Marjorie is a California writer and UCLA Theater graduate whose career began in the heart of the film industry. She worked in film production and location casting on dozens of films, including Misery, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Hard Eight, and Showgirls. Transitioning from the studio to the classroom, she became a credentialed English teacher, serving secondary students in East Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley.

Seeking a creative outlet to balance the demands of lesson planning, Marjorie turned to fiction. She is the author of three novels: The Demon Rift, a horror story set on Christmas Eve 2004 where mallrats must defend the universe from a demonic invasion; Babylon Dreams, a science fiction exploration of a virtual reality "after-death" where buried memories dictate the truth; and its sequel, The Dark Side of Dreams, which sees that VR paradise transform into a hell-scape preying on the 23rd century. Her non-fiction work on the nature of dreams, including "To Sleep, Perchance to Dream" and "Why We Believe Dreams are so Real While We’re Dreaming," has been featured in HuffPost.

The Nuts and Chews of Freelancing

An opinion by Marjorie Kaye Noble

As a freelancer, a term most often associated with temporary jobs in the creative arts, I’ve encountered a Whitman’s Chocolate Sampler of commitments and as Mama Gump famously observed, “You never know what you’re going to git.” Along with the tasty nuts and chews, there have been raspberry creams.

I wish I could have thrown the squishy things away when no one was looking.

As a casting director, I worked on film projects. I found dancers for Showgirls. I bested New York and London casting directors when I discovered the nine-year-old Palestinian girl who rode The Young Black Stallion. The town folk for Misery were mine. I peopled a casino for Paul Thomas Anderson’s Hard Eight.

Each assignment brought a challenge and a new world to explore.

When I rounded up cowboys for Marlboro Man, I learned the difference between ranch hands and Pro-Rodeo cowboys. Auditioning snowboarders in Heavenly Valley, I learned the term “goofy foot.” I made friends in Reno’s small African American Community while casting a film with roles that were almost entirely African American. Johnny Depp’s movie Dead Man needed forty bearded miners. Yep, I found them.

Freelancing opened worlds, subcultures where I explored webs of relationships and learned who to go to for help, who was cool and what defined cool.

I won’t lie; there were raspberry squishes. When a blizzard hit Lake Tahoe, filling a showroom for Showgirls was a Herculean feat. All of this work was for a movie that won a record seven Golden Raspberry awards, including worst picture.

And then there’s substitute teaching.

After casting, I taught high school English. When not part of a faculty, I freelanced as a substitute. Along with the occasional undiscovered genius slouching in the back of the classroom, there were dozens of young minds plotting to ruin the lesson plan I was to follow. When I was a substitute, squishy creams were a daily event. Heading for the most convenient creative outlet, I started to write. After a long day, I would spend an hour touring a new reality. I called it my vacation.

Ultimately, my vacation became my vocation.

In everything I write, research is a necessary tool. Fortunately, I love to research, especially when it’s an interesting topic, like an article on lucid dreaming I wrote for the Huffington Post. When you write, you decide what happens. It’s the same when you lucid dream—but you’re not awake, you’re dreaming. Throughout history, different cultures have practiced it. There are lucid dreams in the Bible and the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Samuel Pepys recorded one in his diary.

I learned about online role-playing gamers for a short story. I can discuss mind-uploading, virtual reality, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in Victorian England, the “charity kids” of Cleveland, early twentieth-century orphanages, and the Chinese Exclusion Acts.

When working on film projects, character actors pride themselves on disappearing into their roles. The starring role is tailored to fit the star. All are freelancers moving from project to project, bringing a certain persona, qualities that filmgoers find compelling and relatable.

For a freelance writer, that same quality is a distinctive voice.

I might be that person, sitting next to you at a bar or on a plane. I may bore you with tons of nuggetry gleaned from the swirl of human history, unimportant factoids deemed irrelevant, but I disagree. Just ask me; or better, I’ll write you a description and tell you a story.