had known, or really thought about the option of writing books, I would have wanted to do it. It was, as we said, a thing that I did in my spare time just not really thinking about that that could be a career for me. And as I started to get a little more clout, I started to figure out like, "Oh, I could just ask to do the things I want to do."
This is a tiny tangent, but one thing I did is I've always been obsessed with the National Spelling Bee. And one day I was like, "Well, they have comedy sentences in that spelling bee when I watch it on ESPN, someone writes those." And I just contacted them and was like, "I would like to write for your spelling bee." And they said, "Okay." And it was sort of a big moment for me of going, "What are the things I want to do? And let's see if there's a chance I can do them."
I ended up hearing about, and I ended up not writing this book, so I'm not gonna be very specific about it just cause it doesn't seem fair, but a publisher that wanted a specific kind of young adult novel. And so I asked to meet with him and he said, "Great, write a sample chapter." And I wrote a sample chapter and he's like, "Great. I would like to give you a book deal. You have to get an agent. This is not something we will let you negotiate by yourself." And I said, "Yes." I was like, "That's a very good idea."
I asked a few friends and I talked to a few agents who read the chapter and then offered to represent me, because it was a done deal. Like it was money to them for not having to do too much work comparatively. But one agent said, "I love this chapter. I think you're a great writer. I want to represent you. I also don't think you should take this deal. I think for a number of reasons, this isn't good for you. I want to work with you anyway. I want you to write another book, but I don't think this is the best choice for you."
And I left that conversation and went, "I think I want to work with that lady." She seems to... not that I felt like other people were just in it for the money or anything like that. But she seemed to, from my writing, have a real interest in my career and what was good for me. So I signed with her, with her potentially getting nothing, me getting nothing, and then ended up telling her a couple of weeks later that I had a book coming out.
And then of course she called me the next day after Marlon Bundo came out and said, "Well Jill, I didn't know what it was, but now I realize you have to write picture books. Like obviously the next thing you have to do is write another picture book. That's the thing you need to be doing right now." And it turned out she was actually a very skilled picture book agent, and that was entirely coincidental.
Sarah Enni: That's so one of those universe moments it feels like.
Jill Twiss: Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Sarah Enni: Is she still your agent right now?
Jill Twiss: She is.
Sarah Enni: What's her name?
Jill Twiss: Brenda Bowen.
Sarah Enni: Amazing. We can give her a shout out.
Jill Twiss: She's the best.
Sarah Enni: What a pleasant surprise for an agent to be like, "Oh, okay, great. So my new client, whom I love, also is instantly a New York Times bestseller."
Jill Twiss: Strangely, it worked out so well for both of us. And I was so pleased that after she talked me out of taking a little bit of money that would have been beneficial to her, that I was able to make her some money.
Sarah Enni: Yes, yes.
Jill Twiss: Not with Marlon Bundo, but with my next book.
Sarah Enni: Right. Let's talk about that. You sort of have this, again, it's a moment of this whirlwind experience of who could have ever guessed it would have kind of blown up like this. Then how did you move forward? Your agent says, "Obviously picture books are next." Did you have a bunch of ideas that you had been thinking about? Or how did you decide how to move forward?
Jill Twiss: I think I did. In addition to just having a Google doc of animal names, which was basically all I wanted, the first thing I wrote was just a kid naming his dog and coming up with 10,000 names. And Brenda was like, "Great, but no. Absolutely that is not gonna be your next book." I wrote a story about a penguin who had never seen colors and only saw black and white. And she was like, "Great, maybe later."
And then what happened, honestly, was I started learning about Trump separating kids from their parents at the border. And I got real sad. And when, as we've learned, when I get dumped, when I get real sad, I guess I write a book. And so I wanted to write a book about not being scared of new people, because I felt really helpless about grownups, honestly. And I still do a bit. But I felt very hopeful about kids and their ability to accept new things and accept new people.
And so I wrote a book called The Someone New and I sent that to my agent and she was like, "Oh yeah, no, that's your book. That's your next book. That's the one that I want to send around." And so she did.
Sarah Enni: Wow. So before we get any more into it, can you kind of pitch The Someone New for us?
