I had always attended classes and written stories as a creative outlet because I need that, and I thought, in my previous career in a model, the way I approached that was that I believed I was telling a non-verbal story.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I like to think that I am telling a story rather than writing it.
Telling stories has been a compulsion of mine since I could physically say, 'Once upon a time...' But in high school, I realized I could study creative writing in college and actually pursue it as a viable career.
If you have to tell a story without speaking, it's sort of like - I come from a dance background, so it's like a ballet where you have to tell a story with just your body. I think that's really interesting to have to tell a story with just your face and your mannerisms, and I'd like to tap into that world.
I did try to write stories in college because I was interested in writing, and I was interested in the sound of language, but I was just no good at narrative and at fiction.
Writing a story is pretty all-consuming for me - it feels a lot like method acting, and for the eight or twelve or fifteen months that I'm working on a story, I'm constantly thinking about how my narrator would react to whatever tangled situation I'm in.
By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths.
I am always telling students that a story is not just words. You can tell a story with dance or paint or music. Kids and adults are visual learners, auditory learners. There are those of us who need to touch it. Storytelling encompasses so much more than words on paper.
I always wanted to tell stories. Well, at least, I always came back to the notion of storytelling when the glitz and glamour of being a special effects designer or a fighter pilot or a DEA agent wore off.
I've been writing stories, in one form or another, since I was a kid.
I guess telling stories is an art. I never looked at it that way. I just started talking, and everyone started laughing. So I kept talking, and they kept laughing.