​I had a coworker who died a couple of years ago on Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year. He was in his mid-thirties. Even before he died, I used to tell stories about him. He was unlike any other person I knew: At the point when anyone else would listen to their instincts to stop, take stock, and back away from a situation, that instinct only spurred him on. If he were driving and hit a cement wall, he would sooner hit the gas and try to drive through it than go into reverse. My friend who also worked with me and I devised a visual joke one day, she printed out sign that read: "Progress Begins Here! It's been ______ days since our last arrest, car wreck or serious injury." Not realizing that we would be resetting the count to zero ridiculously often, roughly every two weeks.
Sometimes after work, the three of us would go over to his apartment and watch a movie, or meet one of a variety of strange, vaguely sinister but altogether vulnerable people from walks of life I never encountered before and haven't since. 
In that apartment we watched movies by the half. "Walk of Shame", which was too bad to finish; "Divergent", which was fine the first time around, but the DVD player didn't have a remote so when it inexplicably skipped and had to be restarted none of us could bear watching it again; "That Awkward Moment", also terrible; episodes of the first season of "Orange is the New Black" - but we didn't do much of that because it made him uncomfortable. Oddly enough, "Broad City" went over the best, in a room full of people of different races, different religions, different genders, different sexualities - we were all rolling on the floor, laughing hysterically at the antics of two cute stoner Jewish girls. His apartment was also where he turned to me mid-movie, about a month before he died, and said he'd seen a trailer for "The Grand Budapest Hotel" and thought that it looked like a movie I'd like. I had already seen it in theaters and I did, in fact, like it. I was impressed that he knew my taste at that point and I remember thinking, Okay. Yeah. We're pretty much friends now.
Stories about work and my coworker used to go over really well. I got to share the experience of being in the orbit of someone whose actions belonged in a movie. This crazy guy. This crazy guy who feared no one, who let his instincts determine every move he made. Then, after he died, I told that story, too. I couldn't help it. There was a part of me that knew he probably wouldn't live long - he'd already gone through seven lives by the time I met him - but it didn't change the shock of him disappearing one day. 
I still work at the same place. I used his office for a couple of months before I got a promotion this year. They're going to be tearing it down soon, replacing it with something new. Things aren't crazy anymore. I don't tell those stories anymore. I also don't feel the need anymore to tell strangers about this larger than life, generous, infuriating, self-sabotaging, creative, resourceful, generous, kind person who I used to see every day and never will again. I don't think about him much anymore, really; I thought about him so much in the weeks and months after his death that the memories started to feel like carbon copies, like maybe I couldn't trust myself to remember him as he was. But I pass that apartment almost every day and when I do, I send a salute to his memory, hoping that I won't forget. 

Most of my MFA program was spent with other fiction writers. Seven of the eighteen required courses were workshops; after one of my fiction friends sneaked into a nonfiction workshop, the program started with some serious rules about taking other genres. But I'd share the classroom with the poets and creative nonfiction writers in literature courses and, in one case, a teaching practicum. (Surprisingly, I did make use of the course and teach high school English for a year. But at the time I had no intention of using ANY OF IT.)

One assignment was to create a syllabus. The poets did theirs on poetry. Mine focused on metafiction, an obsession I'm yearning to encounter in just about every piece of culture I encounter. And the creative nonfiction writers did their CNF thing. Our professor walked into the next session with our marked syllabuses in hand and addressed the class with a number of remarks. One of which was a gentle comment:
"Not everyone has to have David Sedaris as required reading."

Which taught me two things: Number one, that nonfiction works best when it's humorous and entertaining - even the professionals agree to that. And number two, that I'd discovered the CNF guilty pleasure. I found my new bathroom reading and did my best to catch up with this new information.

