Ear­li­er this week, Kathy Ebel wrote about her Ger­man-Jew­ish fam­i­ly and Nice Jew­ish Girl pro­tag­o­nists from New York City. Her first nov­el, Clau­dia Sil­ver to the Res­cue (Houghton Mif­flin Har­court), is now avail­able. She has been blog­ging here all week for Jew­ish Book Coun­cil and MyJew­ish­Learn­ing.

Memo­r­i­al Day, 2007. I’ve drift­ed away from a San­ta Mon­i­ca beach par­ty to gaze out at the Pacif­ic Ocean, plus my navel, when an unfa­mil­iar woman approach­es. We chat a bit — she’s a lit­er­ary agent based in New York, the sis­ter of the host­ess — and then she asks the dread­ed ques­tion. ​“So…what are you work­ing on these days?” I pause to con­sid­er before answer­ing. You know when peo­ple say to cute, charis­mat­ic sin­gle women, ​“You’re so fab­u­lous — I just can’t believe you’re sin­gle!” and they want to punch them in the face and then kill them­selves? This was a work ver­sion of that.

You see, I’ve been liv­ing in Los Ange­les for sev­en years, hav­ing left my native New York City to seek my for­tune as a screen­writer with a soap opera cred­it and a fresh pile of TV spec scripts in my kit bag, but the steady ascent I’ve pic­tured, and that I’ve seen oth­er peo­ple achieve, hasn’t hap­pened. I’ve been work­ing so damn hard for so long and I feel like I’m nowhere, oth­er than crushed. How could that be, when I’ve done every­thing I’ve seen oth­er peo­ple doing — and what my var­i­ous agents have told me to do? 

I mean: I got a driver’s license at age 30 in order to dri­ve cross-coun­try in a U‑Haul piled with what­ev­er pos­ses­sions my hus­band and I didn’t sell when we left Brook­lyn. I sat in a rent­ed house in the Hol­ly­wood Dell with a vin­tage met­al desk and a pris­tine view of a walled gar­den that gave me a squir­re­ly Bar­ton Fink feel­ing, and I cranked out mate­r­i­al and rolled calls. I got a job on a show — the researcher on Law&Order:SVU in its first sea­son — and I wrote two free­lance episodes…but I wasn’t put on staff. I re-wrote a teen com­e­dy fea­ture for Paramount…but my broad­ly com­ic take was poor­ly received. I sold a TV dram­e­dy pilot, a high school musical…but the exec­u­tives involved walked away when I’d banked they’d burst into song. Even­tu­al­ly, moti­vat­ed by the stretch­es of unem­ploy­ment between these gigs, I devel­oped a free­lance side­line, writ­ing copy for enter­tain­ment-based ad cam­paigns. And then, just weeks before the beach par­ty at which I’m now a wall­flower, a lit­er­ary man­ag­er who’s read what I thought were my best scripts deliv­ers a dis­turb­ing cri­tique. ​“Your work is sol­id,” she says. ​“It’s well writ­ten and it proves you can do it. But I can’t do any­thing with it, because it’s gener­ic. I would be inter­est­ed in work­ing with you, but first I’d need to see mate­r­i­al that only you could write. Write some new stuff this sum­mer and send it over after Labor Day.” Gener­ic? New stuff? Sounds like me? Fecch.

Beach Par­ty Book Agent is star­ing at me. I repeat her ques­tion. ​“What am I work­ing on these days?” Then: ​“I actu­al­ly have no idea.” She kind­ly offers to read any­thing I write, if I’d ever care to send it along. I thank her polite­ly and turn back to my doubt­ful view of the hori­zon. What­ev­er the fuck that would be, I think to myself.Then I kick some sand.

A few weeks lat­er, when I sit down at my desk, I’m sur­prised by what comes out. Not a TV pilot in the vein of some­body else’s hit cable series, or a high-con­cept roman­tic com­e­dy involv­ing an action sequence and a makeover mon­tage to which Reese With­er­spoon may want to attach. It’s a short sto­ry, with a title inspired by Mor­ris­sey (Hold On To Your Friends) and a main char­ac­ter named Clau­dia Sil­ver, in which Clau­dia is vis­it­ed by the ghost of an estranged friend­ship. I haven’t writ­ten one of these pup­pies in close to 15 years.

