I must respectfully disagree with Mr. Fitzgerald on the matter of second acts.

I was a late-life surprise to my parents and with older siblings off at college, I grew up an only child left to my own imagination. Raised on a steady diet of stern Catholicism, processed foods, syndicated television, and late-night classic movies, I was shaped into the curious, tormented—yet undeniably funny—man I am today.

Much to my parents’ dismay, storytelling was always in my blood. Left alone (often by choice, thanks to introversion and conflict avoidance), I staged elaborate variety shows and dramatic reenactments with action figures more suited to the masculine adventures suggested by their Saturday morning commercials. The worlds I created were far more compelling than the one I was born into.

That passion led me to Emerson College, where I earned a BS in Mass Communication with a screenwriting focus. I moved to Los Angeles, took a job in post-production, and wrote in the margins of my life—nights, weekends, whenever I could steal the time. A haunted house comedy landed me an agent, and my scripts—a mix of romantic and light comedies—made their way around Hollywood, unlocking doors and fueling the dream.

And like so many before me, that dream never amounted to a career.

That post production job was my first act. Stability! Responsibility! Financial security!

I kept writing off and on, but I wasn’t raised to believe in myself as a writer. My self-doubt stalled my output. The day job consumed me. Time slipped away. And then, inevitably, a midlife crisis arrived—not in the form of a sports car or a younger husband, but in the realization that I had unfinished business with my own creativity.

So I took a sabbatical. I wrote again. I had survived AIDS and addiction. I had loved and lost. I had done the hard work of becoming myself. And with that, my stories have taken on new life with characters and a point-of-view that are uniquely mine.

I’ve returned to post-production—first in London, now at Warner Brothers’ Water Tower Color (because, yes, the mortgage still needs to be paid)— but my heart and soul are firmly in my second act.

Whether on stage or on screen, I have more stories yet to tell. (Check them out at the Projects link above.)

I live in Los Angeles with my husband Matt and our sibling cats Lucy and Freddie Honeychurch.