Recently, my friend was dealing with the grief of a loved one's passing. It made me think of a David Sedaris piece I'd read in the New Yorker a couple of years ago, about his sister Tiffany's suicide. I thought it might be cathartic for my friend to read; I remembered the piece being gentle and subtle. I remembered it focusing on the vacation that Sedaris treated his grown-up family to, only mentioning the suicide halfway through the piece. The deft way he expressed how he was thinking about the family as a whole, now missing a piece, had seemed so sad but beautiful at the same time.

When I went to look up the article, though, it was not at all as I remembered it. Most notably, Sedaris talks about the suicide right out of the gate. His attitude is not one of "How did we allow it to get to that point?" but rather one of "If it had to happen, it wasn't exactly surprising." The siblings all want to move on as quickly as possible - mentions of Tiffany occur mid-conversation, but not for long and without much depth. None of the subtlety I had been enamored with existed in the current piece I was reading.

Which, in a way, made the piece like performance art for me. The first time I read it in 2013, it had a deep, emotional effect on me. I was dazzled by the way the timelines were woven together. I wondered what it might mean for me to lose one of my five siblings during my lifetime. It caused me to consider new things and I was struck by the emotional core of the writer. 

That was an experience rooted in time. It depended on the world being exactly as it was, on who I was at the time, what I was doing at the time, what confusion I was dealing with. I saw "Hamilton" this past weekend and spent half the show crying and the other half with goosebumps - and I know I will never again watch it and feel that same way again. But I expect that from live theater, something that changes from night to night, from audience to audience. What I didn't expect was to feel that way about a piece of writing, something I thought was static and stayed the same, and I didn't expect to lose the way I felt reading it. That makes sense, though. Creative nonfiction is about putting real life on the page, putting memories on the page. Our memories change with us. It's a personal form of performance art.

To be honest, fangirling – when your mind enters a fictional world so intensely that you develop territorial tendencies that border on the loyalty you feel for your immediate family – has always scared me a little bit. My teenage encounter with Buffy the Vampire Slayer coincided with my first experience of binge watching. And man, did that show take over my brain. After watching a couple of episodes in a row, trying to understand how a one-hour TV show could occupy me longer than any movie I had ever seen, I became obsessed. I thought, dreamt, breathed Buffy in a way that I never had about something fictional. Even the fantasy books that I read growing up (the ones that made me want to write my own fantasy books, the ones that kept me busy for hours in a corner by myself, the ones that made me so happy that my own writing was actually just rewriting the fantasy books I was reading) didn't take over my imagination the way Buffy did. Because of my awareness of that all-encompassing infatuation – along with a religion-inspired need to believe I cared about more than just television – I stopped watching it. Cold turkey. I had enough under my belt to talk to people about it, to appreciate the Sunnydale High School T-shirt a fellow intern was wearing the first day I met him, but I full-on rejected the feeling that resulted from immersion in Joss Whedon's vampire world.

​Enter J.J. Abrams. When the new trilogy of Star Wars was announced, I was excited; but I wouldn't say elated. I had watched all of the films when I was a preteen, around the time Episode I and II came out. I did have to wait for Episode III until I was a teenager, glaring at the computer screen when I realized I would have to wait until 2005 for it to come out – 2005! three whole years! – and learning how to be patient for movie release dates for the first time. I liked the films a lot. I was proud to be able to talk about them with my older siblings. Yet I didn't watch any of the films again after that initial encounter. So when Episode VII​ was announced, I was excited and planned on seeing it after the hype died down.

A week before The Force Awakens hit theaters, I noticed that few of my contacts on Facebook and Twitter were rewatching all of the old Star Wars films. At first I was skeptical, thinking of the sheer number of hours it would take to get through the series. But I changed my tune pretty soon. As Episode VII's release drew nearer, I found myself committing to the same process. It appealed to me in some way: Work hard by getting through the old ones in order to enjoy the new ones better. Okay, I said to myself. Yeah. Let's do this.

I started with The Phantom Menace because, like I said, I wanted to work hard in order to reap the benefits. And boy did I work hard. Watching the first three episodes first was mind-numbing. The ratio of minutes to action is bogglingly high. I did, however, get the benefit of (sort of) keeping track of what was going on in the Senate for the first time. (I was also able to recognize Global Treasure Keira Knightley this time around in her geisha makeup.) 

