To learn to ride a bicycle, as with the other great noble human inventions, is a hugely complex activity. Generally, it requires three things: the learner, the teacher and the bicycle, all in the same place at the same time, most often outside someplace.
My only qualifications to be an actor were that I'm daring, and I'm a quick learner. I've always learnt by watching what other people do. It's the same with my writing. I write what I know. Structurally, I write in a very undisciplined way.
I turned 65 last year, and each year I get more and more interested in human health. For most people it happens around age 50, but I've always been a slow learner. It's critical in terms of the cost of health care.
I reached a point where I'd watched enough directors do the job that I felt I understood it. And it's not that I'm a slow learner and it took me this long; I also was enjoying writing, and I still enjoy writing - I get tremendous satisfaction out of the writing end of it.
I wanted to write a book about what it's like to be 50 and trying to reinvent yourself - that struggle. There are all these books and inspirational speakers talking about being a lifelong learner, and it's so great to reinvent yourself, the brand of you. And I wanted to say, you know, it's not like that. It's actually really painful.
Inviting children as gospel learners to act and not merely be acted upon builds on reading and talking about the Book of Mormon and bearing testimony spontaneously in the home.
I am always telling students that a story is not just words. You can tell a story with dance or paint or music. Kids and adults are visual learners, auditory learners. There are those of us who need to touch it. Storytelling encompasses so much more than words on paper.