I did the math on a Sunday morning. And the more I thought about it, the more complicated that felt. Some pride, some disappointment, some confusion. Mostly just interested in wanting to think it through. Curious.

I paid $64k in tuition for NYU’s MFA program in dramatic writing (TV/film/theater). That doesn’t include what was covered by NYU scholarships, but does include student loans and money from my parents. Since 2020, I’ve made about $65k in writing as of last month.

Since 2020 (aka the year I graduated), I’ve had a document where I track “money I’ve made from writing since grad school.” In my lowest year since grad school, in 2025, I made $2400 from writing. In 2024, I made the most: $19,321.

One complication – most of the money I’ve made with writing is from Ghost Ship, the murder mystery party company I co-founded and run. In 2021, it took off because of the pandemic through our online parties. That died away and in the last few years we’ve started doing large scale, boutique parties. What I made from two events in 2024 is about what I made from 200 parties in 2021.

The thing about that is, I started Ghost Ship in 2016, two years before grad school. I probably (maybe) would have made that money regardless of whether I went to grad school.

The income I’ve made is strange: some royalties (from a short play I’ve published, and a play I’ve had produced a few times), acting coaching (which I guess I’m counting), research I did for a more established writer, writing tutoring/co-writing a short film with someone, script consultant work, some workshop stipends. Looking at those, the most I’ve made off a single gig (not counting Ghost Ship) is $2000.

Doing the math, I realized that NYU paid a ton of my tuition. I hadn’t remembered this. They paid 46% of my total tuition in merit scholarships, things I didn’t apply for that they just gave me unexpectedly each semester to make it easier (or, if you ask my parents, because they liked me and thought I was worthwhile). At the time, I remember being confused. Grateful, but confused. I found other students in my cohort weren’t getting this money, even ones who needed it more than I did.

Another complication (as always): privilege. How many of those writing gigs would I have been able to do if my financial situation was different? Since 2023, I haven’t needed to have a day job and from 2020-2023 I was only working part time. I paid for grad school through a mix of savings, student loans, and (in great part) help from my parents, and I was able to leave without any debt.

If I hadn’t had that cushion, I wouldn’t have been able to take on poorly paid work (which is what almost all writing gigs so far have been). What if the day-job I had in disaster response from 2016-2023 hadn’t let me be so flexible? They let me move between 12-40 hours a week depending on my phase of life, whether I was in grad school, needed more money, or wanted to work part time. When I needed to take a month off to be in DC for a production of a play of mine, they simply let me.

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I remember in grad school, my professor Sam Hunter spent one day in class breaking down the numbers. What he made where, how he paid for his life. (For those not in theatre, he’s a well-established playwright). I have no idea which notebook those numbers are scribbled in. I just remember the surprise I felt, that it wasn’t where I wanted those numbers to come from. If I remember right, I think he got a lot of money from grants and fellowships and very little from royalties. Surprisingly, teaching wasn’t paying his bills – or even making a dent.

It was one of those rare times where someone actually talked specifically about money in theatre (or film/tv/novels). It’s common knowledge that most established playwrights either come from money or have a wealthy spouse. I recently found out (and this is total hearsay) that Lauren Gunderson, queen of the making-all-her-money-from-plays playwright, has an extremely wealthy husband (like yacht-level). That was disappointing. And unsurprising.

Another complication: I doubt very many members of my NYU cohort could say the same; I doubt most of them have made more money from writing than what they spent on NYU’s tuition. Of the 23 others in my cohort, I can think of maybe 2-5. And that’s being generous about what my “from writing” category means. It includes writers assistant jobs, being a producer in a production company, etc. Writing-related counts here. Whether it should or not.