Back then, at Barnard Col­lege, I pur­sued a dou­ble major in Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture and cre­ative writ­ing. My tumul­tuous upbring­ing, marked by most of the foibles of the 1970’s along the sex, drugs, and divorce axis, drove me not just to suc­ceed, but to sur­vive. I dreamed of becom­ing a nov­el­ist, but, as I neared grad­u­a­tion, my dream seemed ever more unlike­ly and irre­spon­si­ble. How dare I think I could pos­si­bly make a liv­ing doing what I love? So, fol­low­ing the lead of col­lege friends who head­ed for film or dra­ma schools or straight to Hol­ly­wood, I told myself I would achieve a lucra­tive screen­writ­ing career. Some­day, around the age of (gasp) 40, hav­ing acquired a hefty pile of cred­its, cash, and prizes, and achiev­ing the secu­ri­ty I had nev­er known, I would reward myself by allow­ing myself to write nov­els. Hav­ing honed this world view as an inse­cure 19-year-old, I lugged it with me for the next two decades.

Labor Day, 2007. The sum­mer has passed, and I’ve writ­ten three sto­ries, all about the same char­ac­ter: Clau­dia Sil­ver, a 24-year-old maybe not-so-Nice Jew­ish Girl from Brook­lyn prone to per­son­al dra­ma. The man­ag­er who judged my scripts ​“gener­ic” months before calls me a few weeks lat­er. ​“These are great!” she exclaims. ​“You need a lit­er­ary agent.” I remem­ber the con­ver­sa­tion I’d had at the beach par­ty months before. When I tell the man­ag­er about it, she’s silent for a beat. Then, some­what astound­ed, she reveals that the woman I’d met is a huge­ly respect­ed heavy-hit­ter in the book busi­ness, known for her taste and influ­ence. ​“She may not respond,” the man­ag­er warns, ​“but you should go for it.”

I send Big Deal Beach Par­ty Book Agent my sto­ries, and she gives me the great­est com­pli­ment of my entire career. ​“You,” she says, ​“are hot shit.” She tells me that what I must do next is write a nov­el, and if I do, she will sell it. It takes me yet anoth­er year and half to turn the ship around. In that time, as fate has it, I final­ly land a staff writer posi­tion, on the CBS cop show Cold Case, where I work hard and make great friends, but am not very good at my job. In the writ­ers’ room, while every­body else is hot­ly debat­ing the place­ment of DNA evi­dence, all I can think is: ​“The victim’s in a Diane Von Fursten­berg wrap dress, with a navy and red geo­met­ric print.” When I’m not asked back to the show, I’m final­ly ready to stop try­ing so hard. 

I part ways with my TV agents and sign with Big Deal Beach Par­ty Book Agent. I land a day job in enter­tain­ment adver­tis­ing, begin a 40-hour cor­po­rate work week, and start ris­ing at 4AM in order to write Clau­dia Sil­ver to the Res­cue. I lib­er­al­ly apply my TV expe­ri­ence to my fic­tion writ­ing. I struc­ture the tan­gled web of my book’s heav­i­ly pop­u­lat­ed plot as a detailed out­line, from which I write close­ly. I end every sec­tion of the sto­ry with an ​“act out” — want­i­ng my audi­ence to come back after the com­mer­cial break. I ​“cast” my ensem­ble of char­ac­ters with the per­fect actors for the parts and block the scenes in my mind, and I select design ele­ments with mani­a­cal exac­ti­tude and end­less­ly move them around. As I write, I also find inspi­ra­tion in shows that I expe­ri­ence as nov­els unspool­ing on the screen: The Sopra­nos, The Wire, and the one I can’t live with­out, Mad Men.

As for the back­wards world view I’d been car­ry­ing on my back for two decades, the one that said I must delay what I love to write until I’ve earned the right? I final­ly put it down. Man, was it heavy. What am I work­ing on these days? My next novel. 

It’s about a tele­vi­sion show.

Kathy Ebel, a first-gen­er­a­tion Amer­i­can, was born in Man­hat­tan. Her blog, Father­land: There’s No Place Like Home, or How and Why a Nice Jew­ish Girl Asked Ger­many to Take Her Back, chron­i­cles her quest to have her Ger­man cit­i­zen­ship restored. Kathy con­sid­ers Brook­lyn her home­town and cur­rent­ly lives with her fam­i­ly in Los Ange­les. Clau­dia Sil­ver to the Res­cue (Houghton Mif­flin Har­court) is her first novel.