Talking as Fast as I Can: From Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls (and Everything in Between)

by Lauren Graham

KITCHEN TIMER The principle of Kitchen Timer is that every writer deserves a definite and doable way of being and feeling successful every day. To do this, we learn to judge ourselves on behavior rather than content. We set up a goal for ourselves as writers that is easy, measurable, free of anxiety, and, above all, fail-proof, because everyone can sit, and an hour will always pass. HERE’S HOW IT WORKS: 1. Buy a kitchen timer, one that goes to 60 minutes. Or use a timer app. Or tell Siri to start a timer for 60 minutes. 2. We decide on Monday how many hours of writing we will do Tuesday. When in doubt or under pressure or self-attack, we choose fewer hours rather than more. A good, strong beginning is one hour a day, but a half hour is also good, or twenty minutes. Some of us make appointments in our calendar for these hours, as if they are lunch meetings or business calls. 3. The Kitchen Timer hour: No phones. No texts. We silence ringers; we turn our phones facedown. It is our life; we are entitled to one hour without interruption, particularly from loved ones. We ask for their support. “I was on an hour” is something they learn to understand. But they won’t respect it unless we do first. No music with words, unless it’s a language we don’t understand. Headphones with a white noise app can be helpful. No Internet, absolutely. We turn off our computer’s Wi-Fi. No reading. No pencil sharpening, desk tidying, organizing. 4. Immediately upon beginning the hour, we open two d...

My Dearies: I miss car keys. Those unattractive fob blobs they use now don’t hang well on my key chain, and my gentleman friend is always forgetting to give them to the valet. What, you think Old Lady Jackson doesn’t have the occasional suitor to escort her to a nice sushi dinner once in a while? Please, please, sit down. No, not there, dear, that’s for company. Have a cookie, you’re too thin. Is it cold in here? What was that? Speak up, dear. I won’t keep you long, I know you’re busy. Let me tell you a story. One day, that horrible Marion from next door “invited” me to one of those group online thingies where we keep track of our steps and see who has the most—you know those? You do. Of course you do. Well, for a few weeks, I participated, and I thought it was the most wonderful thing. Such a sense of accomplishment at day’s end! So I started counting absolutely everything, and got all these wonderful apps: I counted not just how many steps I took, but also how many hours I slept, how many calories I ate, how many followers I had on Facebook, what the weather was like in Hawaii, how my retirement stocks were doing. I got a countdown app to remind me how many days I had left to shop for my nephew’s birthday. I got an app to track the constellations in the sky, an app to record how much money I spend at Starbucks, an app to remind me to water my plants, another that reminds me when to order more contact lenses, and one that tells me how many times I’ve listened to Doris Day...