Sarah Scheller
Three months after my sister died, I started a writers’ room for a new television show. Not a drama where I could use my grief, but a fast-paced, half-hour comedy.
I wondered how this was going to work. I was in no place to be making jokes, it was too soon. The tattoo on my arm bearing her name was still fresh. But whatever they say about grief and distraction, it works – until it doesn’t.
For those unfamiliar with a writers’ room, a small group of writers is paid to sit in a room to talk characters and break stories. Days turn into weeks as we pitch story arcs and jokes. Those that land are quickly added to the whiteboard, which over time builds to a colourful mosaic of words and symbols.
We move only for toilet breaks or to reach for snacks. We drink endless cups of coffee, as stretching your brain through the mental gymnastics of story structure is exhausting. A large part of the day is dedicated to lunch: choosing, ordering, critiquing.
With the caveat of respect, no topic is off limits. We share intense life experiences and unpack milestone events, such as that time in primary school when a teacher humiliated you in front of the class and how you now think it’s helped define the person you are today. When the room finishes, we know more about each other than our partners do. It can be humbling, for us and them. When new friendships blossom, they blossom quickly.
When staffing a room, I look for writers who have a willingness to share or, better, overshare. Rooms are confessional, and an environment of safe vulnerability is crucial. As screenwriters, we oxygenate our scripts with personal stories to add specificity, which ironically makes them more relatable. We trade stories of virginity loss, parenting fails (mostly mine), infertility, celebrity crushes, disordered eating patterns. We are already commissioned. We go deep.
I did not share that my sister had recently died.
Unsurprisingly, comedy rooms are more joyful than drama rooms. We work hard to make each other laugh. Setting the new TV show amid a women’s website circa 2012, there was a feminism slant – how could there not be? We spoke at length about gender restriction, feminist literature, internalised misogyny. We shared anecdotes, and tried to make them funny.
I did not share that my sister had written brilliant essays at university on Sylvia Plath and Jean Rhys. Or that she was the smartest, most independent woman I have known, who could replace the rubber fuel hose in her VW Beetle while waxing lyrical about the latest political or celebrity scandal.
When brainstorming career options for our main characters, the usual stereotypes were thrown about. I chose not to share that my sister had studied architecture (as well as fine arts and design) and I had invaluable insight into the precision of that world. A drafting purist who stubbornly refused to switch to the computerised version.
Another writer was from a long line of educators. Perfect, English teacher it is.
The first week we focused on our lead character. She should have the ability to editorialise herself, we said. She would praise the confessional essay, even if at times the moral obligation to her staff was murky. She would overshare and be criticised for it, and we unpacked the sexism in how “oversharing” is always assigned to females.
She would struggle to navigate her public and private life, which would be particularly relevant in her role as a mother, where ambition can feel like an ugly imposter. She would make silly parenting mistakes – and as the only mother in the room, I had a long list of suggestions. We would explore the impossibility of reconciling these two worlds, we would find a way but it wouldn’t be easy. She would get in the way of herself but hopefully challenge the working mother, television standard.
At the same time I was struggling to reconcile parts of my life. Mothering, running the writers’ room while planning my sister’s interment, finding the right spot in the cemetery, deciding what Beatles song to inscribe, feeling guilty, always guilty, about working and not stopping.
Thematically, the show would be about accepting that failure was perfectly passable. Our lead would be resilient in the face of failure. Was I? I knew failure, I was failing at grieving. Choosing to be at work and not with my mother. Maybe I could editorialise my life? I’d have to talk about it first.
From podcasts to interactive theatre, normalising grief and preparing for death is having a cultural moment. Yoga has been doing it for centuries. Shavasana, the corpse pose, prepares us for death by lying still and lowering the heart rate. It’s meant to be both reflective and devoid of thought but when I did it I lay there thinking up new and inventive ways to roll my mat.
Can you ever prepare? When death comes, it changes you in such profound ways that you forget who you were before.
Far more qualified people will tell you that sitting in your experience and processing emotions is how you normalise pain and trauma. We share in the hope of enlightening others and strengthening ourselves. Yet here I was, safely cocooned in a writers’ room, hopelessly undersharing.
I don’t know why I chose to share insignificant life moments, such as getting into trouble at high school or consistently forgetting photo day at my kids’ school, while ignoring the most traumatic and life-changing event that was still raw and fresh in my memory: the death of my sister.
Maybe I felt unable to distil the experience of my sister in articulate sentences. Too raw, too vulnerable, too soon. Maybe I wanted to keep my sister’s story, which now includes her death, to myself.
Anyway, I guess I just want to let my writers know that my sister died.
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