The School of Life: or How Being An Actor Taught Me to Write

My education has never been rooted in academia, even when I was in school. I started modeling when I was fourteen (in the high-fashion world of Baton Rouge!), then at sixteen began teaching modeling to women older then myself and to residences in a home for battered women to raise their self-esteem. In what should have been my senior year of high school, I was living on my own and was the manager and buyer of a clothing store. I basically was living like a thirty year old at eighteen. Then I moved to New York City, had an unexceptional fling as a model there and in Europe, then returned to NYC, and began studying acting.

If you've never taken an acting class in NYC, I can tell you that they are tough. There is such a stripping down that happens, but finally, it is in a good way. I was fortunate to have great teachers from the Actor's Studio, the Neighborhood Playhouse, and Juilliard. I learned about such things as character development, building an arc, when to start a scene, themes. I learned how to listen to criticism, but to also balance it against what is true for my work. I learned about comedy and drama, and the difference between the two (timing, as the old joke goes.) And yes, comedy is harder!

In the years that I went to classes, and worked in theater, TV, and film, and read every play written by Shaw, Williams, Miller, Chekhov, Pinter, and O'Neal among many others, I had no idea that I would use every bit of that in my writing. And not just things that happened to me in that world – though I use a bunch of them in The Safety of Secrets – but for tools of writing.

Another great gift that studying and working as an actor gave me for my writing was that for all those years, I was just one of many people working together to tell a story, and the story (or play or film or TV show) was more important than any one person involved – even the stars! That still gives me great perspective when I'm working: the story I am writing is more important than how I feel about writing it. That's a great way for me to get rid of any self-doubt and write, dammit!

Coming to writing from an acting background taught me to view the work theatrically, or at least, cinematically. I see the scenes playing out before me and I hear the characters talking in them. Many times, they surprise me. It feels a bit like watching my novels unfold on a screen in my head.

I also learned a great deal from Spoken Interludes, the reading series that I produce. Reading so many different writers' work, listening to them read at the events, and noticing when, or if, the audience's attention wandered, all of those things were like a wonderful master class that I put together every month and got to sit in with the audience and other writers.

I am grateful that I had to do and did all those different things that were like a slow unraveling of the outside person that I thought I was or thought that I wanted to be only to have this life revealed. There are many times when I think about those journeys, and the different ways that my life could have gone, and I look forward to exploring what could have happened in my future novels. 

I'd love to hear how different art forms have fed or inspired your own writing...

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"a hilarious inside look at Hollywood, a nuanced portrait of a friendship and its secrets, and a moving testament to the powerful effects of a destructive mother." Dani Shapiro

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