Now this may be a direct result of the fact that I started teaching high school at the beginning of the year, but one of my readings of the story arc in Episode I, II and III is about teaching. About the effects of good teachers and bad teachers. Yoda is a good teacher – we already know this from Luke's successful training in the original Star Wars. Palpatine is also a good teacher, in the sense that his students – Count Dooku and Anakin – continued the mission that he taught them. Qui-Gon is a good teacher, because his student Obi-Wan Kenobi continued his legacy as a stellar representation of the Light Side. 

But Obi-Wan himself is not a good teacher. While I agree that the failure to align Anakin with the Light Side is due in part to him being too old, as the Jedi Council foresaw, as well as his generally childish attitude, I'd posit that Qui-Gon or Yoda might have been able to steer him despite all that. Obi-Wan was not up to the challenge. He let Anakin's delusions of grandeur balloon and affect his behavior, let the chutzpah ooze from him in nearly every interaction. I'd also suggest that in Episode VII, it turns out that Luke wasn't a good teacher either. His student, Kylo Ren, was tempted to the Dark Side and he massacred the next generation of Jedi – much the way Anakin did in Episode III.  

Once I got through the first three episodes, I slinked into Episode IV: A New Hope without too much hope on my part. But boy did I get blown away. It was a mechaya to experience an enjoyable Star Wars movie after trudging through the first three. I couldn't believe how pleasurable it was to watch Luke, Han and Leia flying through the galaxy, kicking ass and taking names. I didn't realize how truly whiny Luke is in the beginning, which makes Anakin's arc a little more understandable. Not to mention how morally ambiguous Han Solo's actions are at every turn. 

One of the fun things about the original three movies, though, is how complementary the three main characters' personalities are. They all have flaws that keep them from defeating the Dark Side on their own. They all need each other to accomplish that ultimate goal. Nonetheless, it never feels clear whether or not they'll actually be there for each other in the eleventh hour.

When Luke abandons his Jedi training to go save Han and Leia, it feels like a turning point that could become fatal. If he fails in his self-appointed mission, not only will it all have been for naught, but – as we later see – he would have given up on finishing his training completely. But he succeeds, and then he has to face Darth Vader and the Emperor on his own and witness the death of his father. When he returns to his friends, none of them can understand what he's gone through. They see a change in him, but it's not something they can relate to. Luke is on his own, the only Jedi left in the world. 

All of this is to say that by the time I went to see The Force Awakens on Christmas Day, I had watched all seven Star Wars movies in the space of a week. A week! I never would have guessed I could do it but after the fact, I wouldn't do it any other way. I went into that new Star Wars movie with the wide-eyed excitement I first felt for the films back when I was twelve, sitting in my basement, watching VHS tapes on a VCR that couldn't rewind. I got goosebumps – as I had each of the six previous times I had seen and heard it that week – when the combination of the logo and theme music burst onto the screen in the dark theater. I watched Rey and BB-8 trying to figure out their place in the galaxy. I looked out for all the callbacks to the older movies. I enjoyed Kylo Ren's face reveal scene much more than I should have. (A hot Darth Vader, woohoo!) More than anything, though, the movie was fun, and I had a great time watching it. 

It made me remember how fun it is to fangirl about something without a trace of guilt.

Now that the hype has died down, I no longer feel the need to buy Star Wars merchandise, or decorate my walls with Star Wars travel posters. But I do have a lingering desire to feel that excitement again. I've been wanting to see The Force Awakens again since I left the theater, but I promised myself I wouldn't go see it again for at least two months. February 25, here I come.

