Valerie Armstrong is the creator of and showrunner for Kevin Can F**k Himself, AMC’s newly released dark comedy about a sitcom housewife who wakes up and realizes what she wants in life: to kill her husband.

But before Armstrong was helming a genre-mashing show with showrunner Craig DiGregorio, she was a story editor and a staff writer. And before that, she was an assistant between jobs — that’s when she realized, “No one’s going to give this to me. So I decided to write every day. And I haven’t missed a day in five years.”

Armstrong recalls how excited she was when she first came up with the idea for Kevin Can F**k Himself. “I had already been writing every day for six months when I wrote the first draft in June of 2017. This was my third or fourth project, and even though it was my favorite thing I had written, I treated it like everything else.” Valerie put it in a drawer and forgot about it. She didn’t revisit it until she could read it with fresh eyes. And then it was only to develop it to the extent of a writing sample for a job.

Which is what happened. Valerie sent out the script to potential agents, who then sent it out as a sample for a staff writer position. The twist? AMC got a hold of it, and her general turned into a pitch meeting, which led to her selling the pilot and another three years before it finally aired.

“I won’t act like I knew what I was in for,” she chuckles. “I’m still learning! But this was the one project where I had an opinion about everything, and I loved getting people’s input on it.”

The hardest part of the development process? “Knowing which notes are intractable and when you are being true to your job. When you’re being collaborative or being a pushover.” 

She goes on, “People wanted to make it less scary because they didn’t know they were coming after the soul of the show. I fully adjusted and let myself understand the show in a different way. But there were a few times I dug my heels in, and I don’t regret it.”

That isn’t to say mistakes were made, especially as the show moved into its production phase. “I definitely made them, but I’m glad I did because those were the lessons I value the most. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have learned anything.”

With season one under her belt and a season two in order, Armstrong admits that “when you’re alone in a room, it’s just fun. Because in the room, you have the reality of production. The conversations for what your flights of fancy might cost begin sooner. But when you’re selling? Who the hell cares.” 

Armstrong’s favorite piece of advice for writers? “Don't be precious about jobs. One of the biggest things at our disposal [as writers] is that our day job matches up with what we want to do. We can write at night and be in a writers’ room getting lunch, which may not be creative, but you can learn so much from them.” And most importantly, “Always be writing.”

And if she could go back in time and high-five herself, what would she say? “Don’t worry so much. It’s going to be okay.”

Season one of Kevin Can F**k Himself is now available on AMC+ and on DVD & Blu-ray.