“When I was 22 years old I was an actor, and I met a playwright who suggested that I write a play and submit it for a Jerome Fellowship. I got the fellowship, so I decided that I’d become a writer, which was really good because I wasn’t a very good actor. But it wasn’t until 1997, when I wrote a play called Molly’s Delicious, that I really started to have a career. In between I did all kinds of crazy things. I worked in a fish store; I worked at a hotel development company; I was a fund-raiser for a camp for children with AIDS; and I was a minister. All of those things helped me as a writer, because you have to be out in the world doing something. You can’t just sit and write, or else you get real solipsistic real quick. How I’ll manage to continue that process out in L.A. I’m not sure, but I’ll have to be doing more than just writing.
“I’m going to be one of the writers for Six Feet Under on HBO. The job came about because I wrote a play called Orange Flower Water. The Jungle Theater staged it in July, and my agent told me that if I wanted to get movie or TV work, I could use that play as a work sample. The executive producer for Six Feet Under liked me and passed the script on to Alan Ball, the creator of the show. Then they flew me out for a second interview, and gave me the job. They’ve got me watching tapes of the show now. I’m slightly daunted, but just enough that it’s healthy.
“I’m going to miss living in Minneapolis. I’m going to miss Al’s. I’m going to miss the snow. And my friends. And the Jungle Theater. But I’ve written a lot of plays recently, and over the next twelve months I’ll have four world premieres. That’s enough plays. It’ll be fun to take a break and work in a different medium, and I think Six Feet Under is definitely a matrix in which I can operate successfully. It deals with mortality and spirituality, and not in a heavy-handed way. That’s something I try to do with my work as well. Writing for television means you don’t have to make the whole universe up every time. It already exists and you just have to work within it, which is a relief. Also you work with a team of people. Even though I’ll write my own episodes, other people will work on them too. It’ll be a great relief from writing plays, because it’s not all up to me. The fact that I didn’t create all of the characters is definitely going to be part of the challenge. But it’s also part of what makes it pleasant. It’s like mimicry.
“If you want to be a writer, stick with it. A lot of it is just attrition. If you just stick around long enough, and if you don’t totally suck, then you can probably make a career out of it. Even if you suck every now and then, you can still have a career. I hate all those people who get on NPR’s Fresh Air and say, ‘You have to write every day. A writer writes.’ I just don’t believe that. You should write when you want to, write when you have to. The rest of the time you should do interesting things with your life.”
—In conversation with Chuck Terhark
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