Read This: A Community writer on how Dan Harmon cured him of “Shit Writing Syndrome”
The Internet is still very sad about Community, and understandably so. But the silver lining to this darkest timeline cloud is that now that its writers have some free time on their hands, they can produce comedic essays like Andy Bobrow’s “How Writing For The TV Show Community Cured Me.” The piece details Bobrow’s brave struggle with a syndrome he calls “SWS”—Shit Writing Syndrome—and how it nearly ended his career as a professional comedy writer. Then Bobrow went to work for Dan Harmon, who comes across in the piece as the grumpy, drunken, but ultimately lovable Yoda fans hoped he would be:
“He pulled out a marker and went to the white board. He drew a circle. ‘If you—’ Then the marker ran out of ink and he threw it across the room. Then he said, ‘Fuck it’ and he sat back down. He opened Twitter on his phone and started typing stuff. About ten minutes went by. Then I think he fell asleep. He closed his eyes at least. Then he opened them, ate a hamburger, poured another drink, and picked up nowhere near where he left off.”
Using Harmon’s “write-drink-drink-delete-rewrite” method, Bobrow was eventually able to “Schindle [his] own list” and write something that he could be proud of. As proof, he attaches his first draft and an almost-final draft of the Community episode “Mixology Certification;” and damned if that later draft isn’t significantly less shitty than the first.