Disclaimer: I am not the world's biggest fan of the violent genres. I do not have encyclopedic knowledge of fight choreography and what makes a shootout/explosion sequence compelling (...uh, nothing?). I have not, despite my love for Timothy Olyphant, watched the movie called Hitman. However, I noticed this thing about movies depicting hitmen as their protagonist that I (previously explored in a Facebook post and can no longer find now) and would like to share here. To be clear, I am not referring to wisecracking, borderline psychopathic, obscurely idiosyncratic, Tarantinoesque/Coen Brotherly hitmen who provide humor in an otherwise bleak landscape of human grit. I'm referring to the stereotype of the uber-capable, never-misses-a-shot, does-this-job-because-he-has-nowhere-else-to-turn kind of hitman. 

This kind of hitman in movies is the prototypical anti-hero. He is dark because he must be sneaky; he is mysterious because he can't have personal attachments; he is excellent at what he does because he is still alive to tell the tale. (Which he doesn't. Except to that one beautiful girl who will never see him again.) We like watching anti-heroes, such as the protagonists in Mad Men and Breaking Bad, because they allow us to feel better about our own bad behavior.

But there's a key ingredient when it comes to the hitman: He isn't meant to show emotion.

Think about Don Draper (Jon Hamm) for a second, who only ever killed someone in a dream. Yes, he's admirable for the suave coolness he oozes wherever he goes. But in addition to that, we watch him go through the full gamut of human emotions. We see him angry (a lot), we see him sad, we see him nervous, we see him having a nervous breakdown. The ideal hitman shows no emotion. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt in Mr. and Mrs. Smith.  Colin Farrell in London Boulevard. Christian Bale in Equilibrium​, who had to be given a puppy for us to like him. Arnold Schwarzenegger as Terminator is the best example - he's a robot!  

What I'm getting at is that while it's very cool to have a hitman in your movie, and I certainly am not immune to the charms of watching someone decimate an entire room of people with perfect fight choreography, the problem with having a straight up hitman as your main character is that they aren't very interesting as people. I have no emotional connection to them and no investment in their fate. Even Keanu Reeves in John Wick was entertaining, but not particularly compelling. 

When you can't relate to a character emotionally, you're missing a pivotal element to the narrative: Why do I care about this person? Yeah, he's fun to watch fight. He's fun to watch saving people. But I don't get much else out of it, let alone the stamina to sit through 2+ hours of him fighting and saving people and not caring.

On the flip side of this (very rudimentary) theory, you have Kingsman: The Secret Service. Remember Christian Bale's puppy? Well, in Kingsman main British guy Eggsy (Taron Egerton) gets his very own puppy to train and develop with at his super secret spy agency. Now, Eggsy clearly does not have the makings of a super spy. He didn't go to Oxford or Cambridge. He doesn't have an impressive family lineage. Even his father, the reason Eggsy was accepted into the training program in the first place, died in the line of duty early on in his career. And to top it all off, Eggsy can't even shoot his stupid dog at the end of training – which, as he's later informed, only had a blank in it! 

But the fact that Eggsy couldn't shoot the dog and didn't have the credentials to be a Kingsman is what makes him an interesting character. I could have listened to him goad people to fight in that British accent for hours. It was funny to see him revert back to his sartorial roots for a mission where he had to be a pickup artist. And when he ultimately saves the world, his motives stem more from avenging the death of his mentor than they do from a desire to actually save the world. The reason Eggsy is compelling is exactly because he didn't make for a good hitman. He doesn't blend in, he's terrible at playing nice with others, and above all – he displays emotions. Lots of them. 

Video games, though. Now there's a place where a well-appointed, emotionless hitman can have it all.

I was a preteen when my family moved back to America in the fall of 2001. In the pre-Internet age, Israel had been in its own little bubble of eighties music and the occasional American blockbuster making its way to our theaters months after its stateside release. Suddenly, my sister and I had access to all of the movies that the actual Blockbuster could offer. We had access to music when it became available. Never before had I understood why some bands were on tour while others were not, but now I could see it was to promote a new album. We dipped our toes into the shining plastic world of American pop culture and then took a headlong dive into it.

