It’s been awhile since I’ve wrote here. I feel like I’ve been writing a lot lately, obviously for other projects and things, and I love it. I was reading The Dreamer Examines His Pillow and I loved what John Patrick Shanley wrote in the forward, “writing is acting.”
My acting coach told me there was a writer inside me. I didn’t know at that time what to make of that comment. I mean I had been writing stuff since high school. I loved stream of consciousness writing. It was catatonic in its own way and there was no judgement from myself on my writing in that form. I just wrote.
I tried and did write some stories for friends over the years. They enjoyed them but the stories were never any good but still I wrote. After my coach’s comment sunk in I did what I usually always did and rebelled. I first disagreed with her assertion that I was a writer and then was appalled at the thought that maybe she’s telling me I need to be a writer and not an actor.
I hated that thought as I wanted to act, not write. Of course with all things I settle down eventually and come to reason and understanding. I realized that my coach was saying the same thing as Shanley. She told me that as I grow in my acting I will grow in my writing and vice verse. That, echoed with Shanley’s statement that “writing is acting,” has truly set me free to combine into a single passion this craft of acting and writing.
Acting will most likely always be my primary focus and love but writing is something so much more personal to me. I still don’t feel my writing is any good but I’m also comparing myself to long established writers such as Shanley and I know I shouldn’t do that. It’s the same thing with my acting, I do it there too. So for now I’m trying not to do that and enjoy where I am in both acting and writing, working on them both, and growing in them both. So that in time, maybe one day, I will be among the greats. Or rather more simply, better than I am today, and still working on being better for tomorrow.