Once and artist, always an artist is what I always say. When you are a person who lives for creativity, there is no limit to what you can do and what you are willing to try creatively to express yourself. What comes along with being creative is the lack of fear of failure. Now let's be honest, this lack of fear I speak of doesn't come easy. It comes from being told "no" enough times that the word doesn't faze you anymore. We'll get back to that later. The point is the sky is the limit when you are a person who has a creative spirit. You have no choice but to think BIG and no choice but to succeed.
Although I have had many successes as an actress, my drive to do more is relentless and feeds in to my every decision. When I book a job, the moment it's done I'm twitching in anticipation of the next one. They aren't lying when they say acting is addictive. I mean who wouldn't be addicted to expressing all your emotions freely, playing amazing characters and getting paid for it?! Come on! Ok, yes, the lifestyle of never knowing what's next or what the next day or even week will be like, can be a little unnerving. Then you get the next opportunity to audition or better yet book a job and all the fear or doubt goes away in an instant. The love of telling stories just shines through.
I have always loved stories and the many ways that you can tell them. I love reading them, watching, listening, acting, dancing and even writing them. In my 6 years as a mom, I have been able to fully emerge myself in reading all kinds of stories. I have read to my daughter since she was a peanut in my belly. To this day, she and I devour books. I can say that I have been able to successfully share my love of stories with her. What I couldn’t get her on board with was my love of acting. This was a bit heartbreaking because she is Ms. Personality, but she inspired me and led me in a direction that I had no intention of going.
That leads me to adding a Children’s book author to my list of creative explorations. After MANY attempts to get my child to follow through on the auditions that she had asked for, might I add, I had to give it up. The real moment I knew was when we had a callback for a commercial together and she literally decided to lay on the floor face down and not do anything. I did my best to improv but what could I do when my child is laying on the floor at my feet. I couldn't even be mad at her. I knew that was my final try at getting her to audition. I always said that I would never push her too hard when it comes to acting. Acting is the kind of thing that you have to love. You've gotta love it or leave it alone. I'll thank Brand Nubian for that later. Back to my point, my child declared to me that she is a scientist and NOT an actor. From that moment on I knew that I had to go about things differently with her. This is when I was inspired to write a book about a little girl unicorn who was an inventor. The journey to writing this book was not as clear as you may think. Talk about one step at a time.
If you want to know about my process in writing this book, along with the MAJOR learning curve I went through and am still going through since adding children's book author to my list of can do's. Please check out my blogs as I keep you updated on my progress of self-publishing my very first children's book.