More than anything, though, my sister and I immediately became obsessed with the Disney Channel – even though we were on the older end of its target demographic. We had caught glimpses of it during summer vacations to New York, but never had we been able to turn it on whenever we wanted. We were entranced. Our television watching habits became so bad in those first couple of months that our parents restricted us to three episodes a week.  We were addicted to Disney Channel Original Series, devouring the likes of Even Stevens, That's So Raven, and, above all, the queen, Lizzie McGuire. We kept track of when Disney Channel Original Movies premiered so that we could watch Cadet Kelly and Get a Clue as soon as they came out. We must have watched Motocrossed twenty times. I wanted to be in Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century so badly. (It's probably what convinced me that sci-fi can be as good as fantasy.) I left for college the year that Hannah Montana and High School Musical came out and I was secretly jealous that I wasn't "allowed" to like the Disney Channel anymore because I was supposed to have matured. (Didn't stop me anyway.) 

For me, the attraction had to be that for the first time I was seeing programming aimed specifically at me. Before experiencing the Disney Channel, I watched Disney cartoons and movies that could have been targeted to anyone. Matilda and Aladdin are generation-spanning stories designed to be enjoyed by whoever is in the audience. The Disney Channel, on the other hand, was made for kids ages 6-14 – and no one else. The shows and movies were about preteens taking risks and getting into trouble, paving the way for their impending adolescence. Someone five years older than me couldn't have enjoyed the programs on the Disney Channel because they weren't created for her. 

Of course, they didn't always get it right. It's not like the suits in California had a Skins-like writing staff to inform the old fogies of what's cool and on-trend with the kids these days. But the writers knew enough to give their viewers a prototype of what a model popular girl looks like, and therefore what we could strive to look and act like. Hilary Duff was supposed to be a super-awkward wannabe as Lizzie McGuire, but we all knew that you would have to be crazy to want to be Kate, the ostensible Popular Girl, instead of Lizzie. (That could be because intercut with Lizzie McGuire episodes were snippets of interviews with Hilary Duff, wearing the cutest clothes and generally being the cutest, in a way that was interchangeable with her character.) 

Because Lizzie had the greatest friendships around with Miranda and Gordo. As did Raven, with Chelsea and Eddie. And if Even Stevens taught me anything, it was that you could hate your sibling and still be the closest people on the planet. The characters in these shows always got into trouble. They were always mischievous. They were always chasing after girls/boys and obsessing over their pre-sexuality. But the resolution of their bad decisions always ended up leading them to stronger bonds of friendship. In that sense, the writers understood that loyalty would speak to a preteen audience more than anything else.

Nowadays, as a Millennial, the world of entertainment is at my feet, clamoring for my attention and trying to please me and my generation with their programming. I can watch any channel on television and decide if I like what I see. I am the ultimate consumer, molding California studios to my taste. 
Oh, you guys like Glee? Here, take Smash, Nashville and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.
Women in politics! You guys like women in politics! Here's The Good Wife, Madame Secretary and Scandal.
Gays? Bring on the gays! Here's Looking, The New Normal and How to Get Away with Murder.

While it's nice to have more options (and the reminder of how I'm getting older and therefore my mortality), I look back on my encyclopedic knowledge of early 00's Disney stars with fondness and appreciation. The Disney Channel made me feel special. It acknowledged my struggles and gave me a sense of community, that I could be like the kids I was watching – if I wanted to be. I think more than anything, though, the Disney Channel taught me that my opinion mattered before the world decided it did. For that I'm grateful.

 Back in the fall of 2008, I had freshly arrived in New York City to begin my college career. I was already writing for the Arts & Culture section of Stern College's newspaper, The Observer, and my section editor informed me that she had been contacted by the press department of a new Broadway musical called 13. We were given prime orchestra seats amid an audience that skewed very young, mostly because the cast was made up entirely of teenagers. Since it was my first time – and only time, so far – seeing a show in previews, I wanted it to succeed. If it did, then I would have somehow participated in the genesis of something great. Alas, the show closed four months later – most likely because the audience that would find the show most appealing was the teenage bracket, which isn't exactly the target demographic of Broadway musicals.

