Second City-1

The most important thing I learned at Second City so far...
When we turn in our weekly Sketch, all we can say is "Here is something I wrote."
We are not allowed to qualify the work. We cannot say "I was sick when I wrote this." Or "I wrote this while I was running out of my office during 911." or "I was puking over an awning, when I wrote this."
All we can say is "Here is something I wrote," and if you write, you know how devastating it can be when you are not allowed to apologize for your work. When you are not allowed to tell your audience "I can do better than this."
We all want to write better. We want people to read our work with the knowledge that we, ourselves, know the work isn't perfect, but we have to get it out there. That if we waited for perfect, the sidewalk would be paved with writers yanking strands of hair from their skull.
We want the writers version of a golf handicap. We don't want people to play golf with us, thinking that we think we're Tiger Woods. We want people to play golf with us, thinking we're some self-taught raw genuis. Like we're Eliza Doolittle and all we need is a little polishing up from Professor Henry Higgins-only then will we appear as William Faulkner.
There is so much greedy self-delusion in calling oneself a writer. When someone calls themself a lawyer, you can infer they went to school for three years, took the LSAT, passed the bar. Same with doctor, but more school and harder tests. But there's an actual moment when you are no longer a student and actually a profession.
But being a writer, well...even with an MFA, a little published work, a drinking problem, a closet filled with manuscripts, a computer coughing up draft after draft, a prurient past....those are all just symptoms of writing. But until you're famous, it's tough to really feel like you deserve the title "writer." Maybe the disease 'writer', but profession? That's a little wonkey.