End Credits: How I Broke Up with Hollywood

Television writer Lin’s debut memoir breaks the fourth wall and places listeners directly in a show’s writer’s room, where scripts are created, dissected, and rewritten. Lin, who wrote for programs like Freaks and Geeks, Friends, Desperate Housewives, and Breaking Bad, tells how what was once a dream job became a waking nightmare. Lin consistently felt pressure to be the kind of professional that her Taiwanese mother could brag about to her friends. The world of TV was incomprehensible to her mother, and listeners may agree that the process of writing and producing a show is less glamorous than one might imagine. Lin reveals that the industry is brutal, and it doesn’t help to be a woman, a person of color, or both. Lin narrates her own audiobook, making her voice heard as she describes navigating from show to show, meeting famous actors in real life, spending a wild weekend in the Dominican Republic on Sammy Sosa’s estate, and, finally, leaving the business altogether. Television operates according to its own rules, and Lin focuses a spotlight on how it uses the talents of its writers without fairly compensating them or treating them with dignity or respect.