The quality of your summer vacation has a positive correlation with the number of shows you binge-watched on your glorious idle days at home. One of the series I can’t stop watching is "Jane the Virgin," a hilariously dramatic account of a woman who was accidentally inseminated and thrust into the chaotic world of motherhood while still managing to handle her dreams of becoming a writer.
As a fellow writer, the show speaks to my heart because it is incredibly well-written, with a myriad of different characters who are dynamic, complex, and fleshed out in every episode. The over the top dramatic twists and turns of the show are insane but pay homage to telenovelas in a satirical way. I’m sure we’ve all sat with our moms or grandmothers watching their guilty pleasure soap operas, and who can blame them? The juicy drama pulls you in no matter how unrealistic and eye-roll inducing it may be.
"Jane the Virgin" is full of love triangles (and squares), long lost twins, evil surgeons who change the faces of criminals, female drug lords, trust fund drama, sex and love, crazy weddings, and stolen identities. It is certainly over the top dramatic, but the roundness and depth of the characters pulls you in and you get so into the story that you believe it no matter what twist is thrown in next. It’s refreshing to watch a television show that is a nuanced rendition of a classic genre that includes so many interesting characters and women who thoroughly support each other and talk about something other than men, love and sex. Jane is an inspiration to me as a writer, and the show has taught me many things about the craft of writing.
Jane taught me it is possible to juggle responsibilities without compromising my dreams.
Through her struggle to be a present mother to Mateo and pursue her master’s degree in Grad school, Jane has taught me that a big part of love is sacrifice. She loves her son and has to juggle caring for him with her own dreams and her own career, not an easy task for anyone. She sacrifices time with her child so she can write and she misses out on writing opportunities so she can be there for Mateo. It’s a give and take, and this can be applied to any responsibility, not just babies.
Jane absolutely loves writing, it is part of her soul, and she is so determined to work even when times get difficult because she has a clear view of her dreams. A common trope in literature, film and popular culture is the death of identity when one becomes a mother. It’s an attempt to flatten the characters of women and make them one sided and static, as if everything that made them complicated and human disappears once they give birth and they simply become a caregiver and birthing vessel. You’re no longer Jane, you’re Mateo’s mom. You suddenly start living for your child and lose all semblance of who you were before. Your dreams are sidelined while you care for another life, you become Mother and that’s that. But that is so far from reality and I’m tired of this idea being commonplace.
Jane proves that you can be both an incredible mother and a woman who has dreams and aspirations of her own. She holds on to her goal of becoming a writer and works towards it, sacrificing along the way where she needs to in order to balance out her life. She keeps her passion alive and motherhood becomes just another piece of her complex identity. Juggling all of her responsibilities is difficult, but Jane puts on a brave face and continues to cultivate her passion for writing by compromising to go back to school after she has Mateo. Even though I’m not yet a mother, I am inspired by Jane to grasp tightly to my goals and keep a clear head, because life will throw many obstacles in the way and I have to adapt and navigate the path to my dreams.
Do not fear constructive criticism, revisions make you a stronger writer
In season two, while Jane is in graduate school, she meets a professor who she dislikes at first because he is super hard on her, and previously she never had anyone criticize her writing so harshly. However, after having a bad experience with an advisor who gave Jane advice that didn’t really help her improve her writing, she begins to appreciate her hard ass professor more. She reads his comments and realizes that they are clear, succinct, and incredibly helpful. She learns a lesson about editing and how to take constructive criticism, and I think this is a rite of passage as a writer. We will all face editors who will want us to tear apart our work, change this and that, cut this part out because it is redundant… but it is important to remember that they are trying to help and they WILL make us better writers. Sometimes we don’t realize flaws in our own work because it makes sense to us, and in order to reach our full potential as creators we need to get that extra push from an outsider who can read it from an objective point of view.
Leave your comfort zone and you can discover the depth of your potential
Jane also meets with this professor when she is scrambling for money for her next semester at school, and he directs her to a scholarship in which she has to write a short story that is either historical fiction, a thriller, or sci-fi. Jane, who forever and always has written exclusively in the romance genre, is terrified and doesn’t know where to start. The professor advises her to write a few pages of each and see where it goes from there, and this was probably the best advice I’ve mentally noted from the show. It’s easy to stay in our comfort zones and write what we know, but you can definitely get stuck and make no progress or improvement if you’re just writing the same stuff all the time. It’s good to experiment and explore the many realms of your potential as a writer, and writing on a range of topics or genres will make your writing well rounded and force you out of your cave of comfort which constricts and smothers you. Your head is full of magic, tell me about it some time.
The mystical moment of finding the muse... and writing it down immediately!
You know those moments when you’re on the train low key people watching and suddenly an idea for a story involving the guy with the handlebar mustache pops into your head? Or you just woke up from a dream where you traveled the world as a spy and had to stop bad guys or pirates or shadow monsters and you totally want to write it down but falling back asleep sounds so much better…. This can be called an ah ha! moment of inspiration or as they call it in "Jane the Virgin," finding the muse.
When Jane gets her first laptop as a teenager she waits and waits for a moment like this to occur, and when it comes while she is riding the bus she hungrily writes it down. To me this stresses the importance of always being ready for such a moment, they are rare and magical and should be seized to the fullest extent. Whether you’re a traditionalist and carry pen and paper wherever you go or use a device to write it down, there is nothing quite like feeling the words drop out of a cloud and into your head.
Writers live for this because it makes our job easy, it shakes us out of our constantly-in-motion streams of consciousness and gives us a place to start. It is a gift, and if this moment happens to you, write it down!
I’ve had creative writing professors who were adamant about keeping a thought journal because thoughts are fleeting, and if we come up with a million dollar idea and don’t write it down, the chances of us remembering it later are slim to none. Even if you wake up groggy and disoriented from a dream, write down your thoughts and you can sort them out later. Raw ideas are like gemstones, they need to be polished and coveted. Jane has reminded me to appreciate these moments, and since I already have my phone on hand all the time (I know you do too, don’t lie) it’s super easy for me to open notes and write everything down. Don’t be lazy, the muse comes and goes and it’s up to you to catch it when it graces you with its presence.
All in all, "Jane the Virgin" is a viewing pleasure and has inspired me as both a woman and a writer, and I urge you to watch it and tell your friends about it. Even though the show depicts unusual and dramatic plot lines, there are so many realistic life lessons to be learned. I'm a sucker for character driven stories because people are interesting, and the characters in this show are anything but static and boring, like most popular television. Instead of watching three seasons of reality TV this summer, watch Gina Rodriguez as Jane absolutely destroy stereotypes of womanhood and motherhood. Let her inspire you to put in the effort to chase your goals no matter what difficulties life throws at you. To my fellow writers, I encourage you to be inspired by Jane and maybe even write a television show as great as this one!