The storyline was cute and familiar: A Jewish boy is about to have his Bar Mitzvah when his parents move him away from shiny NYC to Bumbletown, Indiana. There he deals with the intrigue of adolescence and puberty in a small town. He learns valuable lessons about friendship and the cost of popularity. 

That is, I wouldn't remember much about 13​ if it didn't have a surprising track record of cast members becoming stars in the seven years since. The biggest alum is Ariana Grande, who played Charlotte. After being a regular on a Nickelodeon TV show, she became an international pop star. Elizabeth Gillies, who played the gossipy gospel singer Lucy (above), also became a TV phenomenon through Nickelodeon and has since moved up to FX. Graham Phillips played Evan, the protagonist of 13, and is now working in both film and TV, including as a series regular The Good Wife.  

​The musical itself might have been a flop, but I'd like to suggest that as a sample, 13 was wildly successful. Giving legitimate Broadway stage time to an entire cast of underage actors yielded actual results. Maybe the combination of subjects and subject matter didn't sit well with Broadway audiences, but by giving these actors an unheard-of opportunity at such a young age, the producers of 13 clearly jump started the careers of at least three of them. I'd say that if such a production were to be staged again, you'd be able to pick out three more rising stars. So that's my two cents: Stage more young plays so we can have our own previews of the actors who are going to make it big some day.

Stephenie Meyer swapped the genders of Twilight (sigh) in some attempt to change our view of Bella's character as a damsel in distress. I did read the first Twilight (and subsequently subjected my roommates to many a dramatic reading of particularly potent passages) but personally, I have no interest in reading this retelling. My issue with Twilight is not that Bella pined for Edward and needed him to feel validation. Whatever. Meyer is hardly the first to write a passive character. My issue is that Bella did make active decisions in the first half of the novel by rebuffing Edward's advances, but then when she stops resisting him, all of her power is gone. The problem is that the book gets boring when Bella becomes passive, which is why switching the genders won't make a difference to me. That book has been written. (I assume. I only saw the movie:) It's called Beautiful Creatures and once again, one character has all of the power.

Which is why I found it fascinating when the film version of Ender's Game​ (2013) had this moment that didn't appear with such stark vision in the book. Near the end of the film, Ender leads his team to a victory in battle over the Formics. He's so exhausted, though, that he has to be carried out because he can't support himself. That moment was so cool to me. Even though this kid is supposed to be the hope and future of his society, his own power makes him vulnerable and in need of protection. The people responsible for him recognize that and rally around him.

I found a similar concept in the (painfully ill-advised) movie version of Vampire Academy (2014). The movie itself didn't have much to offer, but the same idea struck me: In their universe the vampires have magical superpowers, but they are completely vulnerable to attack. Their power makes them weak, which requires each one to have a personal bodyguard who can give them physical protection from other vampires and such. While Lissa can bring a person/animal/creature back from the brink of death, she can't stop someone from killing her and needs Rose to do that for her.

Maybe I enjoyed this concept because it balances out the power. Gives the character weakness etc. that makes the narrative more believable. If Edward had a weakness in Twilight that wasn't an actual person – like he's some hitman who's spent years crafting a rough exterior but still has a heart made of flesh and blood that can be pierced with just the right amount of sappy exploitation – maybe we wouldn't take so much issue with Meyer's portrayal of said person AKA Bella. Likewise, I don't think bringing to our attention that the narrative is what needs work, rather than the stereotypes engendered in the characters, is a move that will change our minds.

"Good artists copy; great artists steal." This concept explains roughly 85% of the witty things people say in everyday conversation. I've only ever caught two people in the act of stealing witticisms. I'd like to think that my pop culture radar is so developed that these were the only two to fly under, but my utter cluelessness in these cases would indicate otherwise.