I’m not really sure how to end this or what I’m trying to say (a theme of my substack maybe). I just find it interesting (and kind of depressing and confusing). I’ve gotten a lot of worth from NYU besides money. I wouldn’t have had my 3 productions of Our Black Death or an agent or Little One without it. Not to mention the grad cohort friends I’m in touch with on a weekly or monthly basis still. I don’t write in order to make money, as much as I’d like to make money from writing. I’m a long way off from it paying my bills. And that’s a bit depressing as I near my 35th birthday after having made my life and career out of this.

But also…I’m really fucking proud of myself. I could have never made that money back. My one and a half-page document listing how I’ve made this writing money is a shell of what those moments really were. My first time published in a book. My second time published in a book. My first time as a professional playwright. The recognition from people who didn’t know me who liked and valued my work enough to pay me for it. A record of the fluctuation of my career each year, the precariousness of it all. A commitment to myself back in 2020 to track this, not with any intention to compare it to my NYU tuition expenses, but out of curiosity, to see how it changed and how I changed. To see what came of it all.

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P.S. I’m curious if this was interesting. It feels like what people don’t usually talk about (in the writing world) and especially not in a granular way. So, in the interest of totally airing my laundry for the world, here’s a google doc with the list of how I’ve made my writing since grad school…happy snooping.

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Age: 34

Listening: The Winner Is

As I began to think about doing a substack in earnest, I kept thinking about my old “notepads”. “It’s just like doing a notepad again,” I told myself. But this time in public - which is the antithesis of a notepad.

The term “notepads” has a very specific meaning to me. My notepads have been kind of a secret project, or non-project for a long time. When I was 13-25(ish), I would sometimes turn on a song on repeat, pull up a notepad doc (originally a “.txt” file and later a “.rtf” file), throw a title at the top (along with the date and my age at the time) and write.

Some examples:

“beauty”, written in 2007 at 15 to “Colorblind”

“Coexistence” written in 2015 (no song)

“death” in 2006

“dreams.perfection..” written in 2007 to “Come Down to Me” by Saving Jane

“survival” also written in 2007 also listening to “Colorblind”

They’re all very short. Usually a couple paragraphs, freewritten, stream-of consciousness. Me at various ages of growing up thinking about what it means to be me and be in this world. I wrote about 70 of these notepads during that time frame. Some are only a sentence long:

“a simple confusion” written on Aug 5, 2010 just says - “A simple confusion. Fuck off. Something to do with whispers and I hate yous and worries. I’ve lost sight of characters and ideas]. where are those old ideas?”

Or

“what matters” written Sept 13, 2009 reads only - “James saw a bit of my stomach/hip unclothed, and kissed it. Acknowledged and thanked it.”

And they are VERY angsty. So angsty. I’m a teenager though most of them and very young adult in the others. They were my unfiltered thoughts, never edited, and I prided myself on dicking around. And on lack of punctuation or grammar.

In “kissed the moon” (2009) half the notepad devolves into all caps: “I K I S S E D T H E M O O N L A S T N I G H T. S H E R E S T E D, P A L E, O N M Y F L O O R U N T I L I E N T E R E D. I S O U G H T S L E E P I N M Y”... I’ll spare you the rest.

Anyways, I wrote a bunch of these and eventually stopped. Found them again, forgot, found them another time. Then, in 2022 - at exactly age 30, I did something a little different. I started doing notepads again, but this time in response.

I went through the old notepads one by one, read through them, turned on the same song on repeat and responded. I wrote about what bothered me in the thinking of young-me, what I loved, and how I think about each notepad’s theme (death, beauty, love) now.

If it was a weird and abstract notepad, I wrote something weird and abstract in response. Sometimes I riffed on a phrase or a small idea from the original. Often I disliked my past self - especially because of how she loved and who: people I no longer loved or who had hurt me or who I wished I no longer loved. Or because she was so focused on being smart that she was stupid.

It took me about a year, but I finished the responses. I have 137 of these notepads now. The idea (I decided then, in 2023) would be to do this all again when I turn 40. Read through both notepads and then respond again.

