“Inside The Writers’ Room With The Mindy Project” Panel (Writing Advice & Takeaways) – Part 1

June 3, 2013

Mindy Kaling & rest of writing staff of The Mindy Project at the Writer's Guild Foundation panelPicking up from yesterday

The panel was, of course, great. Some of it was stuff I’d heard before, but is always good to be reminded of. For instance: One great thing that Mindy said was, “No one’s gonna believe in you, except for yourself… So, just do your own thing.”

I actually have part of that thought written largely in one of my improv notebooks (though it is applicable in many instances). It says, “NO ONE is looking out for you, but you.” (Yes. “No one” is in all caps. Intense, right?) It takes up almost a whole sheet of paper, and I’ve seen it many times.

(I don’t do that to emphasize lack of caring from others – but how much you need to remember to care about yourself.)

Some of the stuff I’d never heard before. I liked this analogy that Mindy had gotten from BJ Novak.

Regarding romance on the show: Using the example of The Office, there might be 6 seconds of screen time for Pam falling asleep on Jim’s shoulder. And it might be the only thing people on twitter (or wherever) are talking about – even thought the other 95.5% of the show was filled with great comedy.

And when everyone is telling you that’s the best part, it might be tempting to try to shove more of that in… But, it’s kind of like when you give someone a cup of coffee. And they say, “Wow, this is a great cup of coffee. I love this! You know what I really love is that taste of cinnamon in there.”

And then you might think you should add more cinnamon. But eventually, you end up giving them a cup of cinnamon with just a little coffee in it. So, sometimes a taste is better than kind of a binge.

As far as some other cool stuff, they talked about – when someone asked if they had any advice for someone trying to get in the business, Mindy talked about how she got rejected from tons of stuff. And whenever the traditional route doesn’t go your way, it becomes about finding paths around whatever’s blocking you.

And she mentioned how for every job she’s gotten, she had a bunch of things she didn’t get. Sometimes she couldn’t even get an interview.

Photo credit: @malloryamoye instagram
Photo credit: @malloryamoye instagram

(This is actually another example of something I knew to be fact already, but is always nice to hear again. I actually even already had a blog post drafted about how even in my little tiny corner of the world (obviously without my own network sitcom and all that stuff), people think I get a lot (which, I’ll admit I do). But in reality, I get rejections probably 20x more often than I get successes.)

One thing that was cute about Mindy’s answer, was she said that when she was first trying to break into the business, she was the one who came to these things and nerd-ily took notes.

(She said this as I was sitting there taking notes, and I had a nice chuckle about being one of the nerds she was talking about.) And she said that she always wondered why everyone always talked in such broad strokes. Why can’t they just give a step by step answer about how their career came to be?

So, she broke it down (with stuff you mostly could’ve already read on the internet had you been into Mindy Kaling, which I am). But, she talked about doing that play Matt and Ben, and how things just built up little by little ’til Greg Daniels found her. Then she talked about having to go to FOX after NBC passed on her pilot – which I thought was a little crazy. Why would NBC have passed? Oh well.

I’ll talk more about the panel tomorrow.

I'd love to hear from you! So whaddya say?