TIME: How do you know when you’re ready to write a memoir, I Was Better Last Night?
Fierstein: It’s very simple. This is good instruction for any of your readers: you arrange for a global pandemic. You clean your desk of all other garbage; then you look around the house for other things to do. I made five quilts. I walked the dog. And then the next thing—the only thing—I could possibly come up with, besides cleaning the refrigerator, which is nothing anybody ever wants to do, was to write my memoir.
It’s either that or cleaning out the basement.
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So I did get to that first. You know, I’ve never written any prose of that length. I’ve never written a book; I don’t know that I ever would have written one if we weren’t in lockdown. I can tell you it’s very different. But in the end, it’s been thrilling, really thrilling.
You’ve said that many of your plays’ characters have embodied parts of yourself. I’m curious how different it was when it was just you, and also the whole you.
As a dramatist, you try as hard as you can to leave yourself out of the equation and let the character speak. When you hear the author’s voice, you’re being cheated. So it’s very different to all of a sudden sit down and engage with that voice; I would say the experience was much more like having a really good conversation with a friend. I was trying very hard to have it feel like sitting with me; to make sure it was me you were hearing. The other thing I tried to do—and I hope I accomplished is—is that I tried not to judge myself. I’ve tried to leave that up to my audience.
Do you like to gossip?
Yes, but I do like to keep it just between me and my friends. Of course I do. You know, I’m in the theater! We do the same fucking shows eight times a week, we have nothing else to do. But there’s no real gossip in the book. There’s one story about an actress, for…
Source : time