The first time it happened, a friend of friend – call him Mark – had come into town and my crew was showing him around Chicago. After the Bean and karaoke at Trader Todd's, we were merrily driving home when someone mentioned The Godfather.
"You know what I hate about The Godfather?" says Mark. "It insists on itself."
While I didn't agree with the statement entirely (some artworks are allowed leeway to insist as such, and I won't penalize them for being accurate), I did have to admire the sentiment. It was an interesting concept. A great concept. Yes, The Godfather definitely had the conceit of a work that knows it's going to be remembered as a class and thus can take itself as seriously as it pleases. 
A couple of years later, I was walking with my brother and his wife down Riverside Drive in New York City. The Godfather comes up and my brother says, "I did not care for The Godfather. It insists upon itself." I nearly lost it. My brother, stunned and mildly curious, informed me that he was quoting a scene from Family Guy. 

I was flabbergasted. I had never experienced someone completely ripping off a joke like that, and in a way that could be proven so easily. If someone had recognized the reference during that car ride, I guess Mark could have played it off. But no one did and so he didn't have to.

Of course, as I was to learn when the same scenario repeated itself, people do indeed accomplish that with full intention. Years ago, when voicemail recordings were more of an artform and a novelty than they are now, my entire family was enchanted by a particular person's voicemail. Call him Jacob. 
Jacob's recording went something like this:
"Believe or not, Jacob isn't home! Please leave a message on the phone. Is he in bed or maybe drinking tea? Where could he be!"
We would sing the little song at each other - as well as in front of Jacob. It wasn't until this year, when I watched Kat Dennings interact with Jason Alexander on a talk show, that I heard George's voicemail from Seinfeld. It was the same tune, the same self-aggrandizing third person, the same great sense of self-deprecating humor. The familiar feeling from my experience with Mark's reference crept back in: euphoria at my discovery mixed with the sinking weight of disappointment.

Mark and Jacob thought they were stealing when in reality they were only borrowing. On some level I should admire what they accomplished, but I can't help be disappointed - that they weren't as original as they claimed, or that in the world at large I don't personally know whoever came up with that material. Or maybe I'm sad that I could see the behind the window dressings, to the man behind the curtain, to the magician rigging up his carefully-plotted machinations.

In my experience, there are two ways to go about genre writing: The one where you go into the writing process having made the decision to write genre fiction, and the one where you realize after the fact that you have been writing genre fiction. 

There are certain perks to writing genre fiction. Since it is essentially formulaic, there are formulaic solutions to the issues that might arise. If the reader is having trouble connecting with characters, say, or the tension isn't there, or the plot has become inconsequential, returning to the basic tenants of the genre can be helpful. Take romance novels, for instance. My sister, the genre-spanning Batya Ungar-Sargon, told me that every good romance novel needs three things: a hero to fall in love with, a heroine you can root for, and a world you can disappear into. With a formula, you don't have to reinvent the wheel. You can play within the expectations of the reader or surpass them. Whatever you decide to do within that structure, your decisions are based on the structure's existence.

On the other hand, there is the case where you create genre fiction by accident. The story you're in the process of writing happens to have the formula of a specific genre. Or your story has a couple of devices in common with a specific genre, but not all – and those devices you aren't using are the reason your story isn't working. 

I've been writing my novel for over two years, a story about best friends and unrequited love and jealousy. One day after the workshop of an excerpt, a fellow classmate approached me and told me, with no malice or intent to insult, how my work reminded her of Emily Griffin's Something Borrowed and its retelling, Something Blue. I was stunned. Chick lit? She thought I was writing chick lit? Those books you pick up in the airport when your mind can't handle something of more consequence? I had refused to entertain the notion up until then. Once I heard it, though, I came to understand. Much as I – and the rest of my classmates – would have liked, I am not currently in a position to create something new. I don't have the skills or maturity to do that. So naturally, my work will be following a certain path, a path well-trodden by others who came before me. 

