Everything is Copy
Meaning / Making is a collection of creative non-fiction essays on curiosity, trauma, creativity, play, and connection.
“Everything is copy.”
Per this phrase repeated by romantic comedy legend and essayist, Nora Ephron, all lived experience is fodder for writing, stories, and retelling through art.
Before writing, “When Harry Met Sally,” Ephron interviewed the men and women in her life about relationships and sex.1 She was surprised when the men didn’t believe women often faked orgasms. This observation led to the seminal scene when Sally fakes an orgasm at the diner. And who could forget mother-of-the-director Estelle Reiner’s impeccably delivered, “I’ll have what she’s having.”
This interview style of research was not an uncommon process for Ephron. She even used her own life as material in “Heartburn,” a fictional re-telling of her own divorce from her publicly cheating husband.
But when Ephron was diagnosed with cancer, suddenly, everything was not copy. She hid her sickness from most people, save a few close friends.2
Ephron’s life and the telling of her death indicate a kind of profound agency. Having lived such a public life, from tabloids to intimate essays on aging, Ephron did not shy from wringing out her laundry for all to see. But even she had privacy and self-preservation. She was still writing even as she was dying, and a woman with experience with publicity would know how her story would go. Pity, sadness, dismissal. She knew it would be better to be a plot twist. Her not-telling was the quick-witted gesture of a seasoned writer to give us one more surprise and remind us exactly who is in control. She was telling the story.
Her confidence and agency compel me to remind myself:
I am the one telling my story.
I am the only one who can.
And I will tell it exactly the way I want.
Navigate With Care
Despite my strategic obscuring, focusing on the impacts rather than the acts, the words, descriptions, and pain recounted might cause emotional distress and uncertainty.
I hope you cry as an exercise of empathy, or perhaps a kind of recognition.
But I hope you laugh, too.
I hope you know that you are seeing me through my own lens, splayed out, pulled apart, and examined with curiosity and a complicated joy. I believe in a future for myself, and this work and writing is an investment in that future.
Content and trigger warnings and their rising prevalence have been both challenged and heralded. Some have found them trivial, even when content explores traumatic events experienced by the person consuming them.3 Some think of the warnings as decentering a normative audience.4 Others are convinced it increases and encourages solipsism.5
I think of my own experiences of being “triggered,” or what my former counselor described as “flooding.” For me, this is when a physiological response to a stressor causes a ringing in my head, increased heart rate, the feeling of being far down a hallway witnessing from a distance, and sometimes hot, painful tears.
This flood response has been unpredictable. I avoid content that I am relatively sure might cause this response and appreciate a notice when certain material is present. Sometimes though, innocuous jokes or gestures will shove me into a descent. Often, I can recognize this response and react in a way that protects and preserves my mind and spirit. Even with a warning, there is little preparation I can do before experiencing distressing content, if unavoidable.
One of the greatest gifts given to me after the most recent event was trust. So, I would like to extend that gift to you. I trust you to protect yourself. I trust you to preserve your own well-being. I trust you to navigate this and all media with care for your whole self.
Carlson, Erin. I'll Have What She's Having: How Nora Ephron's Three Iconic Films Saved the Romantic Comedy. Hachette Books, 2018.
Everything Is Copy, 2015. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2831414/
Sanson, Mevagh, Deryn Strange, and Maryanne Garry. “Trigger Warnings Are Trivially Helpful at Reducing Negative Affect, Intrusive Thoughts, and Avoidance.” Clinical Psychological Science 7, no. 4 (2019): 778–93. https://doi.org/10.1177/2167702619827018.
Gray, Brenna Clarke, and David N Wright. “Decentering the Sexual Aggressor: Sexual Violence, Trigger Warnings and Bitch Planet.” Journal of Graphic Novels & Comics 8, no. 3 (2017): 264–76. https://doi.org/10.1080/21504857.2017.1307240.
Ibid.
More on trigger warnings:
Boysen, Guy A. “Evidence-Based Answers to Questions About Trigger Warnings for Clinically-Based Distress: A Review for Teachers.” Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology 3, no. 2 (2017): 163–77. https://doi.org/10.1037/stl0000084.
Lothian, Alexis. “Choose Not to Warn: Trigger Warnings and Content Notes from Fan Culture to Feminist Pedagogy.” Feminist Studies 42, no. 3 (2016): 743–56. https://doi.org/10.1353/fem.2016.0043.