Did you tell the students that?

I did. I said, “I know I sound like an old fuddy-duddy freak, and I’ve only been out of college for six years, but please try and appreciate how good this moment is. Because this isn’t what your whole life is going to be like. I know this feels hard, but it’s going to get harder. Soon, you’re going to have to worry about where to live and what to do for a job and whether you want to have a baby or not. Right now, the landscape is so simple, in a way. Appreciate it!” That was the only advice that I thought could even be close to useful for them.

But what are you up to, creatively, these days? I think I heard you’ve been working a little bit on stuff…potentially for a book? Have you been enjoying it?

It’s so hard. Every time I write something or try to have an opinion about something, I change my mind when I read it again the next week, and I’m like, I can’t show this to anyone. It’s horrible!

I feel that way all the time, but then I end up putting it on TV! I’m glad that you’re finding interests, like theater. Do you think, This is what I want to be when I grow up? Or do you not feel clear about it yet?

I know that I want to act or write.

Well, the cool thing is that you have time to figure it out. When I was in high school, I wanted to be all kinds of things. I went through a phase where I wanted to be a veterinarian. It didn’t take me long to figure out that I probably wasn’t cut out for that, that it wasn’t where my passion lay.

Still, it’s fun to think about things that you could do with your life.

Totally. And that’s the cool thing about being young: You don’t have to specialize yet. When you get older, it gets harder to pursue all of your hobbies, but at your age, you can crack your brain wide open and do anything you dream of. God, that sounds so cheesy, but it’s true! It’s so true. I just watched this documentary about Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan. I don’t know if you’re too young to remember, but they were figure skaters in the 1990s, and one of them attacked the other one with a big stick.

Oh, no!

Well, technically, Tonya’s ex-husband paid someone to do it, but it was like, [Tonya] wanted to win a gold medal, so [her ex-husband] got someone to attack her rival, Nancy Kerrigan, trying to knock her out of the competition. It was a big scandal. Anyway, they were talking about the life of these two girls and how, from a young age, for both of them, it was all figure skating, all the time—your entire life is your sport and trying to get to the Olympics. The whole time, I was just thinking about how much you lose when you focus at such an early age on one thing. I feel like I’ve devoted my life very clearly to what I do, but I’m happy that I didn’t do that when I was really young. My life today, by the way, is pretty much devoted to drinking green tea and having a dog.

Oh, your dog!

I love him so much.

He’s so cute!

I woke up this morning and he was sitting in my face with one of my socks in his mouth, and I was just like, “Where did you come from?” He’s so soft and he smells really good. He smells like a corn chip. He curls up and gives me so much love. I love him.

Does it affect you when people criticize you?

Yeah, I get really affected by stuff like that.

I mean, one mean tweet will ruin my whole day. How do you deal with it?

You know, I think it’s just about realizing that this isn’t your whole life—it’s one part of your life. I think to myself, OK, people are criticizing me. But these people don’t know me. They’re not my friends. They’re not my family. They don’t sit with me in the writers’ room. They’re not really part of my life. I have to remind myself that they are just kind of imaginary spam robots that live on the internet.

But in terms of writing, there’s something here that I think is important. One cool thing about being young and writing is that you can write things that you don’t want to publish. And you can change styles whenever you want. You can change, just like that! Just the act of writing is good for you.

To find your voice?

Right. When I was young, I wrote so many terrible poems—rhyming ones, not-rhyming ones, slam poems, serious poems, romantic poems—and if any of them were published today, I’d throw myself off a building. But doing that helped me become who I am.

My dad says that all the time.

It’s funny—my dad’s an art teacher in graduate school, and he always says that people shouldn’t show their work until they’re done with grad school, because [until then] their work is going to be changing and they’re going to be finding their voice. I think he’s right, in a way. But I also think that part of the joy of our modern world is the idea that we’re all showing our processes to each other all the time, so you might as well publish something online now. Two years from now, you may go, Well, that wasn’t great. But maybe you’ll also see the generosity in the act of showing a lot of other people your process. You maybe made them less scared to show their work, too.

But how do you not judge yourself?

I do this thing where I say to myself, I’m going to write for an hour, and I’m not going to say no to myself at all. Whatever comes out is going to come out, and it’ll be great. I can judge it later, but not right now. You also have to realize that just getting something on paper is such an achievement. So many people think about writing and talk about writing but don’t write. If you’re writing, you’re already one step ahead of the game. At least, that’s what I tell myself!

You can’t just talk about writing. You have to be a writer.

Yes, and sometimes what comes out is terrible! I’ve written a couple of things for my book that my editor read and he said to me, “Uh, I don’t think this should be in the book. It’s embarrassing.” But it’s good to put it out there. It’s just good to put yourself out there. ♦

Maude Apatow is addicted to technology, even though she knows it’s destroying her.