Nayab
asked
Alexandra Sokoloff:
When did you realize that you wanted to express your creativity and knowledge through writing? Was it encouraged by others? What creative expressions (e.g. art, dance, media, music) have you tried in the past, present or future to express your creativity through?
Alexandra Sokoloff
Hi Nayab! Like a lot of authors I know, I just always wrote. Long before I ever thought of BEING a writer. I kept journals, I wrote pages and pages of random thoughts during math classes, I wrote in the car during family road trips. It was how I thought. When I wasn't writing, like every other writer, I read. We had one of those houses that had hundreds of books in every room, stacked to the ceiling, overflowing bookshelves. You were never more than an arm's length from a book. I could read walking home from school—another sure sign of a writer-to-be.
I didn't start out thinking I'd be a writer, though. I got the acting bug first, which is great fun, total instant gratification. I did musical theater from sixth grade all through high school, and majored in theater at Berkeley.
But I quickly realized I was more interested in the big picture, the actual telling of the story, and theater was a fantastic training ground for writing. I worked my way through acting, which taught me how to create character and connect with an audience; dance and choreography, which taught me rhythm and pace, fearlessness and oh, yes—discipline!); then directing, which taught me design, structure, theme. Writing was the next natural step—the ultimate expression of all those things.
But the moment I said—"That's it, I'm going to write"? That was when I saw my first one-act play, one that I'd written for a class at Berkeley, performed. The characters I'd created walked out on stage, live, and it was like I imagine heroin has got to be. I was God. That was it—hooked. It was all about writing from then on. I still dance quite a bit, though! It keeps me sane.
Was I encouraged? Well, that's an interesting question. My parents were scientists and they would have been appalled if I'd actually come out and said I was planning to be a writer (or director or, God forbid, an actor). So I just, um.... didn't tell them. Once I was making a living at it, though, they were all for it!
I didn't start out thinking I'd be a writer, though. I got the acting bug first, which is great fun, total instant gratification. I did musical theater from sixth grade all through high school, and majored in theater at Berkeley.
But I quickly realized I was more interested in the big picture, the actual telling of the story, and theater was a fantastic training ground for writing. I worked my way through acting, which taught me how to create character and connect with an audience; dance and choreography, which taught me rhythm and pace, fearlessness and oh, yes—discipline!); then directing, which taught me design, structure, theme. Writing was the next natural step—the ultimate expression of all those things.
But the moment I said—"That's it, I'm going to write"? That was when I saw my first one-act play, one that I'd written for a class at Berkeley, performed. The characters I'd created walked out on stage, live, and it was like I imagine heroin has got to be. I was God. That was it—hooked. It was all about writing from then on. I still dance quite a bit, though! It keeps me sane.
Was I encouraged? Well, that's an interesting question. My parents were scientists and they would have been appalled if I'd actually come out and said I was planning to be a writer (or director or, God forbid, an actor). So I just, um.... didn't tell them. Once I was making a living at it, though, they were all for it!
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