We recently connected with Rachel Forman and have shared our conversation below.

Rachel, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. One of our favorite things to brainstorm about with friends who’ve built something entrepreneurial is what they would do differently if they were to start over today. Surely, there are things you’ve learned that would allow you to do it over faster, more efficiently. We’d love to hear how you would go about setting things up if you were starting over today, knowing everything that you already know.

If I could slip a note to my younger self, it would say: Quit waiting for permission. Stay away from the “shoulds” and instead let your true interests and desires guide you. The shoulds will lead you down a lot of side quests. Create like you did as a kid. Make to make, without expectation or judgment. Trust your gut on who to collaborate with. And write what matters to YOU, not what you think the market wants. Projects take time to develop (I’m currently pitching a musical comedy movie that my writing partner and I started working on SEVEN YEARS AGO!) When a story comes from a true and meaningful place, it fuels you for the long haul.

Rachel, 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?

Hi! My name is Rachel Forman, I’m a writer and comedian born and raised in Silverlake, Los Angeles. I write for film, TV, animation, live comedy, podcasts and more! I also do script and joke punch-ups, as well as script supervising on set.

I thrive on creative collaboration and work with a slew of different writing partners. I co-wrote and will executive produce an upcoming musical comedy feature alongside comedy great Bill Burr and his company All Things Comedy. I co-wrote the short film BAD ASSISTANT, which stars Jason Schwartzman and has earned prizes at multiple festivals including Best Dark Comedy and Best Writing. I’m currently fundraising for a new short film THE HOLE–a comedy of errors about shared loneliness. I also recently released a zine about grief entitled MOM TREE. I rarely serve my comedy straight up; there’s always a little edge and a lotta heart.

I’ve performed standup, improv and sketch at The UCB Theater, The Comedy Store and The Improv amongst others. I’ve developed animated series for both adults and kids, and written on shows for Nickelodeon, Disney and Spinmaster.

I’m a feminist through and through. Whether it’s on the baseball diamond or in the writer’s room, I love taking up space in male-dominated arenas. Let’s work together!

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Art can be a really meaningful way to process pain and loss, but there are also pitfalls there. I learned a big lesson about that when my mom died a few years ago. I mainly work in film and TV, so my first instinct was to work this pain into a screenplay. I’d had this great film idea, I had the emotion behind it, I was eager to find some silver lining to this huge loss. But I’d launched into it all too fast. I was trying to roll my grief into a nice neat package before even fully experiencing it. And because of that, I kind of ran from this project. It became a major SHOULD. I SHOULD be working on that, I SHOULD be taking meetings about it, I SHOULD I SHOULD I SHOULD. But the truth of it was — I was in pain, and that pain was raw, and putting all this pressure on myself to turn it into something tangible and shareable and monetizable was not helping.

So I put the project on the back-burner for years. The pain got less raw, I made peace with a lot of things within myself, and I realized I don’t need to write a 115-page script about this. There’s a much smaller, simpler way for me to express my grief and love and lessons learned. So I made my first zine!

I love zines, but describing them to others is always a challenge because they can take on so many different forms. Basically, a zine is a little DIY publication that’s made with love and creativity, without all the fancy commercial stuff. But despite being a Zine Fest attendee and collecting them for years, I’d never actually made one myself!

That all changed a few months ago when I wandered into my local bookstore (shoutout Figueroa Bookshop!). I was chatting with the lovely store manager Mads, who recommended the zine workshop at Nova Community Arts (check them out, they’re awesome!). The workshop was great. It forced me to make a zine within a hard deadline – something us creative minds both DREAD and NEED. After that zine, I made more, and more, to the point that when I returned to this year’s Zine Fest, it was as a vendor!

In this process, I made my zine “MOM TREE,” which delves into the grief of losing my mother with a touch of dark humor. I’m so thankful for this project because it finally allowed me to express my emotions in a way that a film script could not. A few days ago, I popped back into the bookstore with some copies of “MOM TREE” to show Mads. It was a full-circle moment; in a way, she had jumpstarted this whole zine-making journey. What’s more, she wanted to stock the zine! So now, for the first time in my life, my writing can be purchased in a bookstore. My younger self is stoked about that. And honestly, my older self too.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

Fiscal sponsorships! I just found out about them this year while applying for grants for my upcoming short film. Basically a fiscal sponsorship allows you to fundraise for a project under the umbrella of an organization’s non-profit status. This means donations from crowdfunding become tax deductible, which is a win/win for everybody! We applied for ours through Film Independent, a media arts nonprofit who’s been great to work with. Check out our website to learn more about our short film THE HOLE and help us bring it to life! www.theholefilm.com

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @dearsandwich
• Twitter: @dearsandwich

Image Credits

Jesse Ozeri, All Things Comedy, Yesel Manrique