Why ‘My Own Muse’?

On how to make it as a screenwriter in LA.

As a kid of the ‘80s, TV was like my portal.

It took me to all kinds of places: Milwaukee in the ‘50s, a junkyard in Watts in the ‘70s, a literal Fantasy Island, and a Beverly Hills high school I desperately wanted to go to. Growing up, TV was my escape and my comfort.

Let me give you a little bit of context…

I was born in Camden, NJ (*cough* that’s the inner city for those unfamiliar), to parents who weren’t together. I had good relationships with both of them and saw them regularly, but they worked a lot and I was a classic latchkey kid… So when I wasn’t in school, I was watching television.

Even though there weren’t that many shows created by Black people, I still got to see aspects of my life reflected on screen on shows like What’s Happening!!, The Jeffersons, and Good Times. I even saw myself in relatively unexpected places like Dynasty and reruns of Star Trek.

Photo by Stefan Cosma on Unsplash

I was 10 when I blinked and suddenly I went from living in an all-Black city to being one of the only Black girls in class. We had moved to a more white, mixed, suburban neighborhood. I had a tough time adjusting, but luckily, some “friends” came with me – Mork was still there to make me laugh and even though I was a kid, I was welcome at the bar at Cheers. So I wasn’t truly alone on this strange new planet.

Having that outlet was healing for me, as it can be for a lot of kids who are feeling like an outsider.

As the years passed and I started getting more into cable TV, The Brat Pack took off and suddenly I had a bunch of teen friends in movies and on TV shows. While there were virtually no Black teen movies, I still felt the school angst and drama of Breakfast Club… The yearning for adventure of The Goonies… My relationship with my sister in Laverne & Shirley… The feeling of being from the wrong side of the tracks in Pretty in Pink even if, for me, it was a little different. (My Blane almost got kicked out of the house for wanting to take a Black girl to prom.)

I got to see life play out through all kinds of people in a million different ways through that beloved portal. I got to see Molly Ringwald feeling the same thing I was feeling. We were different but our stories were the same – I didn’t have to process scary emotions alone.

I found myself reflected on screen JUST enough to keep loving it… To want to be a part of that storytelling. Television started to feel like a part of who I was, and I wanted to be a part of it…

But as I grew up, I didn’t know how to do that. Plus, by the time I got to high school, I got a dose of “this is what you’re supposed to do with your life” from my parents, family… the world.

So I shut down my TV dream. What would it entail, anyway? I had too much stage fright to be an actress. I liked writing but… not books, not short stories, and “artsy careers don’t pay the bills!” Right?

And just like that, I didn’t make the connection to the possibility of writing for TV, nor did I know how to dream about it any further. So I carried on loving TV, secure in the fact that we could never really be together.

Except – Dingdingding! A workaround…

When my parents came home, all they wanted to watch was the news… and that’s when I saw her. A woman who was on TV that people didn’t call artsy or an actress. Lisa Thomas-Laury was a news anchor with a real job. She was Black; she even had my same name. I could do that.

From Lisa Thomas-Laury’s Facebook here

Broadcast news was like getting close to the storytelling that I loved while leaving out the untouchable fantasyland of Hollywood. My parents approved of journalism – they were even excited about this prospect. I mean, my dad hoped I would change to engineering, but journalism was at least something he understood and respected.

So, cut to my freshman year at Morgan State University (an HBCU in Baltimore) where I majored in communications. I was on the road to my TV dreams coming true until... I was bored out of my mind. Damn it!

Well maybe that’s okay… my parents (and most adults I knew) didn’t love their jobs. I didn’t understand this to be a nudge towards my REAL dream. So instead I carried on, enjoying the other community aspects of college.

You know what? I’ll just get the degree and then figure the rest out later.

Dr. Sedlak

Then one day, like a sign sent from above, my English professor pulled me aside after a creative writing assignment. She asked me if I had ever considered writing for TV. 

[Okay, I guess it’s maybe not a sign from above so much as a teacher going above and beyond their job description – everybody’s got that “one.”]

I didn’t really have a clue as to what she was talking about– Laverne and Shirley were just hilarious ladies making things up as they went along, right?? Yeah I saw Garry Marshall’s name but I didn’t have any idea what he was actually doing...

I was completely confused by her question; she was so patient and kind. She explained that writing for television was in fact a job, and that she could teach me how to do it so I could move to Hollywood and be a writer.

This small, incidental conversation woke me up from my autopilot. I left Marty McFly fire tracks to the English department and signed up for as many of her writing classes as I could. Now, I was an English major with a concentration in screenwriting. And when I tell you this new major fit, I mean it FIT.

It felt quintessentially ME. It was like shedding old hand-me-down clothes and putting on the perfect tailor-made outfit. One that made me confident. Made me feel like I was finally showing up to the world as a more honest version of myself.

How I wish that had been my 180.

But this turning point of course was not a 180. It never is, is it?

It’s just a minor course correction. Because as I inched closer to graduation, and eventually left school in my rearview mirror, I didn’t follow this dream of writing for TV out in LA.

I mean, LA???

Where Rob Lowe lives?

The magical, mystical, untouchable wonderland out West?

I can’t make it there; I’m not good enough. Plus I don’t know anyone. And it’s just so far!

And so I moved to Washington D.C. instead. Unable to shake the long-ingrained belief that my dream was in fact of-the-pipe-variety, I went to work at an international news station that I had interned at my junior year.

