Meet Fletcher Michael | Writer & Actor

We had the good fortune of connecting with Fletcher Michael and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Fletcher, why did you pursue a creative career?
I’m not sure that a creative career is something one chooses to pursue, per se. For me, it’s always felt like more of a compulsion than a choice. It’s being so obsessed with the honing of a creative skill — acting, writing, claymation, banjo-playing, what have you — to the point that you’re willing to make sacrifices in order to create opportunities for something you’re passionate about. If acting were a career you could simply apply for on Ziprecruiter, then New York and Los Angeles would experience a serious drought of attractive waiters. I’ve often wished that my passion for writing and acting could instead have been an equal passion for hedge fund management or venture capitalism or some other practical, lucrative career. But alas.

Ego has a lot to do with it, too, I think. To pursue a creative career in earnest requires, in my own experience, a strong conviction that it should be your face — my face! — up on that screen, speaking those lines, or that my thoughts are so profound and captivating that everyone ought to read a whole novel’s-worth of them. Without a healthy ego to buttress my own pursuits in writing and acting, I think I would have succumbed to the daily rejection from casting directors and publishers awhile ago.

It’s hard to pinpoint an exact moment or a singular author, but I think I’d have to credit JD Salinger for inspiring me to pursue writing. I grew up in a bookish household — both my parents are English teachers — but Catcher in the Rye was the first time that capital “L” literature ever felt accessible to me. It would be a long time before I realized that penning lines that read so casual and off-the-cuff, so distinctive to a narrator like Holden Caulfield, so humorous and melancholy and true at the same time, is just about the hardest thing for a writer to achieve. There were others — Whitman, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Edith Wharton, Jay McInerney, David Foster Wallace, Zadie Smith, Jhumpa Lahiri, Stephanie Danler — that fostered in me an admiration for great writing. But Salinger’s turns of phrase were so beguiling that they made me want to be a writer. They still make me want to be a writer.

The inspiration for my acting career is (I hope) far less pretentious. I moved to New York to seriously pursue writing because sometimes my motives are cliche. I was writing a play when a friend of a friend recommended I take an acting class so as to meet people who might be willing to perform for credit, cheap wine, and cold pizza in lieu of actual money. I registered for a class at The Barrow Group. It didn’t take long before I was hooked.

Of course, if I’m being completely honest, I think a small part of me has always wanted to be an actor — ever since watching blooper reels of The Office. Something about watching John Krasinski bust out laughing in the middle of a take has stuck with me. Maybe it was just my disbelief that something that looked like so much fun could somehow also be considered a career.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
If there is something that distinguishes my writing, my hope is that it might be that my novels are intriguing and accessible to people who do not consider themselves readers. It’s no secret that the market for literary fiction has dwindled over the past several decades, the result being that publishers cater to audiences that already exist rather than trying to convert the massive swathes of the population who would rather scroll Instagram or listen to Barstool Sports podcasts on a rainy day than pick up a novel.

My most recent novel, Glass Bottle Season, was published in June of this year, and the most gratifying response, for me, has been those texts, calls, emails and chats with people who tell me that they haven’t read a novel in years — not since high school or college, in many cases — but that they really enjoyed the novel, or that they really connected with this or that character, this or that scene. Given my age (I’ll turn 29 in August), it’s probably unsurprising that my novels, short stories, and plays often turn out to be ‘coming of age’ stories of some kind or another. I’m hoping to publish my third novel in 2024 (this one is about a deluded playwright living in Manhattan…write what you know, as they say…), and this one, too, speaks to the tribulations of being in one’s twenties. I would be thrilled if readers found in it something different, something truer to their own experiences — diverse as those experiences might be — than what is often promoted by risk-averse, mainstream publishers.

In so far as I have had success as a writer — or as an actor, for that matter — it is due to persistence. My work has been rejected by, at this point, hundreds of publishers, agents, casting directors, what have you. When pursuing a creative career, there are very few things over which the professed creative person has control. For me, those things were writing, editing, and submitting. So I wrote, edited, and submitted. I have been dropped by publishers, re-cast in plays, cast in productions that never got off the ground, and endlessly rejected. All of it takes time, energy, and, often, money. And all of it often feels like it is for nought. On this path, self-doubt is a constant. Am I a writer, or just a guy with a rambling Google Doc and wine-stained teeth? Am I an actor, or just a guy who goes on a hell of a lot of auditions?

But then little things happen; little things that eventually feel like big things. In my own case, I was fortunate to get a few short stories published on exclusively-online literary magazines, and then a few satirical pieces published by online outlets with slightly weightier followings. A small press picked up my first novel, Vulture, which was a feather in my cap that I could point to when pitching my second novel. I accepted parts in numerous plays and short films for little more than credit and a copy of the footage for my reel until, finally, I was able to start booking paying gigs. But I don’t think those paying gigs would have come along had I not performed in all of those unpaid gigs. I don’t know that I would have published my first novel without the bona fides of having been published prior, however small the venues. It’s a game of aggregates, making minuscule tectonic shifts in hopes of, eventually, creating some kind of a wave.  

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I’ll dedicate this shoutout to my siblings, Drake and Sydell. There are few people in my life around whom I can feel totally, genuinely myself, and I feel beyond lucky to have a brother and sister who have appreciated — or, at least, tolerated — my sense of humor and imagination for all these years. That support is, for me, indispensable.

Website: https://byfletch.wordpress.com/