Jill Twiss: Sure. The Someone New is the story of a chipmunk named Jitterbug who is very nervous about new things, like I think a lot of us are. She's just scared. She's just very scared. And a snail named Pudding comes into her forest and she wants to be nice, but she's scared because everything's different. You know, "What if this new snail comes into town and everything is different. And my friends, aren't my friends. And I just thought I had my life figured out. And now everything's different."
So she's like, "Sorry, Pudding, get out." And Jitterbug's friends, who are some otters named Duffels and Nudge and a butterfly named Toast and a goose named Geezer, kind of give Jitterbug a little talking to. And the lesson that she needs to learn is that new things can be scary, but that kindness is stronger than fear. And not to spoil the whole book, you never feel dumber than when you're explaining the plot of a picture book to an adult.
Sarah Enni: It is a unique pitch.
Jill Twiss: Yeah. But luckily Jitterbug comes to her senses and asks Pudding to stay and they become very good friends.
Sarah Enni: Ah, I love it. And this is so interesting too, because you were able to sort of say, "I want to keep working with the same illustrator."
Jill Twiss: Yeah. Which I didn't know, of course, was not normally a thing. But my agent suggested that perhaps we could sell ourselves together. And I was so lucky because I can't imagine working with anyone other than E.G. Keller. Everything he draws, I think, is so humorous and yet perfect. He knows how to sell a joke in a way that is so perfect for the things that I enjoy writing that I feel really lucky. But yeah, I have never worked with another illustrator and my publisher has never suggested another illustrator.
Sarah Enni: I love that. To what degree, if any, do you guys communicate or what is that workflow like?
Jill Twiss: For the most part we communicate because we know each other, although I did not meet him until well after Marlon Bundo was published. Actually until after The Someone New was published, because he lives across the country. So we had never met each other and just happened to mesh well stylistically. But now we're friends and we communicate a little bit, but of course that's not our job.
Our job is that the publisher tells us what to do. But because of that, I feel comfortable doing things that perhaps, maybe other writers wouldn't do with their illustrator. Which is like suggesting jokes I would like to have in the illustrations. For Marlon Bundo, I actually wrote what I wanted every illustration to be just because I didn't know any better. And I had to come into this publishing process and be told, "Oh, that's totally not your job." And going like, "Oh, actually, that's great. I love that. It's totally a load off of my mind." And he's an incredible artist and will always come up with something better than I would have suggested anyway.
Sarah Enni: Right. It's wonderful to have that trust. You're like, "Oh, this person is gonna have their part of the job completely in hand. So I don't need to..."
Jill Twiss: Yeah. One of my favorite things in The Someone New is that they let me name the books on the chipmunk's floor. And one of the books is called Crazy Rich Acorns and one of the books is called the Handmaid's Tail, but it's about a mouse with a tail.
So he is incredibly generous in letting me throw some cute little jokes in there, but also there's so much humor just naturally in his drawings. I think my instinct is to force it and to force a joke and cram it in anywhere. And I realized that he's just so good at making it warm-hearted and humorous just by looking at it. And you just don't have to try so hard. That's what I'm trying to learn.
Sarah Enni: That's nice, I like that. I am interested in the process. This obviously was a different writing process, it sounds like, then Marlon Bundo. So what was it like? How long did it take? What was the whole thing?
Jill Twiss: I would say I probably did maybe six drafts of The Someone New before we sent it to publishers. And that was just with my agent and she helped me. I could not tell you if that's how it usually works. I don't know if agents usually give a lot of notes, but she did. She was very, very helpful because of course, Marlon Bundo isn't necessarily, in a lot of ways, a typical picture book. I'm now learning it has a lot more words than most picture books do, things like that.
So she was able to help me figure out a little bit more about what's typical. A little bit more about like, "You have to figure out how many pages it is." And she helped me with that. And then it went to the publisher. And then, of course, we went through what felt like a bazillion more drafts, but it's more just because it's a picture book so every single word matters.
And you really will go back and forth about almost every single word of the book and whether you need it. And I'll fight for words. And now I look back and go, "Why did I fight to keep that word? That was not necessary." Or whatever. I think I've learned to let go a little more now. But that's a lot of what it is, is just going, "Why did you need that many words? Why does Jitterbug say 'Hello, hello, hello' instead of saying 'hello?''
Sarah Enni: What is your experience with that kind of writing versus joke writing? They're both succinct, where the words really do matter. This is a broad generalization, but maybe more sincere. And there's not as much of a pressure on it. I don't know. What's your impression?
