I feel with writing, so much of the time, I don't know how to tap in and be spontaneous and alive on a daily basis. So I don't write every day. I'm just not disciplined, and I can't be in the groove most of the time. I feel like I'm in the groove ten days a year or something. But with reading and research, I feel like I have this incredibly instinctive pleasure-driven process that ends up working out for me and inspiring me. It's almost like a maze, like I know eventually I'll hit the heart of my play if I read enough books.

Annie Baker

Categorized in : Book Writing Reading

For me, on every project, I realize that I've boxed myself into a corner, or that the play necessitates some sort of theatrical convention that I realize I hate while I'm making it. So then the next play is always a rebellion. Or like, the thing I didn't even realize I was doing last time I will make sure I don't do this time. But there's always some other blind spot. And then that blind spot inspires the play that comes after.

Annie Baker

blind-spots hate play

I feel like the reason I ended up becoming a playwright is because I never choose the right word. As a kid, my fantasy profession was to be a novelist. But the thing about writing prose - and maybe great prose writers don't feel this way - but I always felt it was about choosing words. I was always like, "I have to choose the perfect word." And then it would kill me, and I would choose the wrong word or I would choose too many perfect words - I wrote really purple prose.

Annie Baker

purple writing kids

I'm very interested in silence. And, more importantly, in what happens when people aren't talking on stage. I'm interested in letting actors play and do things between the lines. And in slowing everything down.

Annie Baker

play talking people

I was a very self-righteous 15-25 year old. Anyway, I wake up every morning and thank God I'm not a kid anymore.

Annie Baker

self morning kids

Being sad and going out on terrible dates and having horrible breakups and then having a shitty job and then quitting the shitty job and then wondering if you shouldn't have quit the shitty job and then getting a new shitty job that you get fired off of after six weeks, it's all so good for your writing.

Annie Baker

breakup writing jobs

For early plays of mine, I started with character. But I think that's because I hadn't been in theaters; I hadn't worked that much. I'm very interested in character, obviously, but once I started having my plays produced, I became so fascinated by the theatrical experiment and the weirdness of theatrical space, so now all my plays start with space and stage picture and setting - or container is maybe the better way to put it.

Annie Baker

play character thinking

I never had a lot of ideas. I always have exactly one that is the next project; the idea of a project beyond that project is ludicrous.

Annie Baker

projects next ideas

I ended up becoming a playwright because you can be grammatically incorrect: people speaking in bad poetry or people attempting to speak well and sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing. The whole imperfection of it suddenly felt freeing to me.

Annie Baker

imperfection succeed people

Yeah, I have the detail-obsessed, controlling personality of a novelist, but I somehow ended up writing plays.

Annie Baker

personality play writing

I think growing up in a small town, the kind of people I met in my small town, they still haunt me. I find myself writing about them over and over again.

Annie Baker

growing-up writing thinking

I was raised by a single psychologist mother and we spent every evening sitting at the kitchen table and dissecting our emotions and speculating about the inner life of everyone we knew.

Annie Baker

kitchen sitting mother

I'm terrible at speaking extemporaneously about my work - I get completely tongue-tied and consumed with fear.

Annie Baker

tied tongue terrible

If I think back to every rehearsal process for every play I've ever worked on, there's just so much crying at home. I barely sleep. There are moments of deep despair and anxiety, and then there are moments in rehearsal that are the most exhilarating; feeling seen and seeing everybody. Feeling like you have a purpose on the planet. A huge part of the process I enjoy is watching the actors figuring out what they can handle and what they can take and what they need from the director and me.

Annie Baker

home sleep thinking

I feel like my life is at its happiest when I don't have a looming deadline. There's some really groovy wonderful times, when I'm like, "I have a new piece, I'm excited about it, I'm reading all these books about it, but there's not a lot of time pressure, and I'm financially stable enough right now that I don't have to be trying to get another job." But that's so rare.

Annie Baker

reading jobs book

For me, being a good creative writing teacher is actually kind of being a good therapist. The line is very porous - you can also be a creepy guru/abusive therapist, too, so you have to be very careful. But it feels really important to me.

Annie Baker

creative writing teacher

If I were less lazy, when my play was published, I would go and rewrite everything for the reader. But I don't do that. What people are reading is just me trying to get the actors and directors to do something or think about something.

Annie Baker

reading play thinking

There are certain early plays of mine that I really don't like, but I can't imagine going back and fixing them. I would be totally incapable of it. I'm not in the head of the characters anymore.

Annie Baker

would-be play character

I don't enjoy hearing the sound of my voice. The most important things for me are impossible to articulate extemporaneously.

Annie Baker

hearing voice important

Film can express things that computers never will. Film is a series of photographs separated by split seconds of darkness. Film is light and shadow.

Annie Baker

shadow light darkness

If anything, I was the opposite of most college students who think they can do anything.

Annie Baker

college opposites thinking