About

Tinker Lindsay

About

I’m a storyteller, a shape-shifter, a dowser. As an author and screenwriter, I search for the places that resonate, whatever the medium, whomever the creator. I write solo, and also collaborate on scripts, novels, personal essays, memoirs, business plans. Hell, I’ll edit fortune cookies, should that need ever arise. My goal as a writer is to tell the truth. My goal as consultant and conceptual editor is to help shape fellow writers’ ideas into persuasive prose without losing their vision or voice. I believe the collaborative process should be as enriching as the end product is satisfying. Skill and concentration are great, but humor’s what lightens the load in the wee hours.

  • "To be a warrior is to learn to be genuine in every moment of your life."

    - Chogyam Trungpa

  • "If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."

    –Henry David Thoreau

Confession

Truthfully? Decades ago, I had life mastered. I had a pedigree, an identity and a mantra. A long-term marriage to a successful, if challenging, actor meant family life was both traditional and adventuresome; I was wife, mother, business manager, and celebrity-by-association all rolled into one neat bundle. I even had a spiritual safety net–a meditation technique, initiated in college and religiously practiced ever since. If all else failed, I still had cosmic consciousness in the bag.

“Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now…” Yup, my journey forward was all mapped out. But I somehow missed a road sign, the one that warns MINEFIELDS AHEAD: PROCEED WITH CAUTION. Soon it was one darned explosion after another. Faced with the resultant wreckage, what’s a girl to do?

In my case, write. Write, and help others to write as well. Laugh, cry, hide, expose, drink, quit, run, collapse, dig, avoid, crash, salvage, but above all, write. Because writing has taught me that enlightenment is not necessarily found in the perfectly smooth, straight bits of any journey. True wisdom— not to mention true freedom, and true love—is much more likely to be hiding out in the rubble.

Cold, Hard Facts

Name

Tinker Lindsay. (Born Dorothy, nicknamed Tinker after Tinker-Bell when my mother saw Peter Pan on Broadway.)

Marital Status

Married to Cameron Keys, July 19th, 2014, after eleven short years together. (Previously married to Ned Beatty, 1979-1998)

Children

Had two, raised four. Besotted grandmother of Daisy, Addie, Jack, Gus, Iris, Maggie, and counting…

Education

  • Harvard University, B.A., English and American Language and Literature, Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa; Editor, Harvard Crimson; Graduate, Radcliffe Publishing Procedures Course.
  • Founder, The Oaks School (private elementary school established in Hollywood, 1986)
  • Meditation teacher

Representation

Organizations

MWA, WGAw, IWOSC, WIF