Suki McMinn is the author of the novel The Screenwriter Next Door. Her other books include the memoir The Opposite of Famous, written as Susan McNabb.
Q: What inspired you to write The Screenwriter Next Door, and how did you create your character Sadie?
A: My own life inspired the story as well as the main character, Sadie. In 1984, I moved out to Los Angeles as a young woman to pursue a modeling career, and I fell in love with some very funny and talented men.
I stayed a whopping 27 years, finding success and my own happily ever after, but in the beginning, I did struggle in my career as well as my love life. I dated three standup comedians, including Jerry Seinfeld for eight years. My next-door neighbor really was a screenwriter, and the meet cute that opens the book actually happened.
In The Screenwriter Next Door, I just took my real story and embellished it to make it better and funnier. I write what I know.
Q: As someone who writes both fiction and nonfiction, do you have a preference?
A: I love both! Nonfiction is trickier because it needs to be the truth, and fiction is freeing because it doesn't need to be the truth. If you've read my memoir, The Opposite of Famous, you know where some of my fictional stories come from. And if you've read The Screenwriter Next Door, you have an idea what my real life was like.
Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?
A: I'm a pantser, which means I write "by the seat of my pants"—without a set-in-stone outline. But I do know where the story will end up, and I have important scenes in my mind. Beyond that, I let the characters have their way with me, and they're never wrong.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from the story?
A: I hope they leave with a happy sigh and the satisfying remnants of a good laugh. More than one, actually. It's a feel-good story, after all. They'll also get a peek behind the scenes of a Hollywood life.
I also hope it inspires them to be true to themselves, to follow their dreams, and to believe in themselves.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I'm working on another novel set in Hollywood but in the late ‘90s instead of the ‘80s.
By then, I was much wiser. I'm just kidding. I was still all over the place, trying to find my way in a Hollywood career and in love. It was a messy and wonderful life, and now it's so much fun putting pieces of it together with my imagination to create stories.
I was one of the first women in Hollywood to stop coloring my prematurely gray hair at the age of 38. I lost my agent and my boyfriend, but I found a new path to success that unexpectedly extended my career another decade or so.
In this new book, I use my experience in aging in a career that frowns on it, and I added a super dreamy commercial director for a love interest (yes, I worked in commercial production as a side gig). I even named him after a sexy male model friend (the one that got away, but I get to finally have him in this book—hehe). It's called The Silver Hair Affair.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: When I write nonfiction, I'm Susan McNabb, and when I write fiction, I'm Suki McMinn. You can follow me as either one (and I hope you do!).
At the moment I'm publishing two multi-chapter short stories that take place in the standup comedy world a year after The Screenwriter Next Door, giving side characters their own love stories.
Both were written for anthologies from The New Romance Cafe, and one is a reader magnet you can get for free when you subscribe to my newsletter. Just go to sukimcminn.com and look for the Free Book tab that leads you to download "Heartfelt."
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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