When I was sixteen my mother gave me a copy of Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters To A Young Poet. I had already been strumming out poems and pained love songs since fourteen being precocious as I was at the time. Not until then, however, when the young writer in the book was posed with the question, "Must you write" did I recognize my own love of writing and the immense value it had in my life.
I was easily hooked on Rilke's fine words, but also those of my own. From then on I began the unrelenting and nonjudgemental pursuit of pen and paper. Whether it has been in my journals - of which I have volumes - or my novels, I have been driven by the absolute necessity to express myself through written words. Even in College history and writing were my focus. Acting fell far into second place, although I have grown to love it as well. Senior year in college I saw myself working at a newspaper after graduation and pumping out genius like Kafka did on weekends. It didn't turn out quite like that, but in my off hours - between acting jobs - I have completed two novels, one of which is currently being released.
This first one is called Nerissa, which I began in 1998 at an old desk in my one bedroom apartment on 73rd street in New York. I finished the book in 1999 in my Los Feliz yellow bungalow with it's sweeping banana tree out front, far from where it began. That is the same house I was living in when I got Law and Order. It was a very good year!
One night I awakened with a strong sense of a place in Scotland. I'll never forget that it was two in the morning when I heard the sound of gravel crunching beneath the tires of a car. In my dream this car was leading me to the castle in Wick where Nerissa unravels. Those thoughts I jotted down then were just the beginnings and it has obviously changed quite a bit since that abstract dream. Now it is a love story between a young woman and an older man and the strange convergence of events that reveal their private thoughts in 1911 during the most important year of their affair. Finding stories in the middle of the night has continued for me and I seem to think most clearly somewhere between midnight and seven. Now that I've just had a child, I tend to be up during those hours regardless.
I wrote my second novel, Desire during the first years of Law and Order in my dressing room somewhere between all those courtroom scenes. It was a great way to pass the time there and what has come out of this book is very personal for me. Set in New Orleans, it is a tale of two souls meant to come together in friendship due to the unique circumstances in both of their lives, a Harold and Maude relationship between a seven year old girl and a thirty year old Haitian woman. It deals with a childhood marked by the psychological destruction of a bipolar mother and an absent father, and the healing that can take place outside of even the most complicated families. It is a love story too. All stories are love stories.
As Letters To A Young Poet points out, it is not important whether you are good at something. The question is, can you live without the pursuit, and are you sincere in your efforts? I hold that philosophy close and think often of the words that inspired me so long ago:
"There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple "I must" then build your life in accordance with this necessity...But after this descent into yourself and into your solitude, perhaps you will have to renounce becoming a poet (if, as I have said, one feels one could live without writing, then one shouldn't write at all)."
I believe that this way of thinking can lead to all good decisions in every aspect of your life. I thank you for expressing interest in my other endeavors outside of acting, and I hope you enjoy my books!
-Lis
