End Credits (How I Broke Up with Hollywood)

The only script you can really write in life is your own.

What if achieving your professional dreams comes at too high a personal cost? That’s what screenwriter Patty Lin started to ask herself after years in the cutthroat TV industry. One minute she was a tourist, begging her way into the audience of Late Night with David Letterman. Just a few years later, she was an insider who—through relentless hard work and sacrifice—had earned a seat in the writers’ rooms of the hottest TV shows of all time. While writing for Friends, Freaks and Geeks, Desperate Housewives and Breaking Bad, Patty steeled herself against the indignities of a chaotic, abusive, male-dominated work culture, not just as one of the few women in the room, but as the only Asian person.

This funny, fresh, eye-opening, and inside-Hollywood story will resonate with anyone trying to please their parents, maintain a love life, and find their way in the world—and will inspire countless dreamers to listen to their inner voices and know when it’s time to get out.