Jill Twiss: I'm not sure. It's a thing that I don't want to say came naturally to me, because it's very hard, and I'm also probably doing it wrong, who knows? But it's a language that came naturally to me. I think that there is an overlap between all the things I do. Between music, which is where I started, and joke writing and children's books, I think the rhythm is very important in all of them.
And sort of knowing the feeling of when a sentence should end, or what you should end a sentence with. Or how much a person can read aloud. A big overlap between picture books and writing for TV is that it's a thing that's out loud. There are not a lot of kids reading picture books because it's not the right age for them to be reading by themselves. So you have to be thinking, "What's this gonna sound like out loud?" And are you writing something that a parent can easily say and that they will be able to make funny in the way that you think is funny?
And so I think that that's a lot of what comes naturally, but also a lot of what I think about in them. You mentioned sincerity, and I think there is a sincerity to comedy too, or there can be. But I do think there is something nice about not having to hide the love and not having to talk around it and all that stuff. There's just something nice where can end a book with saying, "And they were very good friends." There's something lovely about that. Or that Marlin Bundo and Wesley fell in love and they wanted to spend their days together. And to just go like, "You don't have to be funny. Kids just understand love."
Sarah Enni: Yeah. That's really sweet. I love that. I think when you sold the deal for The Someone New, it was a two book deal. Is that right?
Jill Twiss: It was.
Sarah Enni: So did you have another idea? Had you already been talking with your agent about what the second book might look like?
Jill Twiss: My publisher knew that they wanted the second book to be on voting because it was coming out in 2020. And because my books previously have been, at least somewhat, political. Marlon Bundo is probably very political and at least the beginnings of where The Someone New came from had a political bent to it. Although I tend to think of the story now, because I was always the new kid in school, as being a little more about that. A lot of the question for me was what do kids actually need to know about voting? Because they don't need to know everything.
Sarah Enni: Right. Oh my God, let's not get into the electoral college in the picture book.
Jill Twiss: Absolutely not. Look, I would like to forget what I know about that if I could.
Sarah Enni: I am interested in that approach. So that's sort of yet another unique circumstances to be writing a children's book under is we know about the theme or the topic, and then you kind of have to find your way in. What was that process like?
Jill Twiss: It was difficult in a lot of ways just because it was really important. It was difficult for me, I don't think difficult for the publisher, specifically. It was really important to me that this not be a book that parents just buy because it's the election, but that it'd be a book that kids really actually need to know and get something out of. And there's a lot of lessons kids need to know that are not in voting. You know, voting is not about compromise. That's the thing kids need to know. And that's a great theme for a children's book, but that's not what voting is.
So you kind of have to figure out what is the thing that voting is that children actually do need to know? And for me, it was the concept that everyone gets a say. That voting is about how the quietest voice matters as much as the loudest voice. And I think especially for kids, especially maybe for quiet kids, it feels like you would like to know there is a way for you to be heard. And there is a fair way for you to be heard, even if you're not the loudest voice.
So that's what I decided to make the book about. It's the same animals. They are trying to make some decisions and they know they need a leader, but they don't know how to choose a leader. Should it be the tallest animal? Should it be the fluffiest animals? Should it be, you know, the one that can fly? And then one of the animals has the idea like, "What if everyone gets a say? What if we all get the same say, and that's how we make our decisions?"
Sarah Enni: I love that. And just to be clear, it's called Everyone Gets a Say. It'll be out today, which is exciting. I love that you chose to stick with the same world and we get to revisit Toast, the butterfly. Was there any talk about doing a whole new thing or did you know you wanted to stick with the same people?
Jill Twiss: This was the way that they decided, in the initial contract, was two books with the same characters. They met the characters for The Someone New and they knew they wanted another book with those characters, which was exciting for me.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, that's great. You had a whole cast already there. So in the book you do use a lot of words that aren't vote. And this is like one of the things that's so great about kid's books is they make you, as an adult, reframe things. And like you said, kind of get back to maybe a little bit of an outsider view. Kids are so wonderful because they're new to the system so often they'll be like, "What? This doesn't make any sense." And you're like, "You're right."
Jill Twiss: Yeah. Yeah.
