PR Pro Writes Herself Into Screenwriting Career

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

What's up, Side Hustle School listeners, friends, community. Hope you're doing okay wherever you are in the world. We have reached the end of the month. For those listening in real time, it is the end of May, 2020, episode 1247. How will you remember this time?

How will you remember this season? When you look back later, what will you think of? And for me, you know, these days I am regrouping. I'm trying some more experiments. I'm doing my best to plan and think about bigger things instead of just grinding along.

Where do you want to be six months from now? Where do you want to be a year from now? I try to think about that stuff a lot because the decisions you make today will affect the options available to you in the future. That's just something I try to remind myself of, as I said, so I pass it on to you as well. Now in today's story, an only for fun romance novel leads to a multiple six figure side gig writing real life screenplays for this PR and marketing whiz.

This is another good reason to pursue that passion project. Once you go down the road of adventure, you don't always know where you'll end up. I always love hearing about people who start something just as an experiment and then, you know, it leads to something so much better. I've seen that happen in my life in lots of different ways. So perhaps there's something for you to take away as well.

PR Pro writes herself into screenwriting career. That story is coming up after this message from our sponsor. [Music]

When Melissa Casera was growing up, she had a dream of writing soap operas. But life took her in a bit of a different direction. She ended up working in marketing and PR.

For a time, she took her work on the road, spending three years traveling around the US in an RV with her husband and their three dogs. Eventually, they settled down in Napa, California. It's a beautiful area, but also a bit isolated. And Melissa suddenly had some free time. To entertain herself, she decided to start working on a romance novel, just for fun.

She never intended to share the book publicly. It was purely for amusement. She'd write chapters and send them along to a few friends. Things kept up like this until one day, while visiting LA for a work appointment, Melissa picked up a book called "The Coffee Break Screenwriter." The book teaches you to write a screenplay in little mini bursts of about 10 minutes a day. This got her thinking.

Could her private novel become a public TV show? Intrigued, Melissa bought the book and immediately went to work. A few months later, she had a draft of a pilot. She reached out to the author of the book and shared her writing. The author had worked as senior story analyst for DreamWorks and gave her glowing feedback.

She told Melissa her writing was just as good as some professional screenwriters she'd seen working in Hollywood for years. That's when Melissa started thinking, maybe this was something she could pursue seriously. She lined up coffee dates with showrunners, directors, producers, and other writers, anyone who was willing to share their time. A few of those people gave well-intentioned but discouraging advice, telling her not to bother trying to break into the screenwriting biz. It's nearly impossible to get noticed or be successful.

Others told her she'd need to gradually work her way up the ladder, but it would take years before anyone even looked at a script she'd written. Her head began to spin. Were they right? Was it just a pipe dream? For weeks, she felt pretty bummed out.

But Melissa had one more meeting with a guy she really respected, a longtime TV industry veteran. Melissa told him some of the advice she'd been given and he shook his head and told her to ignore all those people and just keep writing. "Write a script that's really good," he said, "because good work usually gets found." Melissa left that meeting ablaze with renewed excitement. She threw herself into screenwriting, working in the mornings, at night, on weekends. She even scheduled work-cations where she could write more.

She received tons of rejections, but there was also some interest. And within a year, she got offered her first paid writing gig, an original movie for the Lifetime Network. Just like her mentor promised, good work got found. Things happened quickly from there. One of her mentors introduced Melissa to a literary agent and they started working together.

With his help, she sold an original TV series called "Addicted," loosely based on her own dark experiences with pharmaceuticals. Her first movie, "Girl Followed," premiered in April 2017 on Lifetime. She almost cried when she saw her name on screen for the first time. Since then, she's had four additional screenplays produced. And while the specific payments of a screenwriting contract are confidential, we can safely say that she's now bringing in six figures a year.

Things have shifted with her marketing work, too. She now teaches companies and entrepreneurs how to incorporate screenwriting techniques into their messaging and content, with her business model now at 70% screenwriting and 30% consulting and training. The best part of the experience is knowing that she saw it through, even though she was told for a long time that she wasn't good enough or that she had to follow certain rules to make it. Moving forward, she'd love to fund and produce an original web series, film, or maybe even a documentary. Her advice is to keep your eyes on your own paper.

Good work often gets found, so keep working away. [Music]

Awesome, congratulations to Melissa. She sounds to me like a hustler in true form, which is somebody who is not afraid to commit to working hard, yet also not afraid or unwilling to talk about it, to pitch it. It's this two-part process. You know, if you're all talk and no work, then that's a charlatan, basically.

But if you just keep working away, like nose to the grindstone without promoting the work, then you're anonymous and you're unseen. I think a lot of our listeners are not charlatans. They're much more likely to be that second category. They're working hard, but they're a little bit unwilling to talk about it, unwilling to knock on those doors, to follow up with the author of the screenwriting book, and to write to other writers, showrunners, et cetera. So it just takes some balance, right?

It just takes some balance of hard work and being willing to talk about it, knock on those doors, et cetera. I want to give a shout out to my friends, Liz Kraft and Sarah Fain, who produced the podcast "Happier in Hollywood." I was just thinking about them as I was working on this. They have been good friends and writing partners for, I think, close to two decades, if it's not two decades already. And they produced this wonderful show, which you may have heard already. But in case you have not, check it out.

Again, it's called "Happier in Hollywood," all kinds of fun stories, as well as tips and such. You can listen to that wherever you listen to podcasts, just like "Sidle School." All right, listeners, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. Today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/12471247. Thank you so much. Be sure you're subscribed.

Much more is coming up. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Sidle School." [Music]

- From the "Onward Project."