I’ve always been a writer. You should see my notes from high school. I took note-taking on every essay to that next level: double-underling, eight different color high lighters, stars and circles and double circles...none of it ever followed a system. My process was just to annotate with whatever symbol or shape mirrored my reaction to the words.
When I was ten years old, I started a newspaper. It was three pages long and I wrote it with two of my friends. Every Friday morning before a big holiday, I’d go with my dad to the office of his private practice, and use his copy machine to make 100 copies. I’d sit on the ground, criss-cross-applesauce, collating the pages and stapling them one-by-one. I didn’t sell them, nothing entrepreneurial like that, I just gave them away. I loved seeing people read my words. I loved hearing them talk about the articles on the playground. My friends bring up those articles still, at reunions, or in coffee shops, or on slow, nostalgia-laden days.
In high school, I spent two years writing for the school paper before becoming Editor-in-Chief. I loved the glamour of the title, and the power to shape the paper in my vision. Everyone on staff was cooky and crazy and totally my flavor.
I told myself I didn’t want to write in college. I’d moved to New York for school and was ready for a new character. Who else could I be? What else was out there? What opportunities had I ignored because my nose had been buried in a book?
I tried broadcast journalism, but the industry felt tired and antiquated.
And then I tried video production. I couldn’t believe that people got to hang out, on set, with so many different types of art all working together to create something multidimensional and, even better, entertaining as all hell.
So much of my experience with film makes me feel like I’m an outsider, living behind enemy lines, taking notes as I go, trying to make it all make sense. I didn’t go to film school. I haven’t watched every summer blockbuster ever made. But I fell in love with the process, and I think that makes it a career worth pursuing.