Sarah Enni: But I'm interested in like specifically the vocabulary of this being so poignant now in this moment, like vote means one thing to us and we kind of use it without thinking, but you really are getting into leadership and values, and what does it mean? You know, I love that you're saying it's not compromise. It's one time where you get to just say, "I believe in this thing and I'm gonna stand up for that, right now." I mean, this is not a question it's kind of just like, what was it like to play with those words and think about those things.
Jill Twiss: It is really interesting to me when perhaps I'm a little nervous about democracy right now.
Sarah Enni: You're not alone.
Jill Twiss: And yet, I don't want to pass on that fear to a bunch of children. And so you have to think what is the heart of democracy? But be like, "What do I want it to be?" And you don't have to teach kids that like their vote counts. They don't think their vote doesn't count. There's no kid out there who's like, "All the candidates are the same!" You don't have to tell them it's their duty to vote. It's not. But what I think they do need to understand is they just don't know how decisions get made. And for them, a lot of life, frankly, is not about voting. A lot of life is about somebody being the boss and telling them what to do.
Jill Twiss: But I wanted to introduce the idea, especially in groups of kids, cause I remember just being so frustrated when I was a kid and I wasn't the loudest kid and just sort of getting steamrolled. And you want to introduce to kids early, the idea that you can make a decision together, but that you're not always gonna get consensus. So what you want is to create a system where everyone gets a say. And you mentioned that I don't use the word voting a lot, and that's true, because that's not really what it needs to be for a five-year-old. What they need to understand is having their say and being heard.
But that having your say doesn't mean getting what you want. And that's a really tough lesson for a kid is like, "Yes, I hear you. We are taking your opinion into consideration. Everyone gets a say, and yet you might not get the thing you want out of it."
Sarah Enni: Right. And we just talked about the beauty of being able to wrap up a kid's book with the simple, beautiful message of love. This is a little more complicated.
Jill Twiss: Yeah. Yeah. And the thing that makes it acceptable is when you believe the system is fair.
Sarah Enni: Yeah.
Jill Twiss: And of course we would like to make sure that our system is more fair, but I think a way to do that is instilling the idea in kids that your say is just as important as everyone else's.
Sarah Enni: I want to go back, just briefly, to something that you mentioned. You had, I think this was on the Am Writing Podcast that you really, and you did just share it now, but talked about having this moment of realization that you should just ask for the things you want. And I don't want to gloss over that cause it's actually a really big thing especially, I think, as women. So I don't know. I just would love to hear more about that, about what it was like to realize that and how you've integrated that into your creative life.
Jill Twiss: Sure. I don't think that I have a huge imposter syndrome, but I think that I've always been very practical and felt like I have to prove myself. It was probably two years and maybe an Emmy or two in, before I would say that I was a writer. And I was making my entire living as a comedy writer and had had actual trophies. Just because I felt like it was a sacred thing to be. And I didn't feel like I had earned it.
I don't think that that's true or correct, but I think something that happened in the middle there is I went, "What if no one knows any more than you do?" There's sort of a stage you hit, I think, the first time you go to a doctor that's about your age and you go, "Oh no, Oh no. What if this is it? What if I know the most and my doctor is just as confused about life as I am and everyone else? And he's just definitively saying a thing while he's going, 'uh, I don't know?'"
"What if the people running for office don't know any more than you do? Well, then maybe you should be running for office." And that's kind of what I said is like, "I could be fully qualified to do all the things I want to do. What if I am? There's certainly less qualified people who are out there demanding stuff." So I just started trying to think of the things that I wanted to do and ask if I could do them. And some of them worked and some of them didn't. As I said, I found people at the National Spelling Bee and I said, "I think you have comedy writers. Can I be one of them?" And they said, "Yes."
Similarly though, I wrote to anyone I could find at the Tony awards and said, can I write for the Tony awards? And they said, "Nope." And they were wrong. And I really feel sure that at some point I'm gonna get to do it.
Sarah Enni: Someday for sure.
Jill Twiss: But I don't feel bad that I asked and I don't feel unqualified to do it. And I think now that's kind of where I'm at. I'm writing a play. I don't know how to write a play. I genuinely have no idea, but also everyone has to write a first play. Like you can't skip to the second play. And so I don't know? I didn't know how to write a children's book. I still don't. And yet, like my third one's coming out. So, just ask. Just do it.
And do it kindly. I'm not a huge fan of people who oversell themselves necessarily, but maybe there's no one out there doing it better than you. Maybe you are as qualified as everyone else. And you should just go out there and ask for the thing you want.
