Stephen Colbert got cancelled last week. Which is devastating, because I was absolutely planning to go on his show—right after finishing the book I’ve been writing for the last 20 years.
Everyone knows it happened; everyone’s up in arms. The hot takes on social media are probably done by now. Great job, everyone. Be proud of yourselves.
I’ve never stayed up late enough to watch him live. I had kids, then a job that drained me so much I was in bed by 9 PM every night. But I watched the clips. And here’s the thing: Stephen Colbert saved my life.
I’ve always written—and I’ve always been ashamed of it. Even when I edited a university lit journal and assisted a man who later had his NYT obit (RIP Lewis Dabney, you charming disaster), I felt like an imposter. Just some probably undiagnosed, mentally ill kid from a chemical company town who thought she was smarter than she was.
I was naive enough to think that even without a trust fund, publishing connections, or family support, I’d still make it in New York as a book editor. It was the dream. I was 30, I’d worked my way through college, and I was ready.
Then I died. And then I got pregnant.
Writing became something I snuck in while caring for twins—because the circumstances were such that I was caring for twins all the time. My journals were one paragraph every two weeks. Proust went on the back burner. Grad school for literature? My ex said it was useless, and I believed him. So instead, I made my kids my entire world. I became the mom I wished I’d had.
But still. Stephen was there.
I had days I couldn’t be good. Days when I thought about the life I could’ve had if I hadn’t gotten knocked up. Days when I believed someone, someday, would realize I wasn’t crazy—that I actually had something. Somehow, I wrote 36,000 words of a sci-fi novel about a stay-at-home mom abducted by aliens who saves Earth from a corporate overlord race in league with the CIA. I put it in a baby-blue binder. I marked it up in red pen. Then I got in the minivan and drove to pick up the kids.
When I wasn’t writing, I was on The Late Show. (Or Oprah. Didn’t matter.) I imagined being that mysterious Midwestern writer who changed science fiction. I’d win the Pulitzer, and sit under bright lights in a perfectly cut navy dress with silver ombré sparkles and flats, discussing craft and politics like a pro.
Reality? The book wasn’t good. Because writing and editing a good book takes time and energy, and I had neither. Instead, I went back to school for special ed certification. It was brutal—everything was. It wasn’t until my marriage ended that I understood why.
That’s another book. The one I swore I’d never write. The one I started last night.
It’s not as funny as the alien-abduction novel, but it might save someone’s life. Stephen Colbert was the vision that kept me alive through that story—the possibility that someone, somewhere, might get what I was doing. That my frantic keyboard-banging between school pickups was actually the real story of my life. That vision kept me alive in a situation designed for me not to live.
He’s part of the reason I’m here to tell it. But I’m not writing for him anymore. Or Oprah. Or the Vanity Fair glam shot after the Pulitzer. I’m writing for me. By hand, under a skylight in an Airbnb in Ecuador. Not caring about glamour—open to mystery, ready for what comes next.
If I’ve done my math right, I have less than a year to publish if I want to live the dream of getting on his show. I better fucking get going.
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