Wands Spotlight: Amos Mac

Meet my friend and brilliant writer/artist: Amos Mac. I met Amos when I hired him for the short lived second season writers room for Y: The Last Man. He immediately became a friend, and an important person in my life.

Amos writes for television, but he's also a visual artist, historian, photographer, editor, and independent publisher. He was a founding editor of Original Plumbing, the first U.S. magazine dedicated to the culture and community of trans men. Featuring Amos's photography and writing, Original Plumbing concluded its ten-year run with a book, Original Plumbing: The Best of Ten Years of Trans Male Culture, published by The Feminist Press.

His photography has been featured in galleries and magazines all over the world. He's cool, you guys, okay? Some of my friends are much cooler than I am, and that's just the way it goes sometimes.

Amos is also a great hang. That's a huge part of writer's room culture – who do you want to spend four to six hours a day with (if you're lucky) telling stories? Amos is thoughtful, collaborative, kind, and funny. These are the qualities I look for in writers. He's also a sharp, intelligent, strong writer who writes great dialogue. Those are also qualities I look for.

When you're done reading about his process, I must also recommend you read this beautiful interview Amos did with Elliot Page. You can find Amos on instagram as @amosmac. And, after that, follow him on TikTok where he is sifting through found photographs that depict queerness throughout history. This project is so fucking cool, I'm going to share the first video with you here:

How would you describe yourself? Do you use the word “artist”? Do you use another word? 

Artist, writer, and when I want to flaunt my super niche identity, “flaming trans human” works. I’m a screenwriter who was a magazine editor and publisher and photographer for over a decade. I’m also a huge collector and self-curator of queer history through “found” vernacular photographs and I’m working on a curated print project to share the collection.

How do you know when it’s time to move out of the envisioning/brainstorming/inspiration gathering process and get to work?

When I’m ready to walk away from an idea, I know my time to dive in has likely passed. If I’ve waited this long already to start powering through a new script, short story, photo project or whatever, there’s a good chance the project isn’t worth doing. I usually dive into something “full throated” (why is this term haunting/intriguing me so much this election cycle?) ASAP despite what the marketplace or the world is telling me.

Are you a planner/outliner? Is your process more intuitive? How did you discover a process that worked for you? And have you ever worked differently?

I have to outline scripts before I write them. If I don’t it’s like this level of chaos I’m uncomfortable with. I need my blueprint. I need to Mad Libs myself into a place of comfort before I fill in the blanks, and write and rewrite and all the good stuff. As a self-taught screenwriter, I discovered this process by perusing books and realizing I like formats. Give me structure or give me death.

If you’re working on a piece of art/writing, and you suddenly get a new idea, how do you deal with that interruption? And how do you determine whether that new idea belongs in this piece or a different one? If you’ve mapped out how something is supposed to be, do you ever divert from the plan?

The first step is to write it down on paper with a quick logline of whatever this new idea is. Step two is to desperately try to finish whatever I was working on before this started. The third step is to go onto tiktok and joy-scroll for a few minutes, or long enough that I forget about step two. Then I start the “new idea script” and get to act two before I remember I still haven’t finish the unfinished one. This is fun. 

What is your favorite part of the creative process and why?

This is more about creativity as a whole. I love how it feels like I can’t exist without it, that my life as an artist, a writer, a creator, was all I could see for myself even as a kid. I’ve lived as a freelancer and an artist for my entire life. Just another Sagittarius riding whatever creative wave is giving me that natural high, obsessing over what you want in your life until it happens. I love getting into the zone as I write new worlds, or discovering the history of old photos I find at an estate sale, and plotting out a collaborative fine art photo series – this is how I breathe. But it also causes a lot of stress and forces me to pivot quickly because some careers shift or don’t last. Sometimes your career disappears right when things start to get good. Then you just have to hope that your love of the craft will get you back to a place that invites you back in at a financially sustainable level.

How do you deal with burnout?

I’ve learned to take a break before I get to that spot. I remind myself (usually before going into a weekend) that the intense deadlines I set for myself are great and all, but if I’m feeling fried (I know it’s happening when I get a brain headache over one eye ball), I can give myself some grace. I am allowed to take a break. I am allowed to take a day. Two days even! Go outside, touch some grass, play pickleball, especially now that I live the life of an involuntary retiree since the WGA strike. This answer will be so different when I sell a project and have deadlines again placed by studios and other people. I actually can’t wait for that type of burnout again. Give me burnout, please! Wait, is this a pro-burnout answer?

What is the bravest thing you’ve ever done creatively?

When I launched Original Plumbing magazine, focusing on the culture and lives of trans guys. It was a creative force I’m proud of.  OP was launched back in 2009 before trans representation was a “thing,” meaning before people outside of the trans community were concerned about including us in their corporate inclusivity measures. At this time, trans people were still the butt of jokes on tv. The good ol’ days! In the first year of publication, on a normal day I could be found photographing a model, putting out a call out for pitches, editing articles, conducting interviews, teaching myself inDesign and working my way through layout out of an issue… even sourcing small businesses to buy ad space so we could pay the printers. And we launched it in an era when the media was obsessed with declaring “print is dead” – and maybe it was. But for ten years Original Plumbing existed as a print magazine for and by trans people, and it definitely changed my life and created community, and showed me how it was actually great to not overthink creativity. It taught me how to work fast, how to stand behind my aesthetic as a visual artist, and how it’s okay to take a break and not work myself to death. It also proved I couldn’t financially survive on a “labor of love” project, no matter how special it may feel.

What is your relationship to deadlines? Do you love them? Hate them? Why?

I like them because it makes me do the thing! Without a deadline I simply pile on more unfinished projects with notes from people who often do not share my creative vision or understand my POV. I try to set deadlines for myself but it isn’t always easy to hold myself accountable.

What is the best piece of creative advice you’ve ever gotten?

"Don't worry about the opinions of others if they don't pay your bills."

“What other people think about you is none of your business.” 

This is creative advice because it was been told to me when I’ve struggled with judgements from strangers who don’t even know me, and critiques on projects that sometimes didn’t even exist yet before critiques were fired off.