Rhimes - Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand In the Sun and Be Your Own Person

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Some names and identifying characteristics have been changed, and some individuals are portrayed as composites. The timeline of certain events has been altered, with some events reordered, combined and/or compressed. The author is neither truly old nor is she truly a liar.

Quotations from Greys Anatomy and Private Practice courtesy of ABC Studios.

Copyright 2015 by Ships At A Distance, Inc.

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First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition November 2015

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Interior design by Ruth Lee-Mui

Jacket design by Jackie Seow

Lettering by Nick Misani

Author photo by James White

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rhimes, Shonda.

Year of yes / Shonda Rhimes. First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition November 2015

pagescm

1.Rhimes, Shonda.2.Television writersUnited StatesBiography.I.Title.

PN1992.4.R515A32015

808.2'25dc23

[B]2015035684

ISBN 978-1-4767-7709-2

ISBN 978-1-4767-7714-6 (ebook)

For Harper, Emerson and Beckett,

May every year be a Year of Yes . May you inherit a future that no longer requires you to be an F.O.D. And if it is the future and that hasnt happened yet, go ahead and start the revolution. Mommy says you can.

and

For Delorse,

For giving me permission to start my own private revolution. And for saying yes to showing up every single time Ive called your name. You are the F.O.D. within the familythe five of us who came behind you thank you for creating our second chances.

The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.

MAYA ANGELOU

If you want crappy things to stop happening to you, then stop accepting crap and demand something more.

CRISTINA YANG, GREYS ANATOMY

Im Old and I Like to Lie (A Disclaimer of Sorts)

Im a liar.

And I dont care who knows it.

I make stuff up all the time.

Before you start speculating about my character and my sanity... let me explain myself. I make stuff up because I have to. Its not just something I like to do. I mean, I do like to do it. I thoroughly enjoy making stuff up. Fingers-crossed-behind-my-back flights of fancy make my motor run, shake my groove thing, turn me on.

I do like to make stuff up.

I love it.

Its also kind of ingrained in me. My brain? My brain naturally just leans in the direction of half truths; my brain turns toward fiction. Like a flower to the sun. Like writing with my right hand. Fabrication is like a bad habit that feels good, easy to pick up, hard to quit. Spinning tall tales, knitting yarns made of stories, is my dirty little vice. And I like it.

But its not just a bad habit. I need to do it. I have to do it.

It turns out that making stuff up?

Is a job.

For real.

Seriously.

The very thing that had me on my knees in church during recess reciting the rosary for one nun or another at St. Marys Catholic School in Park Forest, Illinois, is an actual honest-to-Jesus-Mary-and-Joseph job.

Dont tell anyone, but my Mom? She escaped from Russia. She was engaged to this guy, Vladimirshe had to leave the love of her life behind and everything. Its so sad. And now she has to pretend shes a totally regular American or we could all be killed. Of course I speak Russian. Dah . What? Shes black Russian, stupid. Like white Russian. But black Russian. Anyway, it doesnt matter what kind of Russian, we can never go there ever, shes a dead woman over there now. For trying to assassinate Leonid Brezhnev. What do you mean why ? Dont you know anything? To stop nuclear winter. To save America. Duh.

Youd think Id get extra credit for knowing who Leonid Brezhnev was. Youd think Id get bonus points for reading up on Russian politics. Youd think someone would thank me for educating my fellow ten-year-olds about the Cold War.

Knees. Church. Nuns. Rosary.

I can recite the rosary in my sleep. I have recited the rosary in my sleep.

Making stuff up is responsible for that. Making stuff up is responsible for everythingeverything Ive done, everything I am, everything I have. Without the tales, the fiction, the stories Ive spun, it is highly likely that right now, today, Id be a very quiet librarian in Ohio.

Instead, the figments of my imagination altered whatever downward path the nuns at school expected my life to take.

The stuff I made up carried me from the small bedroom I shared with my sister Sandie in the suburbs of Chicago to an Ivy League dorm room in the hills of New Hampshire, and then it took me all the way to Hollywood.

My destiny rides squarely on the back of my imagination.

The sinful stories that earned me prayer as penance during recess are the same stories that now allow me to buy a bottle of wine plus a steak at the grocery store and not worry about the price. Being able to buy wine and steak and not think about the price is very important to me. It was a goal. Because when I was a struggling graduate student in film school, I often had no money. And so I often had to choose between wine and things like toilet paper. Steak did not even enter into the equation.

It was wine or toilet paper.

Wine.

Or.

Toilet paper.

The toilet paper did not always win.

Did I just see you give me a look? Was that... did you just judge me?

No. You are not about to come up into this book and judge me.

That is not how we are going to start off this journey. We are gonna ease on down the road. Were in this book together, my friend. So let she who is without wine cast the first stone. Otherwise...

Sometimes the toilet paper does not win.

Sometimes a broke woman needs the red wine more.

So youll have to cut me some slack if Im unapologetic about my love for the magic of a little bit of fibbing and invention.

Because I make stuff up for a living.

Imagining is now my job. I write television shows. I make up characters. I create whole worlds in my head. I add words to the lexicon of daily conversationmaybe you talk about your vajayjay and tell your friend that someone at work got Poped because of my shows. I birth babies, I end lives. I dance it out. I wear the white hat. I operate. I gladiate. I exonerate. I spin yarns and tell tall tales and sit around the campfire. I wrap myself in fiction. Fiction is my job. Fiction is it. Fiction is everything. Fiction is my jam .