Staci Greason’s literary achievements include award-winning television pilots and screenplays. Her well-reviewed novel, All the Girls in Town, was published by Touch Point Press. Her short stories and essays have been published in Brevity, Slate, Lunch Ticket, AFLW, the Same, and the Huff Post. In her past life, she played the late Isabella Toscano Black on Days of Our Lives. Staci lives in Southern California with her smart sexy husband and one very dopey dog.
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Meredith: Are you ever frightened of your ideas, or what’s inside you? Does it help to know it – or not really, when it comes to getting the words on the page?
STACI: My artistic life began as an actor and singer. It took time with training and practice, but I’m not one to shy away from difficult ideas or what’s inside of me. The main reason that I decided to focus on writing was the freedom to express myself, not others’ ideas, on the page. I relish it. I love it. Artists have big feelings for a reason. I honestly believe we are the shamans of the tribe. We translate stuff and make life bearable and better.
As a longtime practicing Buddhist, I tend to view things in terms of channeling whatever comes up on the path for a greater good. Fiction offers unique opportunities for exploring difficult themes and creating community with the most unlikely of fellows because we are world building. If I’ve done my job well, the reader can enter this world and move around and become a part of it. Seeing all sides or understanding something on a deeper level brings people together. Or at the very least, it gets us uncomfortable and curious which is when we learn. People are complicated. We are not wholly good, nor wholly bad. We keep secrets, often even from ourselves. We behave in despicable and amazingly kind ways. My new novel All the Girls in Town is about three very imperfect beautiful and talented women who are living in rage and trauma and how they find a way forward through their complicated friendship. While I was writing the book, the Harvey Weinstein story broke, and I decided to let my three main characters, Dani, Red, and Sasha, really go after their horrible abusive rockstar, Peter. I let myself really go all in with sorrow, anger, revenge, rage, love, and protection.
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Meredith: Homeostasis is a concept I learned on my first day of graduate school. It means the desire to revert back to the familiar, for things to remain the same. As a writer, how do you remedy this type of stagnation which can thwart creativity? Or, do you believe there’s a time for it?
STACI: My writing mentor, Jim Krusoe, once returned pages to me and said, “You’re writing too good. Mess it up.” Is homeostasis staying in our comfort zone? Many writers have found great success doing this. I like to explore branching out while working on first drafts, but often an editor will reel me back in. The publishing industry has a kind of homeostasis. It can be difficult to get published if your writing lives outside the boundary of a genre, etc. It is a business. Money must be made. Can a writer accomplish something daring if they also must fit into a form? That’s the exercise, I guess. Try writing in a different form! I also write screenplays and TV scripts which have a very rigid form. Learning the form to set yourself free from the form is a great exploration. Novelists Jose Saramajo and Cormac McCarthy are two of my favorite writers. Their skill broke them free of convention and created something uniquely beautiful and interesting. I may never be able to do this but I deeply admire it in fellow writers. I can feel when I’m too comfortable and just typing but sometimes this is a necessary stage. Everything is of value.
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Meredith: Perhaps related to the above: Taking the stance that creativity is a natural state, why do we get stuck?
STACI: Stuck is a natural part of growth. We must get lost. When you are lost, you stop. You finally start to pay attention. How can we grow and create works of interest and depth, or an interesting life, without climbing mountains and trekking through valleys and backtracking and getting lost? That’s when the discovery happens! When we are stuck! Aren’t we writing after all about the human experience?
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Meredith: Writing partners or groups aside, the bulk to the process of creating is [generally] solitary, meaning the transformation occurs within and then it is conveyed in words or pictures (or music, dance, etc) out into the world. Selling is not—selling as in marketing, promo. How do you help them make peace with one another inside you? Or do they? Is there a reconciliation?
STACI: Oh, marketing and selling is exhausting. Putting yourself out there is exhausting. Even when I was an actress, I hated being in the spotlight. But if we want people to be able to find our books, and we do write them for people, then we must do the work. The writer can decide how to promote, or not. All the Girls in Town came out with a small traditional press with an even smaller staff. Because it took me two decades of writing novels to get a book deal, I went all in! I already knew that I needed to hire an independent publicist. I joined an online group of women authors with debuts coming out in 2022. We supported one another. I made friends. I learned how to become a good literary citizen. While I was writing personal postcards to indie bookstores, my husband was calling their buyers on the phone. I built relationships on social media and did interviews and had events. And, to keep myself grounded, I worked on rewrites for my next novel. Which, ugh, I will have to promote and market – if I get lucky enough again.
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Meredith: Writing—or the dream of calling oneself an author or writer—seems, for many, to have this highly addictive, seductiveness about it. Like: I’d really be someone if I could write. Or be a writer, author, etc. But it’s not writing that imbues itself with these characteristics, it’s the person. Why, do you think, it’s such a seductive slope?
STACI: In life, it’s always the picture of something that trips us up. Who are we trying to be? Aren’t we already someone? We romanticize and reach for things because we think that “thing” will fix an inner life condition. I once believed that when I was on the NY Times Bestseller list, I would be a real writer. It would validate my choice to become a writer. Ha! The NY Times may never happen for me. So what? It wouldn’t make me feel any differently inside. Being a writer is just writing. I do look to certain female artists as mentors for direction, but I can’t be them. Comparison is the killer, the death, of everything. If I have something to say, to share, then it’s my job to get it on the page and try to give birth in the world. It’s frustrating and heartbreaking but beautiful, too. Once, after patiently listening to my writer’s laments, my good friend, the artist, Dustin Shuler said, “It’s not a bad way to spend a life, is it, Staci? Doing what you love.”
[Thank you, Staci.]
Photo by S O C I A L . C U T on Unsplash