Smart Girls At The Party: The Writer

Amy Poehler: My name is Amy Poehler, welcome to another episode. As always our show celebrates extraordinary individuals who are changing the world by being themselves. With me today, is a writer, poet, playwright, collector and scooter enthusiast, Cameron King. Hello Cameron. Cameron King: Hello! Amy Poehler: Thank you for being here. Cameron King: It’s great to be here. Amy Poehler: Cameron, I like to ask every woman this question first, how old are you? Cameron King: I’m 10 years old. Amy Poehler: When was the first time you knew that you like writing? Cameron King: I can’t remember when I didn’t like writing. I just like to get my thoughts out and let people hear what I want to say. Amy Poehler: Cool and there’s all different kinds of writing right? What kinds of writing do you like? Cameron King: Well, I’m kind of into the paranormal kind of stuff like ghosts, mysteries and things like that. I also like to read books like that also. Amy Poehler: Wow, mysteries and ghost stories, scary stuff. With me today as always and my co-workers and best friends, Meredith Walker, Meredith Walker: Talk to me. Amy Poehler: And Amy Miles, our world famous musical director. Does that have a title Amy? Amy Miles: Nope. Amy Poehler: Tell me what you like about mysteries, reading them and writing them. Cameron King: Well I love trying to figure them out and I think it’s just really fun to surprise the reader and make the reader scared. Amy Poehler: You’re a writer, what is your process? Cameron King: Sometimes I’ll do like a rough draft then a final draft and I’ll take the dub and you know, do all these crazy things. If I have an idea in my head and I want to write a little five minutes story then I’ll just write it down on a piece of paper and it’ll take me five minutes. Amy Poehler: What do you do Cameron when you have writer’s block and what is writer’s block. Cameron King: You’re writing and you’re just stuck, you can’t think of anything else to write. When I do have writer’s block, I might take a break and try and get ideas when I’m not writing. Amy Poehler: So you wouldn’t do let’s say what I would do which was to be like turnover the table or make a hole on the law or something that -- Amy how do you deal with writer’s block when you’re writing a song? Amy Miles: There’s usually a lot of crying. Amy Poehler: Meredith? Meredith Walker: I just write through writer’s block. Amy Poehler: Wow. What do you do when you have producer’s block? Meredith Walker: I write through that. Amy Poehler: So you like to have a strategy before you write? Cameron King: Like I said before I like to think out my story before I even write anything down. I am a very descriptive writer so instead of just saying, “She walked through the mud”, I could say, “She walked the squishy mud and it gave her shivers of delight” or something. Amy Poehler: Wow, did you just make that up? Cameron King: Yes. Amy Poehler: Wow. Amy Miles: I just got inspired. Amy Poehler: Oh, here we go. Amy Miles: [Sings] Amy Poehler: Any other question for Cameron? Amy Miles: Well if you did write a novel, I’m assuming that it would be like a mystery and a story scary book, can you just off the top of your head, give us the title of your first novel. Cameron King: I don’t know, it’s a pressure, I mean, Amy Poehler: Pressure’s a good title. Cameron King: Okay then, Pressure. Amy Poehler: Pressure. Pressure by Cameron King. Amy Poehler: Okay, Meredith and I are here with Cameron and we are going to write a story together. So how are we going to do this? Meredith Walker: I think what we should do is have Cameron do the start, you write a little bit and then we’ll just pass it around and everybody adds a little and at the end Cameron can read the story. Amy Poehler: Cool. Cameron King: Once upon a time, there was a beautiful girl named Katrina. She was known all through her village as the girl who could talk to ghosts. Katrina talked to people no one else could see. Everyone in their village hated her. They always thought she was yelling at them when she was actually just yelling at all the bad spirits who were misbehaving. One day, a ghost was teasing old man Jones and making him sad. Katrina told the ghost to stop and the ghost stopped. Every one thanked Katrina. The End. Amy Poehler: Our last question and we saved always our most serious question for last. Which do you like better, summer or winter? Cameron King: Summer. Amy Miles: Summer. Meredith Walker: Summer. Amy Poehler: Summer. Thank you so much for coming Cameron. You were awesome. You are an amazing talent. Cameron King: Thank you for having me. Amy Poehler: You’re Welcome. Well, we’ll end this episode like we do every episode. One, two, three! All: Dance Party!