Near the end of my MFA career, I accidentally caused someone going through a similar realization. During a critique of her work, I casually mentioned to the writer that I had watched a Nicholas Sparks movie the night before and that her story reminded me of it. Though I had hated the movie, her work was much better and actually accomplished the act of transferring the protagonist's yearning and emotion to the reader. Our professor, the wonderful Juan Martinez, after a kind and gentle preface, took the opportunity to point out that my classmate's lovely, intelligent prose might do well on the romance market. I recognized the look of chagrin that crossed her face. The unexpected understanding that our work, what we thought had fallen under unique and original criteria, was the reiteration of a genre on which we had long looked down and with which we never thought we'd be associated.

Nonetheless, with that understanding comes acceptance. Despite the instinctual horror, once there is a name for what you're writing, you are no longer alone. You have a blueprint for that which you couldn't name. And now you have something to follow, where once you might have stumbled in the dark. 

And if I'm going to be writing chick lit, then it will be the most earnest, highbrow chick lit I'm capable of.

The first time I watched reality television – cinéma vérité – that wasn't a reality competition, I had to go through the mental process of understanding that what I was watching was not scripted. That first time, it was an episode of Jersey Shore. The fact that I was not watching an actress pretending to be Snooki, but rather watching Snooki fulfill the role usually reserved for actors, was fascinating. The Situation was sharing actual thoughts that went through his actual mind. These characters were like people I knew, only sassier and less original. I was sitting through the spoken thoughts of people who actually existed.

Of course, I now know that the seasons of reality TV are scripted by producers. That the "talking heads" portions of the episode are filmed after the fact and can't represent true in-the-moment feelings. That the work done on video and sound in the editing room is appallingly all-consuming. Nonetheless, I've embraced reality shows on the regular, especially during the tundra that is summer television. I watched Total Divas, a show about female wrestlers in the WWE, for the parts of the show that go meta when they involve "kayfabe". The Glee Project, in which young actors competed for a role on the now-canceled Glee, because it was the first time that someone realized they could just tell drama kids there's a camera on them and then let it roll. Bring It, about a teenage majorette dance team in Mississippi and their creative coach, because the moms on that show teach me not to be afraid to get up in somebody's face. Throughout the viewings of these shows I settled into the role of spectator and came to understand how someone could become a national celebrity just for being him/herself.

I had a different reaction when I tried watching Rich Kids of Beverly Hills, a show about the spawn of billionaires. (That's the entire plot.) Maybe because for the first time, I watching people who didn't need to make money. Or maybe because the show, aired on the E! Network, is designed and packaged for the viewer to desire what is on the screen. To desire the private jets, international vacations and Birkin bags. To desire the exclusivity. To desire the consumption. The characters – sorry, personalities – are presented as having flaws, but they're hardly a tragic-hero-level of flaw. The drama is mostly from within the group, incidentally highlighting the same issues most people have in a large group of friends: fear of someone gossiping behind your back or fear of your friends deciding to leave you out in the cold. 

For me, the worst sin that reality TV commits is filler episodes. I hate when I'm watching a season and the whole thing feels like it could have been five episodes shorter. Watching Rich Kids of Beverly Hills, I got the sense that this was going to be one of those shows. (Full disclosure: I did watch the entire first season.) But the first time I watched it, I thought that Morgan, one of the main duo of friends, looked a lot like the actress Rosemarie DeWitt. And I had a flash of inspiration. What if this reality TV show was really a scripted show featuring Rosemarie DeWitt? What if there was an entire season of action waiting, something that would be absolutely clear if the writers put that much thought into the pilot episode? At least then I would know that this show wasn't going to be a colossal waste of time.

Which is when it occurred to me: If I wanted to watch Rosemarie DeWitt act, I should turn on the first season of Mad Men, or pop Rachel Getting Married into the DVD player. Because clearly, reality TV is not where I'm going to get a satisfying session of television.