Tembi Locke (23:49)
What came first is acting. I mean, and it's my first love and it's the thing I did as a kid. And like I said in these after school programs and so when I left, so I studied art history in college, and I was writing, but I never thought I would do anything with art history. And I never thought I would be a writer in any way. I was like, I'm a performer. I want to be on stage. And so when I left college, soon thereafter, I had a small role in a soap opera in New York City. And that role got me an agent. And then, you know, I'm off to Hollywood. And so there I really began my career as what they call a journeyman actor. And for listeners who really don't know what that is, it's like, you know, an actor who, like, is not. You don't have, like. They're not famous, but they're like. You would show up. They work enough to, like, pay the rent, keep the lights on, you know, and they don't have to have a day, a second job, right? That was kind of what a journey meant, the height of a journeyman actor. And that's what I did for many, many, many years. And I loved, loved, loved it. And when I. And I married along during that time, and I write about that from scratch. Asado, my late husband, and, you know, he's Italian, and we're in LA and everything's going well. And then when he was diagnosed, suddenly my acting career changed because for anyone listening who has either had an illness in their life or has been a caregiver, you know, that you. Well, for me, I put that first. And showing up in that space was more valuable to me at that point in my life and in my marriage than like, I wanted to book every job in Hollywood, right? That was not the case. So I had to slow down. I had to slow down my career. And in that void, in that slowing down, I missed. I didn't know how to be creative. I was like, oh, what do I do if there's no director and no set and no scripts, no costume? What do I do with this energy that I have while I'm really home a lot? And that's when I started taking writing classes. And I took writing classes through UCLA Extension. I did them online. And when I could get to a class in person, I would take one in person. And again, I'm not thinking, I'm gonna be a writer one day. I literally was just trying to use writing as a way to. And my creativity to process a really large life experience. I was in my 30s, right, and I had an ill husband, and I thought, what do I do with this? And so that's really where writing began. And honestly, I kind of stayed in and out of classes and workshops for, like, almost a decade. I. Because I didn't have, like, big aspirations for it, and I was still acting. And it was after Sato passed and then some a year or so after that, that I really began to think, oh, my gosh, what have I been doing right, with all this writing? And is there something here? And it was really my sister who said, you have a story in you. Wow. You need to write it, and if you don't write it, I'm not gonna speak to you. Really, Attica, I get that she's my rider, and she sees something that I couldn't see and I wasn't. I don't think I had the bravery or the belief in myself. But the one thing about a loss that teaches many of us is that once you've had the hardest thing happened, you kind of. And I don't know if I can use, like, you know, curse words on the show. You kind of, like, you don't give fucks. Like, you're kind of like, the worst has happened. What's the worst that could happen if I endeavor to try this thing that I've never done before? And so that really is what put me on the path to writing my book from scratch was really my own internal compass telling me that if I didn't endeavor to do it, I would suffer an additional grief. I wanted to write this down. And then it was like, how do I use all of the knowledge that I have as an actor and all of my creative sensibilities and my understanding of the human condition, and how do you build character and, oh, what does scene look like? And how do I craft all these journals and all of these, like, writing prompts I've done in classes into a book? And that became From Scratch, and then.
