Bad Actors Make Good Writers, by Josh Stallings

 Q: Most writers have had other jobs. What’s one thing you learned in an entirely different professional setting that you’re grateful for?

A: From a young age I wanted to be an actor. Or a bank robber. Or a spy. But mostly an actor. I worked very hard to learn the craft. It never became a job, in that I was never paid to act. But I am deeply grateful for all it taught me.

That’s me on the far right, playing cowboy #2 in a Western staging of a Shakespeare comedy.

At sixteen I graduated high-school a...