Stepping down to step up

On leadership and female ambition

Last night I co-chaired my last meeting of the Writers Guild of America (West) Committee of Women Writers. A mouthful of a name! It was a bittersweet evening for me, because endings are hard, and beginnings are scary.

I stepped down for a few reasons. First because I hate emails. I am sorry if you are one of the 4 people on earth who thinks e-mails are still fun, but they suck ass. I’m sorry, in fact, that so many of you are reading this via email. If I could figure out how to effectively deliver writing any other way, I would! Maybe one day I’ll start an old fashioned paper mailing list, but let’s be honest, you would probably recycle those too, because life is very overwhelming and most mail is now bills. Perhaps we will divine a way for me to send a pigeon to your door. Why aren’t tech companies working on that??

Anyway, running a committee is about half in-person creating a welcoming community and facilitating meetings, a job I love and am naturally suited for, and half email, a job that makes me feel like a crab doing yoga. The thrill of dispatching some of my e-mail threads has been well and truly life affirming.

I also stepped down because I think an underrated part of leadership is making room for other people to lead. Leadership is a muscle anybody can grow. But there isn’t really a gym to train it. It’s hard to get your reps in. And it’s especially hard as a woman in a male-dominated industry. So, you gotta take up space, but once you have, you also have to inspire and invite other people to believe they deserve to stand in the place you are standing. And that’s not really possible if you keep standing there!!!

And third, I stepped down for myself. Because I wanted to make room in my life for something I feel is coming. I’ve spent a lot of my career doing the work of community building, of joyful space creating, of organizing. I believe in that work! But I also see how easy it is to use fulfilling others to supplement fulfilling yourself. How easy it is to focus on the whole, and leave your own projects and dreams to gather dust. And, more frustratingly, how easy it is for other people to see the full plate you are using to feed others and assume you aren’t hungry.

Service to others is the easiest path to walk as an ambitious woman. Not that it doesn’t take effort to walk it, not that it is not noble. But it’s a well-worn groove in the earth beneath our feet. It’s surrounded by neon signs and big pointy, cartoonish arrows. A carnival barker stands out front, inviting you in. It smells like warm, freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies. There is not always room for women in leadership, but there is always room for women in service.

The path towards a woman’s own naked ambition is more treacherous. Nobody invites you in. You have to strap on your own hiking boots and climb towards a blurry and distant unknown.

As a writer, I make my own path out of words. I like to imagine every script, every line I type, even the words in this paragraph, as a path forming underneath my feet, carrying me forward to the future.

So… I guess I’d better go and finish that script I’ve been working on, huh?

Thanks for reading, friends. <3

Me and my co chair Jeane Wong and our vice chair Franki Butler