Today we’d like to introduce you to Macee Binns.
So, before we jump into specific questions, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
You know, it’s funny…when I first moved to Los Angeles in 2009, I thought I knew exactly what I wanted and why I came here. Like so many transplants in Hollywood, I moved out here to pursue a career in acting. But somewhere along the way, life took me in a completely different direction and I eventually found my path as a writer. Which still surprises me to this day.
When I look back on my early years, growing up a severely dyslexic kid in Little Rock, Arkansas that was terrified to read out loud and wanted to burst into tears when I had to write something on the chalkboard in class. If you had told me back then that as an adult, I would be living in Los Angeles getting paid for my writing. I seriously would have thought, I’m being punked.
I fell into writing by chance. When I was in graduate school, working on my MFA in Acting, our class was forced to write our own material to perform for our thesis. I hated it at first, but a couple of my teachers really liked my work and encouraged me to submit my scripts to a National Screenwriting Competition, and I actually won Best Short. After that, I started spending more and more time writing. Then, once my first play was published and I was working for some online magazines writing celebrity news articles, it just kind of hit me that somewhere along the way writing had become my career, and I feel extremely lucky to have stumbled into a job that I love.
My work has surprised me in so many unexpected ways. I have published two plays and contributed to the Smith & Kraus annual theatre book series, “The Best Women’s Stage Monologues,” which is sold at Barnes & Noble and other major bookstores. I have written several newspaper and magazine articles over the years. Including a passion piece for TheRichest.com that exposed the mistreatment of different animals at SeaWorld, and received over 2 million views online. I started a women’s comedy blog with my best friend, actress Fernanda Chaves, called “Thoughts From A Tiny Ass Chair” that I am hoping to re-launch this spring. I also had the privilege of working at Dancing Iguana Productions writing content and co-hosting segments for Elizabeth Morales’ podcast, “Left Unsupervised” that is currently on iTunes and Spotify.
Despite my work as a writer, some things never change. I am still the same severally dyslexic girl that I always was growing up, but now, instead of being terrified to read out loud. When I’m working, I just shamelessly shout basic spelling questions at my husband in the living room and I have my best friend fix all of my mistakes before I send anything out to be published.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I don’t think a smooth road exists in any career, but especially not in the entertainment industry. Sometimes just living in L.A. is a struggle. I worked my fair share of crap jobs in the beginning. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I’m a truly awful cook. I’ve started more fires in my kitchen than I care to count, but somehow, right out of college, I got a job cooking made to order lunches at this little pop up cafe inside a beauty salon in Beverly Hills. I’m pretty sure that I spent 90 % of my time trying not to cry in that tiny kitchen, and needless to say, I was fired within a week.
I still face the same daily struggles in my writing career that most actors face. Rejection is never fun. Last year I was up for my dream job writing a sex, love and dating column for a very popular magazine. They offered me a test week and I poured my heart and soul into a bunch of different articles for them, but in the end, they gave the job to someone else. I was devastated, of course, and I may have stayed in bed pouting in a pair of oversized sweatpants for the better part of a week. But that’s just part of the business. You are going to hear no way more than you will ever hear yes, so I’ve learned to just keep at it one small goal at a time.
Like most artists, I struggle with feeling like my career constantly needs to be moving forward at lightning speed. But that’s just not always realistic. Sometimes you’re going be stuck. I know I have been, and when that happens, I have to remind myself that it’s not a race. There isn’t going to be some magic finish line moment where I suddenly feel like I have made it as a writer. An artist’s career is ever-evolving and you have to look back on all that you have accomplished and trust that there will be more great things to come.
We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
My specialty is comedy. Whether it’s a comedic play or a lighthearted entertainment news article, I want people to enjoy themselves when they read my work. I think what sets me apart from other writers is the fact that I’m severely A.D.D. If you’re reading something and you start to lose interest in the material, I can promise you that I zoned out 10 minutes before you did. So I always try to gear my work towards the A.D.D. child that lives inside us all by keeping it fast-paced and ever-changing.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
Every few months, I get a letter from one of my publishers letting me know that a theater company or a college somewhere in the world is doing one of my plays, and it always makes me really happy. Writing is strange because you spend endless hours working on something, obsessing over every word on the page. Then once it’s published, it’s over, and you’re on to the next project.
Here I am in LA going on about my daily routine…. working, working out, going to the store, hanging out with friends and after a while, I usually forget that my work is out there. Until one of those letters reminds me that somewhere, in a completely different state, there is a group of people whose day is revolving around my writing. Learning the lines that I wrote, having in-depth conversations about the characters that I created while they are rehearsing one of my plays and something that is no longer a part of my daily life anymore, for a brief period of time, becomes a big part of someone else’s day that I don’t even know. That always surprises me and makes me feel like it was all worth it.
The same thing happens with my monologues. I get a lot of emails from high school students, who are using my monologues to audition for college theatre programs and have questions about the characters in one of my performance pieces. I always think, how cool is it that something that I wrote is being used in an audition that will determine the future path of another person’s education. It’s amazing to be a part of something like that cause in the end, that’s what it’s all about really.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.maceebinns.com
- Phone: 501-231-9622
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: @maceebinns
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/macee.binns
- Other: https://maceebinns.journoportfolio.com/
Thoughts From A Tiny Ass Chair Blog
Image Credit:
All Headshots, David Muller
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