“Girl Talk” with Leslie Arfin
2010 interview with the insanely brilliant “Dear Diary” author and “Girls” staff writer.
Lesley Arfin wakes up at 7:30 in the morning to catch the train. She ties her brown hair back in a ponytail, wearing a spunky outfit that shows off her even spunkier tattoos. “I work all day, go home, maybe have dinner with a friend. It's pretty low key.” Maybe it’s just modesty, talking but as far as the Long Island native’s career goes, it has been anything but low key.
Since 2001, Lesley Arfin has been writing professionally, adding many endeavors under her belt. She graduated from Hampshire College and immediately started an internship at Vice magazine, where she then went on to write a number of articles, as well as her own column, "Dear Diary.” In 2007 her book, Dear Diary, based on the column, was published.
Arfin has been freelancing for a number of influential publications such as Jane, Nylon, America, Jezebel.com, Street Carnage, and Buzz Net- just to name a few. Lesley was also the former Editor-In-Chief of Missbehave magazine. She has even done commercial work for clients such as XBox, Burton, Sophomore, Kanon Vodka, and Nike. However, her current endeavor is the thing she said she’s been most excited to be part of.
Lesley is taking her charming and witty writing styles from pages to the television. She is now a staff writer for “Girls”, an HBO series created by Lena Dunham and produced by Judd Apatow. The show is about twenty-something year old girls living in New York City, and is expected to air sometime in the near future. “I have been working on doing this for a while. I wrote a TV show called ‘The Skinny’, and I also wrote a pilot. I’ve been messing around in the entertainment industry for a little while now.”
“Girls” stars Dunham as Hannah, an “eternal intern" at a publishing house in SoHo, Marnie (Allison Williams), an ambitious assistant at a PR firm and Jessa (Jemima Kirke), a spacey wannabe artist and teacher. With Arfin as a staff writer on board, the show is bound to be a big success.
Most would think having your own book published, writing for some of the most popular publications in the country, and working on a soon-to-be hit HBO series would be, practically, the height of one’s success, but Lesley says she still feels like she has a long way to go.
“I love writing for television and I would love to keep going with that. Selling a feature would be awesome, and making a feature or television show would be ‘awesomer’! I also love writing my advice column, Ask Barf on streetcarnage.com, and I'd love to get better at doing that. I hope to never stop wanting to write. Outside of writing I would love to have my own family one day.”
Arfin explains that she started reading at a very young age, and inherently knew that writing was what she wanted to do. She started with a diary at age 11 and says something about it just felt right, probably because she turned to a diary during a time of trauma.
The diary turned published book is a collection of her completely raw and uncensored entries from middle school all the way up to post-college, with a majority of entries having to do with her struggle with being an outcast and drug addiction. “The offer to publish a book when you are 27 years old is something you just can't turn down. Being real is just part of my writing style.”
She hopes the young readers of Dear Diary are able to laugh and feel more connected to other people- people they might not know but who went through the same things, adding, “Ideally, I hope it inspires them to keep on being true to themselves and keep on being awesome.”
When asked about her mental process when beginning on writing a new a new piece, Lesley explains, “I usually clean my entire house and in recent years, I take short notes on the thing I'm about to write. Just little examples and stuff like that. When I'm writing a script, I find it useful to outline, even if I don't always stick to the outline. Sometimes I do none of those things and just get into it, which is great, but I end up having to do more revisions. Both ways have worked for me.”
In an interview with coolforsomething.com, she said when it comes to the best lesson she has learn personally and professionally, staying true to herself often leads to the best possible results. She has also learned that when doing a job for someone else, it is most important to be of service to the job rather than herself.
For the aspiring writers everywhere, Lesley offers her advice “Keep writing and reading as much as you can and don't think "real writers" only work as writers, we do many other- boring- things to make money as well. There's nothing too glamorous about writing, don't be deceived.”