Jenny Hagel on How to Build a Creative Career When the Odds Are Against You

Comedy writer Jenny Hagel has six Emmy nominations. The other week, she wrote 20 jokes. One made it to television. She doesn’t see this as failure, though. It’s the nature of the job. And it might offer the most useful career lesson you'll hear all year. Jenny is a writer on Late Night with Seth Meyers, where she also regularly appears on camera in the popular segment Jokes Seth Can’t Tell. She is also the author of a new book of essays called Advice No One Asked For. In this episode, Jessi Hempel sits down with Jenny to talk about the arc of her non-traditional career, and what it actually takes to keep going in the face of failure. In this episode, Jessi and Jenny discuss: The live advice show Jenny built during the writer's strike, and how a room full of strangers asking earnest questions accidentally became the most community-building thing she's ever done How humor acts as a spoonful of sugar that lets us endure the heavy stuff a little longer The 411 call that landed Jenny a grad school internship Why the find-yourself period matters, and what gets lost when young people skip it The writing advice Jenny gives everyone: the part where you create and the part where you judge have to be two completely separate steps How growing up queer in the '80s and '90s inadvertently became a blueprint for every out-the-box decision she's made since Why a creative career isn't all-or-nothing, and what the middle actually looks like Find Advice No One Asked For wherever books are sold, and follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn.