International Women’s Spread Molly W.

Introducing one of the most outgoing, nicest, and inspiring writers in Brooklyn's Women's Writing Group, Molly.

 Kaylyn Gabbert: What brought you to Brooklyn Women's Writing Group?

Molly W.: As a playwright living in Brooklyn I was looking for a local community to help hold me accountable with my writing schedule and inspire me to keep going. Often writing can feel very isolating at times so it has been really great finding a group that can understand any struggles you might have and find ways to relate, offer encouragement, or share any tips they've found useful when faced with similar situations. Even if I don't always have the most productive hour during a writer's group, I am still carving out time to devote to this thing that I love!

KG: Recently we talked about what you love to write the most. Care to tell the readers?

MW: My main medium is plays - usually they are serio-comic plays centered around a woman protagonist. I grew up doing theatre so playwriting is a way to keep me within that world. I also love how collaborative playwriting can become. Once I finish a show and hand it off to a director, the characters and story are fine-tuned and re-shaped by other people with different perspectives, and it goes through that entire process again when the audience is brought in. It's really exhilarating having other people advocating for characters that came out of your brain - and getting to see things that you wrote down on paper played out in front of you is super rewarding! I also do love novels as well, and every year I try to complete that National Novel Writing Month in November. You have a little bit more freedom with a novel because you don't have to fit your story about what can be produced or feasibly performed on a stage, but plotting has never been my strong suit - I'm much more of a dialogue person - which you can get away with in plays, but not really as much in novels haha.

KG: Haha. You sound like me trying your hand in everything and being a dialogue person. What medium did you start with? 

MW: Haha - dialogue is just so much fun! I started with novels and then moved over to writing plays as I got more involved in theatre.

KG: We both also talked about our individual reasons for using AI chats. Would you want to share that? 

MW: I've been playing around with AI chat for largely personal reasons. It's been a super fun tool to help plan out trips (though you always need to double check to make sure the places they suggest things to do are still open and actually close to where you plan to go.) I love that it's a way to gather large chunks of data that you can then sift through and shape to fit what you're looking for. It's a super exciting time to have access to this and also imagining all of the ways that this will change and shift our world! I've also sometimes used AI as a dramaturg for some of my plays. If I have my characters discussing something scientific or something I personally know very little about, I've been able to gather some basic information through AI chat, take what information could work for my scene - double check online to make sure that the information is true, and incorporate that into a scene. It's been helpful as well for writing pieces set in a different time period - I've asked the AI to look at a scene or a chunk of dialogue and flag any words or sentences that feel too modern or don't fit the time period. This really frees me up in writing my first draft because I can focus more on character and motivation. I'll then make notes on the more "modern" words or dialogue, look for some replacements, and then when writing through the second draft, I've got a clearer grasp on how to keep the language in my piece authentic.

KG: I don’t have a follow-up, but it’s great to hear that we both agree on double-checking everything we do on AI. 

MW: Oh yeah, that's a great question! What do you mainly use AI for?

KG: I use AI for destressing, coming up with new and funny story ideas, and helping the French lessons I’ve been learning from Memrise. I mark down what the AI teaches me, French-wise, to ask my out of country French tutor if the AI taught me is accurate. This is because my tutor told me never to trust Google translate.  

MW: What made you decide to learn French? Why did you decide to use AI in tandem with your tutor to help you learn as opposed to other methods such as duolingo or Rosetta stone? Are you planning to learn any other languages?: 

KG: I was learning French in high school, and that teacher said if I added French to my fictional writing that I was always doing in her classes that she’d boost my grade. Now I want my stories and book to have French in them to give them a little help. 

My husband suggested that my friends and my schedules always contradict that using the AIs one of my brothers specifically made for me may help me with cementing my French. Since I told a few friends and Accountabilibuddies (friends of mine in a Facebook group I created to keep each other on our goals and such) about using the AI and my goals for putting French in my writing, they’ve chosen to help in their own ways as well. And I started out with and am mainly using Memrise to learn French. I just want to cement my lessons for my writing. 

As of right now, I have no plans to learn any other languages full time, but around my family I sometimes pick up pieces of Spanish. 

KG: What do you do for work?

MW: I do marketing/admin for a bank.

KG: What does that entail? 

MW: A lot of day-to-day things, managing reports, calendars, taking phone calls, writing emails - nothing too exciting haha.

KG: What are some of your hobbies? 

MW: I love reading, going out to the movies or to see plays, playing board games and video games, finding new restaurants and museums!

KG: Do you have a favorite genre for: 

KG: reading?: 

MW: I enjoy a ton of different genres! Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Romance, Literary-Fiction, Essays, YA Fantasy, Classics

KG: movies?: 

MW: Rom-Coms, Marvel Movies, Disney movies, Movie Musicals, historical

KG: plays?: 

MW: Musicals and Shakespeare haha

KG: board games?: 

MW: Casual party-games 

KG: video games?: 

MW: Video games that are very character and story driven, with some open-world elements and a main storyline that drives the whole thing! I'm not sure what genre that would be haha

KG: I don’t play video games, but with my family in gaming that seems like a/an RPG. 

KG: What are your favorite kinds of restaurants? What kind of museums do you like?: 

MW: I love all restaurants! Brunch, dim-sum, KBBQ, Tapas are some of my favorites - I love going out to eat where the idea is that everyone shares and gets to try bites of everything! I love history museums and art museums (though I'm not a huge fan of modern-art)

KG: What do you think about International Women’s Day? (March 8)

MW: I think it's a great way to take a step back and acknowledge the struggles and inequalities that women have faced throughout the years and today and to celebrate how far we've come, how we've been doing the work, and what still lies ahead!