about

In third grade, I hated creative writing because my teacher’s examples for every literary device were always about his cup of coffee. Coffee was gross, and thus, writing was lame.

Today, I live in New York and understand where he was coming from.

I think “writing” started to turn around for me when I got addicted to Runescape. I spent way too much time in Runescape’s forums and developed a modest following of other lonely adolescents who liked my medieval stories. Off-forum, I wrote a lot of super emotional poems and songs, retyped pages of Harry Potter to feel what it felt like to be Jo Herself Pre-TERF-Reveal TM, and started literally dozens of novels I never finished (although one got to page 67).

The real magic happened when I read JUNO in high school. Did you know Diablo Cody sums up Jennifer Garner’s character as “Very Banana Republic.” Like, wow. That was mind-blowing to me. How could you possibly describe that character better? You couldn’t. I was in love.

Eventually, I committed the unforgivable sin of leaving Kentucky and going to NYU Tisch to study film and screenwriting. After a lot of soul-searching and therapy, I realized I want to write scripts for kids that show them they aren’t alone. I wish there had been more fun movies in the early 2000s that subliminally told me I deserved to be treated with love, compassion, and respect—and not just in a fluffy way. The best I can do is make sure there are some like that in the 2020s.

In sum: I wish I wrote INSIDE OUT, Kentucky is weird, and I now believe that you can never write too much about coffee.