I think it's also helpful to know that people that have achieved some things that you perhaps might make you think, "Oh, they know what they're doing." They also do not know what they're doing. There's so little overlap between confidence and ability. And at some point you have to say, "Let my work speak for me. I might not think I know what I'm doing, but maybe I do. Maybe I do. Or maybe I know as much as anyone else."
Sarah Enni: I love that. I like to wrap up with advice. I guess I'd really love to hear from you, for someone interested in honing a voice. I think writing comedy really takes a good understanding of perspective and voice. And I guess I'd just like to hear any advice you'd have for someone who's trying to think that way, or broach into comedy.
Jill Twiss: Sure. I think that, I'll speak specifically to late night, just because that's what I know about. A lot of what I did was I would watch late night shows. Or I think there's even something you can subscribe to, to get the best of late night jokes sent to you. And I would either write down the jokes or look at the jokes in writing, and I would try to replicate them. A lot of times I would read the first sentence of the joke and try to write the second sentence of the joke.
And some of what you're gonna figure out there is that there's people whose voices you do better than others. I might not do, you know, Conan's voice as well as I would have done John Oliver's voice. Or maybe you're a person that can adapt to all of them. That's something I do.
The other thing I think a lot about, and we touched on this a little bit, but I think literally just exercising the muscle of having to write is a huge difference between your very funny friends who write very funny things on Twitter, and you're very funny friends who consistently write very funny things on Twitter because they force themselves to write even when nothing is funny.
And for me, a lot of what I had to learn was just how to sit down and have a setup and know that I had to write a punchline for it. And that I didn't get to look for another setup. Sometimes I have a lot of tricks that I use. I do things like I will set my timer for seven minutes and be like, "Just during the seven minutes, you just have to write down all the things you know about this thing you're writing a joke about."
And almost always somewhere in the middle of that, I will find a place to go. I will find a joke or I will find three jokes. You know, very often on the show, we don't just write a joke, we write a joke and like three alt jokes. Even in my play right now, someone was laughing at me because I was handing it to people with still like 20 alt jokes in it, because I go, "Well, I wrote them. Why wouldn't I wait and see what went best with an actor?" And so that's just something I'm used to doing is finding ways to sit down and force yourself to do it. Like it's a job even when it's not a job.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. That seems to be what you have done to great success, so far. Is really work hard at what you're interested in and then find a way to make it happen.
Jill Twiss: I mean, I think the lesson with Marlon Bundo that I didn't do deliberately, but I think has worked out for me generally, is give people something fully formed. A lot of times we want to not do all the work and have someone discover us so then they can pay us to do the work. But until you have that history behind you, and until you have some reason for people to believe in you, you actually have to do all the work first. You just have to. And then they can understand what you meant. As opposed to like, it would be great to be able to pitch a novel and have someone pay you for it. For the most part, you don't get to do that. For the most part, you have to write it.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. And then even if you've proven yourself... in talking to people on this show, that's been actually a consensus that's been coming up lately over and over, is even people that have written many times are like, "Just write the entire thing cause then you know what you've written. And then you can talk to people who are gonna help you make it an actual final book in a much more clear way." And it puts you in a position of a little bit more power cause you know what your book is, as opposed to being like, "I sure as heck know what these three chapters are."
Jill Twiss: Right. No, that makes total sense to me. And it's exhausting. But also a lot of times, the time you would spend pitching is a time you could have spent writing. If you have the option of pitching things and selling it, do it. Do that, absolutely. But if you are going, "I just want someone to see my stuff." Make more stuff. Make more stuff, put it in a place where people can see it. Ask people for help. It's okay. But offer them something as far as like you've done a lot of work before you ask them to put work into it.
Sarah Enni: I love that. Yeah. This is all amazing, amazing advice. And very hope inspiring. Jill, this has been so fun. I want to come back and talk about any of these projects that you're talking about. So let's talk again soon.
Jill Twiss: Okay. Thank you so much.
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Hayley Hershman produces First Draft and today's episode was produced and sound designed by Callie Wright. The theme music is by Dan Bailey and the logo was designed by Collin Keith. Thanks also to transcriptionist-at- large Julie Anderson. And, as ever, thanks to you, Elks lodge Emmy boasters, for listening.
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