But, I didn’t tell anyone. I think I maybe told 2-3 people this whole time that I write notepads or that I was doing the response. I’ve revealed more about this non-project in this email than I’ve probably ever shared with anyone. Sure, there are occasionally fantasies that after I write the responses in my 40s, I’ll turn it into a book. It’s hard to live in my brain without fantasizing regularly about publishing a book. But the point, while writing them, was to NOT share them and to feel like they weren’t “for anything.”

I think there are two kinds of writers. There are the writers who if you told them tomorrow that they’d never be “successful” (published, produced, whatever), they would stop writing. And there are those who would write anyways. Honestly, I think I’d feel some relief if I was told definitively I’d never succeed. I’d stop submitting, maybe stop talking about it as much, and it could be purely fun again. Fully mine again. The way playing the piano at midnight feels - not for anyone but yourself and something almost no one (oops, until now) knows I do.

I’m getting lost a bit in this substack. At the start, I put on a song on repeat, pulled up a .txt doc to write this in, recreated the feeling of informality that was crucial to writing a notepad. Curious to see what happened. I’ve meandered.

So I guess this is just an introduction. The plan for these substack is I’ll choose an idea, a topic, and think it through as I write. I’ll explore where I’m at now. Knowing it and I can change. They’ll be writing or craft related, usually. I have a list of ideas already. I’m going to aim for twice a month (around the 1st and the 15th). Some will be more focused or clean than others, some more train of thought.

I’m hoping they’ll stay earnest, maybe too earnest, and unpolished, the way my Notepads were. Different in that way than my other writing—my plays and the novel, where I edit and edit and edit. I’m hoping that they’ll emulate my notepads in their briefness (I’ll work on that) and as snapshots, moments in time, brief reflections and excavations of what I’m thinking about and what I’ve learned.

There’s something amazing to me to come back to a way of writing that I’ve been doing since I was 13 years old. Back when I was young and confused and angry and vulnerable and passionate and scared and just needed to hear myself think. And here I am still doing that all these years later. Imagining practice, practicing imagining. Practicing thinking.

Ok. Maybe next time will be less rambly. Maybe not.

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Welcome. There comes a time in every writers life where they have to decide if they’re going to start a substack. For me, that moment is now.

1. Musings

Here, I’ll explore what I’ve learned, what I’m wondering, what I’m trying, what isn’t working. I’ll share writing techniques, my process, and reflect on my career and where it’s going.

The name “Imagining Practice” is based on a pilot I wrote - a riff on the Eurydice tale except horror and set in a high school. I like to think of writing (and directing) as just an extension of playing make believe like I did as a kid. Except now I’ve built a practice around it.

2. Who am I?

I’m a writer-director based in NYC/Boston who’s spent over 15 years working in the arts. I medium-hop a lot and have worked in theatre, TV, film, and immersive theatre. I co-founded a murder mystery company called Ghost Ship. My award-winning plays have had professional productions and my short film, Little One, recently screened at over 15 festivals including Palm Springs ShortFest and RiverRun. I went to NYU for grad school. (End of bio.)

Who am I actually? I like to work on things that mess with genre – I love mysteries, horror, and fairy tales – but treated in a more genuine or elevated way. I write about power: who has it, what will they do to get it, how does it change them? But it’s usually balanced out with hope. I love magical realism and playing with language. I love poetry but am too afraid to write it.

3. Artists and non-artists welcome

I’m hoping this will give fellow artists and writers a place to think about their own craft and daily frustrations, while also giving non-creators a peek behind the curtain. All welcome here. Just know I’ll be vulnerable here, venting frustrations, revealing ambitions, and celebrating successes.

4. The plan

I plan to post twice a month, on the 1st and 15th of each month. For now, all posts will be available to everyone. As I keep going, I’d love to have subscriber only posts, maybe specific series that are only available to them. Or maybe offer bimonthly co-working times for anyone who wants to join me for some body-doubling. I’m curious what people are interested in.