On Writing Your Trauma & Healing, With Laura Chinn, Author of "Acne" and Creator of PopTV's "Florida Girls"
An interview with TV writer, director, and author Laura Chinn on her creative process, writing as a tool for healing, directing her first feature film, and how spirituality changed her life.
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If you wanna cut straight to the good stuff, my introduction is 3:50 minutes.
In November, I recommended the book Acne, a moving and hilarious memoir, and today I’m so excited to share an interview with its author, Laura Chinn.
Laura is an incredible writer who created the PopTV show “Florida Girls,” and most recently directed her first feature film for Hulu, starring Laura Linney, Woody Harrelson, and Nico Parker (who I loved in The Last of Us pilot!) Last but not least, she published her book Acne, this summer, which is how I discovered her work. Laura has a consistent spiritual practice, which includes two hours of meditation a day, to keep her grounded through it all.
In her debut memoir Acne, which Tina Fey called “funny and heartbreakingly honest,” Laura explores her childhood traumas, including neglectful parents, the sudden sickness, disability, and ultimate death of her brother, suicidal ideation, and confronting various forms of racism and isolation as a biracial girl growing up in Florida. Of course, none of these compare to her real struggle: Severe cystic acne. The best part of her memoir is that it delves into very dark topics while remaining laugh-out-loud funny throughout.
In Acne, Laura also writes about her incredible healing process, which has included deep explorations of spirituality, meditation, Yoga, retreats, talk therapy, EMDR, acupuncture, seeking spiritual healers, and ultimately, forgiveness.
In our conversation, we discuss everything from Laura’s creative process to her healing and spiritual practice, writing personal stories, teaching yourself to direct, and so much more. It’s a very conversational, fun listen, and I think you’ll learn a lot, too! You can listen to it in this post above, or download the podcast episode here to listen later.
Here are a few moments of the conversation I loved (edited lightly to make sense on the page) —
You’ve accomplished 3 pipe dreams for many people: You’ve created and starred in your own TV show, you published a book, and you just wrote and directed your first feature film. … What advice would you give to people trying to achieve one of these three big career goals you’ve achieved?
I always go back to figure out your mental state. For me, I don’t think I would’ve been allowed to be in leadership positions until I changed the way I spoke and saw myself. I would’ve been meekly making self-deprecating suicide jokes. I think the domino for me was figuring out why I hated myself, why I believed I didn’t deserve it, why I thought men deserved it more, and why can’t I speak in a loud voice like a dude can. All those things. Figuring out where those wounds came from and healing those, and then I started behaving differently, and then suddenly the whole world was like, you should be in charge! It was massive.
Before I might’ve said, read this screenwriting book, take this class, hang out at this bar to meet the right agent — I think for me it was very much inner work, changing the inner story, and then the whole universe started to view me differently. It was magical.
I think there’s so much more longevity and freedom in figuring out your mental state BEFORE achieving your dreams. When I got staffed on The Morning Show, I sorta felt like — Woo! I’ll never have problems again! Then, eventually, I started realizing, oh okay, this is an amazing job, but it hasn’t fixed anything internal in my life. And then during season two, I literally became a Yoga teacher.
That’s amazing! Yes. You know, Jim Carrey said “I don’t wish achieving your dreams on anyone” but I don’t see it that way. I wish achieving your dreams on everyone, because then you quickly realize, oh that’s not it! It’s not it! No matter what — Academy Award, marrying that one person, it doesn’t matter — it’s not it. And you won’t know that until you get some version of it. Florida Girls was a low-budget comedy that very few people discovered, but it was still my dream. I had wanted to perform in something, I want to show-run. So it was enough of my dream that I realized when making it, “oh, this isn’t it. I still have gaping holes inside of me.” And I wouldn’t have been able to know that if I didn’t get to achieve some of my dreams.
What drove you to believe in yourself enough to accomplish all your work?
I never felt like I had a choice with my career. I had to do it because I needed to find out that it wasn’t the answer — that my parents seeing me succeed in something wouldn’t heal me — but I was going to push myself until I did.
I think as artists we’re afraid to heal because part of us is only pursuing fame because we need our dad to love us, and we know that, so we’re like, if I don’t need my dad to love me than I won’t need to do this work. If I don’t have my demons anymore, why wouldn’t I just pick a job that’s so much less painful? Why wouldn’t I go be a teacher?
But I think ultimately through the healing, you find the love for it. You find a genuine love for storytelling. So the darkness pushed me, and so did my pure love for the activity.
Listen in this post, or download below to listen later:
Listen to previous episodes:
Reminders:
Join the community in doing The Artist’s Way, starting February 5th.
Join me for a week of writing & Yoga in Greece.
Typos are always totally intentional, of course.
Really loved this conversation! Definitely going to check out her book. Thanks for sharing.