Maxie Dara is a writer and actor from Ontario, Canada. She has been a freelance journalist focusing on the local arts and culture scene for more than five years, with bylines in publications such as Hamilton Magazine and Beyond James, among others. She is also a two-time award-winning playwright, taking home the Best of Fringe award at the 2017 Hamilton Fringe Festival for the musical comedy This Is Not a Musical: The Musical!  and the 2020 Torpedo Prize for her play  Alone Together,  a pandemic drama. Maxie knew she wanted to be a writer at the age of seven, when she first fell in love with the written word. She also wanted to be a mermaid but has mostly focused on the writing side of things. 

“The world is changing,” I hear you say from the other side of this screen. “And change is scary, and industries are dying, and a lot of those industries involve people like me, people who want to tell stories. So what’s the point of it all?”

All excellent questions, I say to you, oh familiar stranger on the other side of this screen. The world is changing, and industries are dying, and my pants would be fully aflame if I said I wasn’t scared too. But as creative landscapes shift and society does…well…this, there will always be one constant. Because change has always been an inevitable factor of human existence, but so, my newfound pal, is storytelling.

From our hairy ancestors etching animals onto cave walls to journalists in bulletproof vests reporting live from the frontlines of war, we as a species have always told each other stories in one form or another. We crave stories. Stories are what connect us to each other; what help us understand ourselves. And if you feel pulled to tell them, your options to do so are unlimited.

“But where do I start?” I hear you ask, because it’s a very logical next question. Unfortunately for you, my tentative chum, my answer may not seem all that helpful at first.

Anywhere. You start anywhere.

“I thought we were friends!” I hear you cry, and you have every right to be annoyed, but hear me out.

I knew I wanted to tell stories when I was seven years old. My parents read to me from the time I was in the womb, and as soon as I had the capacity to think it, I knew I wanted to do that. I wanted to tiptoe into people’s imagination, paint it different colours and invite my coolest made-up friends to the party. I wanted to create whole worlds using only letters and thoughts. I wanted to write. And so I did.

As I got older, I realized there were other ways of scratching that storytelling itch. I discovered acting as a teenager and spent years in community theatre and studying film. Acting, I realized, is just writing with your face, body, and voice. Both require observation and reflection of the human condition. Both require nuance and experience and creativity. I could paint the walls of someone’s imagination by feeling instead of saying. I could invite different versions of myself to the party. And so I did.

Then I needed to make a living, properly, like a big girl. That’s not to say you can’t carve a career out of the arts: for the past few years I’ve done just that. But as a fledgling adult I knew I needed something built on a little more than imagination for my first while in the so-called real world. Still, the storyteller in me persisted. For a time I traded fiction for fact and pursued the world of journalism. And before you say it, this may seem like quite the jump from my previous endeavours, but what I learned in my time studying and working as a journalist is that it’s more related to creative writing than you might think. If they’re not siblings then they’re definitely cousins. The close kind, who choreographed dances to the Spice Girls together during holiday get-togethers growing up.

While you’re working from fact rather than imagination as a journalist, you’re still using the same skillset as any other form of storytelling. You’re still observing humanity and reflecting it back. You’re still telling tales that deserve to be told. You’re finding narrative arcs and building something cohesive.

My journalistic focus was, predictably, the local arts scene. I interviewed and wrote about artists across all disciplines, and what I learned from their stories only served to enhance my own storytelling abilities as a writer and actor. It’s cliche, but the truth is that everybody has a story, and the deeper I dove into the inner workings of strangers, the deeper my appreciation for telling those stories became. Though my journalism years are behind me for now, I credit them with helping me to grow in so many areas of my life, both creatively and personally.

“So you’re saying I should be a journalist?” I hear you ask, oh storyteller. To which I say, not really. You certainly could, and we could definitely use your voice in this scary, changing world, but there are really no shoulds here. What I am saying is that there are so many ways to tell the stories you want to tell: make films or documentaries, keep a diary, or yes, explore the lives of those around you through journalism. Industries may be taking technological hits just now, but there will always be a space, and a need, for storytelling. Just ask our hairy ancestors. If there’s one thing journalism taught me it’s that every single person has a story to tell, whether their own or one from their imagination, and there will be someone out there, or maybe many someones, who will benefit from hearing it. And that, my new best friend, is the point of it all.

A Grim Reaper’s Guide to Cheating Death by Maxie Dara

As an employee of S.C.Y.T.H.E., a company in charge of the nation’s grim reapers, Nora Bird knows that there are many ways to die. So when she comes across a file with her estranged twin brother’s name and cause of death, Nora races to his house. Together, they hit the road, narrowly dodging both death and S.C.Y.T.H.E., but a new cause of death appears after every narrow escape. Desperate to keep her brother alive, Nora must figure out how to outwit the killer before it’s too late.

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