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What is your favorite quote, by whom, and why? Never doubt that a small group of committed, thoughtful people can change the world. It is, indeed, the only thing that ever has. ~Margaret Mead
This is one of my favorite quotes because of the underlying paradox, which doesn’t immediately occur to most readers. How people react to this quote tells me much about their unconscious nature: do they see this thought as positive? Or negative? I do not believe that Dr. Mead meant it negatively – but words, you know, slippery creatures.
What are you most proud of accomplishing so far in your life? I am an intrepid traveler and I especially like exotic solo travel. I feel most accomplished as a person when I step off of a plane by myself in the middle of China, or Russia, or the Czech Republic, and although I do not speak the language, and everything around me is strange, I push myself into the unknown thinking “I can do this.”
What is your favorite color? Sage green
What’s your favorite place in the entire world? Oh…one place? Maybe Old Town Square in Prague.
How has your upbringing influenced your writing? I was raised partly in a small bucolic northern New Jersey town, and partly near the Pacific Ocean in a Southern California. These were two very different environments and I learned a great deal about how place informs a person’s worldview, which has subsequently influenced my characterizations.
Do you recall how your interest in writing originated? I cannot recall a time when I didn’t consider myself a writer.
When and why did you begin writing? I wrote my first poem when I was eight years old. It was about the Statue of Liberty. I was not a prodigy – the poem was awful.
When did you first know you could be a writer? It took me a long time to commit to writing as a way of life and not simply a personality trait. I tried numerous other jobs while always writing on the side. Then, I got “down-sized” while working at an advertising agency in New York City. I was about twenty-five years old. I decided I needed to figure out how to actually making a living as a writer. I knew all of the steady work was in Los Angeles and so I moved there and began screenwriting.
What inspires you to write and why? I don’t know where the desire to write originates. One would think self-preservation would kick-in and guide an intelligent person in a kinder direction, since the rejections are brutal and often from editors/agents who can barely put a sentence together. Recently, I was told by a prestigious agent that my new book had “too many ideas for her”. Ah…okay.
Of course, those comments never hurt the way a negative comment that suddenly rings true hurts.
What genre are you most comfortable writing? My writing friends have been known to call me a stem cell writer. Where many of them specialize in particular genres or formats, I have had assignments in nearly every genre: comedy, horror, drama, thriller, docu-drama, children’s, and in all categories: fiction, non-fiction, adaptation…I am most happy when switching around.
Who or what influenced your writing once you began? In the beginning, it was all about getting paid. I needed to support myself first. I understood that very practical exigency, and so I was influenced to write what I believed would sell. Later on, I began to do more of what appealed to me. Not surprisingly, when you must make money writing, the drive to turn-out pages is enhanced, and so I do not think that was a negative at all. While I was creatively frustrated at the time it taught me so much, and it has influenced the way I work ever after.
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