We recently connected with Larissa Zageris and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Larissa thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

I think there are enough keys to success to fill a grade-school janitor’s key ring. For me, a sense of playfulness is one of the biggest keys on that ring. Play is my skeleton key for success. Cultivating a sense of playfulness keeps me hopeful and imaginative enough to follow ideas, flexible when fixing problems, and makes me respectful of myself, my teammates, and the shared metaphorical sandbox we’re playing in. Playfulness also helps me keep my perspective in check so I don’t become a jealous harpy sucked into a tar pit of woulda-coulda-shouldas and despair.

I’m primarily a creative writer, which means I write a lot of pitches, projects, and scripts for myself and with others. Success as a writer can feel elusive, to put it mildly. For every major win there are at least three thousand losses. Goalposts and budgets shift constantly in games, comics, and filmmaking. It can be fun and rewarding work, but is often done under fun-sucking pressure while on an emotional and financial highwire. That wire all too often snaps, and so can the spirits of all those involved in the project. My spirit has definitely felt the effect of that snap too many times to count. But I think why I am still working in creative fields and achieving some of those major wins within them is because I can creatively play well with others, and on my own. I try to keep everything I work on in a safe, friendly, and productive zone of play. It’s the only way to make working on things worth it, and essential to finishing those things and getting them to audiences possible. I’ve been part of projects that fail because of murky vision or lack of funding, but relationships I made while working on them, forged in a sense of creative play and respect, have lasted beyond failed projects and into more traditionally successful ones.

One of my earliest successes also purely comes down to the power of play. Years ago, in the ancient days of tumblr, I started a blog called “Taylor Swift: Girl Detective.” I had realized I had stopped writing. I found I was using my phone to scroll gossip blogs and spy on friends’ wild successes, rather than create anything of my own. I longed for something to spur me to write at least a sentence every day, but didn’t get an inspiration until I was scrolling a gossip blog while at a gas station with my sister. I had just commented how the outfits Taylor Swift kept being photographed in during her first NYC days looked like teenage sleuth Nancy Drew’s clothes. I started this goofy blog where I wrote a sentence about Taylor Swift’s alternate life as a Nancy-Drew style detective every day or so, paired with one of the many paparazzi shots of the time. That goofy blog got me writing again, playing again, and eventually led to my would-be creative partner, Kitty Curran, to contribute some art to it, and inspire us both to make a book, called “Taylor Swift: Girl Detective – The Secrets of the Starbucks Lovers.” We Kickstarted the book, and the campaign went viral. Kitty and I ended up getting pitch meetings off of the success of the book, which helped lead us both to our own shared and separate creative work.

Larissa, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’ve been working as a creative since kindergarten. I’m now a writer, director, and filmmaker, which is the grown-up way of saying I love to write and make entertainment. I also teach others to do the same. I’m a multimodal genre writer. If it makes you laugh, cry, jump, or investigate, I like to write books and scripts full of flavor-blasted feelings suspenseful or silly sequences. Primarily, I write comedy, horror/thriller, and mystery stories about people of all ages coming of age. I like to focus on traditional story formats with nontraditional teams or characters leading the story. Think: popcorn entertainment with art house flair.

I’m the author of “My Lady’s Choosing: An Interactive Romance Novel,” “For Your Consideration: Keanu Reeves,” “Taylor Swift: Girl Detective,” and many comics, games, and scripts. Favorites include “The Wicked + The Divine: The Funnies,” and “Betty Boop and The Heroine of Hearts.” My short film “Not Bloody Mary” was a NYX Official Selection for their inaugural 13 Minutes of Horror Film Festival. It streamed on Shudder, and as part of India’s Wench Film Fest. My short story “Something in the Night” received an Honorable Mention in Killer Shorts Season 5, and my scripted adaptation is being produced by Good Pointe podcasts. When I’m not writing scripts, I’m writing articles, including an Oral History of the Chicago Rat Hole for Thrillist.com.

I work on my own and with a roster of fantastic partners that make me better for being part of their team. I come from Midlothian, IL, a small south suburb of Chicago. My involvement with the arts and arts education has taken me all over Chicago, Missouri, and my current home, of New York. Every single creative thing I do today is filtered through my obsession with movies, TV, and stories as a youth in the ‘90s. My obsession has yet to falter, and infuses my work with a sense of fun, adventure, thrills, chills, and romance. You know: big ‘90s movie energy.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I am a working-class creative. I’ve enjoyed tremendous support from family and friends while pursuing my career, and I’ve also had to pivot a lot to financially survive and thrive. There’s a lot to be said about staying on one particular course, but I’ve found all of the pivoting I’ve had to do ultimately makes me a better writer, director, and creative teammate. From working in logistics to Starbucks to interactive writing, everything has added to my own particular set of skills. However, one of my biggest positive life-changing and career-changing pivots was becoming an educator.

Early out of college, I started out in arts education to supplement my writing career. Education is now a major part of my ethos, life, and career. I’ve taught little kids through college students and adults, everything from writing to filmmaking and visual art. To me, education is a vocation as well as a way to supplement arts income and build community. Being a good teacher is much like being a good creative leader and team player: you have to be able to explain concepts and goals simply, provide examples, and let students show you what they can do, then help them where they need guidance. You also have to facilitate real conversation, discussion, and discovery.

I find being an educator a major ego check, as well as a creativity booster. Being an educator also gives me hope for the future because I’m directly interacting with the future. I empower them with tools and hope and anything they can learn from lessons I’ve already learned. In turn, my students, no matter what grade or age, energize me with their own curiosity, exploration, and creativity. I even made a short film with some former college students, and then saw those students partner up to make their own.

There’s a lot of doom and gloom in creative industries. There’s a lot of jealousy and bitterness over missed opportunities. Being an educator, especially in my primary field of script writing and creative writing, helps me give younger generations or those with less experience than me some footholds and hope, rather than yet another closed door.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

One of my greatest joys in this life is a reader or audience member saying something I made or helped make gave them joy. People have obsessively diagrammed “My Lady’s Choosing” to see if they made all the possible choices, people have commented on a zombie-themed fan music video I’ve made for the Tilly and the Wall song “Sing Songs Along” that they watch it every Halloween. Readers have said my work brightened up their bad days or distracted them in dark times. I write and make semi-thoughtful, popcorny entertainment. It means the world to me when anyone gets from my work what I get from watching a good movie or tv show, or reading a good book. That moment of translation, from me to whoever else, is magic to me. Shared experience across time and space, man. It’s the magic of art: that we can comfort a stranger, delight one, or pleasantly intrigue or scare one another in the name of making this life more enjoyable, bearable, and better all around.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.larissazageris.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/larissa_z/