And it was indeed a great job. I was an employee of the federal government and at 22 I had benefits and a 401(k) (which my parents were ecstatic about). There were great people there – including a small village of older Black women who scooped me up and took care of me. I don’t remember if I told them specifically about my dream, or if they got clued in from all the movie posters on my walls, but they definitely knew that I didn’t belong there and were suddenly on a mission to kick me out the door. These loving sisters and aunties pretty much erased my runway.

“Don’t get too comfy, baby,” they told me. “If you stay in this job, you’re gonna start putting down roots: you’ll fall in love, settle down, buy a house, and you’ll regret never trying to live your dream. We can’t let that happen.”

First my professor and now them? Was this a second sign from above? I didn’t know, but one thing I know for sure:

Wise, older women are my guardian angels.

But even with all of this support and belief that I had something special to offer, I couldn’t get past my fear. A career in Hollywood isn’t really possible; everyone and their mother are trying to “make it” and most of them don’t. What makes me so special? What gave me the right to think I could do what so many others couldn’t?

So I stayed at the station, even with those women asking me every so often what I was still doing there. Week after week. Year after year.

And still, more signs came…

• The ladies gave me the number of a fellow creative who had worked there and moved to Hollywood to live out his dream. “If he could do it, then so can you.”

• Then, my intern that summer was a UCLA student. What are the odds?

• And finally, get this, my job sent me to Los Angeles to cover the Democratic National Convention.

So bit by bit, the idea of moving to Los Angeles was demystified. I was there driving a car down Sunset Boulevard, riding along the PCH… I saw the Hollywood sign and movie studios. I was forced to dip a toe, and guess what?

LA wasn’t a wonderland, it was a town like any other town, see? Somehow I was ready to move to this place to find out if what I had was a pipe dream, or a realistic goal that I could actually make happen. In 2000, I sold all my stuff, bought a one-way ticket for me and my cat, and moved to LA.

And once I was there, the real challenge of becoming my own muse took shape.

I followed the signs. I was sitting in my studio apartment in Koreatown looking out the window (to a brick wall) and wondering, “Now what?”

What do I do? How do I get a writing job? How do I pay the bills until I get a writing job? What do I have to say? I heard that it was important for a writer to have a voice. Okay, sounds good… where do I get one of those? 

(And by the way, how does shooting work? What does production mean? WTF is a key grip?)

I had so much to learn about the business, about myself, about writing. It would be years before I understood how to go from a meaningful idea to making a show that could touch a viewer like I was touched all those years ago.

My 20-year-long journey from set PA to showrunner is a long one and one that’s still ongoing. And I’m surely going to tell you all about it in the hopes that you’ll find some useful information, inspiration, or that little thing that keeps you going when you’re ready to give up. If you don’t have a sweet older lady who wants to help nudge you toward your dreams, I’m hoping you’ll find her here.

I can’t give you fool-proof advice or the magic key to making it in Hollywood, but I can tell you what enabled me to take this journey in the first place (and the thing that still enables me today):

How to become your own muse, your own personal inspiration and guardian.

“I am my own muse.” - Frida Kahlo

In practice, here’s what that means: There’s always a piece of me in my work. If Frida Kahlo painted self-portraits for the canvas, then I write self-portraits for the screen. Everything, every story, every character, every pitch, starts with me and something I know to be true because I experienced it. And that is what I want to leave with you even if you don’t read or remember anything else.

Why?

The most important lesson I learned (and there were many… stay tuned) after moving to LA is that A LOT of people are trying to make it. The only way to stand out in your craft, to not be like everyone else, and to make a real impact on those first readers who scan your script amidst a stack of others, is to be unique in the only way YOU can be. 

By putting a piece of your own truth in the story.

All the stories I tell, pages I write, shows I produce, characters I create… They all come from some part of my personal, lived experience, or one that I know intimately from others.

With every new creation, no matter how fantastical or dramatized the container, I start with my own lived experience. I DON’T MEAN THAT LITERALLY – I don’t only write about brown girls who grew up in Camden and whose love of Whitley Gilbert led her to an HBCU. (A Different World is streaming on MAX, watch it!)

What I mean is this: Nothing is created in a vacuum, but rather from reality, for the sake of truthfully reflecting humanity at every turn.

That’s how you get to emotional truths – and truth is how you create something that universally resonates.

Now today, as an Emmy-award-winning and multi-nominated writer and showrunner (Ack! My PR advisor made me say it), My Own Muse exists for two reasons:

1. To help others continue seeing themselves reflected in meaningful stories, the way I could in unexpected places growing up. To keep writing and hopefully give others moments where they feel less alone.

2. To help others become their own muse and stay on the path toward their dreams, regardless of what they’re used to believing about the world and their talent.

Whether you’re a screenwriter or someone with a ‘pipe dream’ or simply an entertainment lover… I want to walk with you toward becoming a muse for yourself. That’s what will keep making this dream of mine come true – getting to create and witness (from you) humanity on screen. 

My Own Muse isn’t a How-To guide, or a step-by-step process to making dreams come true. It’s a collection of stories, advice, and a community focused on serving you in the ways you might need most: mentorship, inspiration, support, and the power to be YOUR own muse, even if you have nothing else. 

Becoming your own muse, telling emotional stories grounded in YOUR truth… that’s how we create things that last. Things that universally resonate.

That’s how we’ll keep capturing and reflecting the essence of humanity and making great stories. That’s how we’ll be able to see each other and not just what makes us different from one another.

It starts here. The path isn’t linear, and I don’t think you can copy-paste someone else’s path. But if you feel this calling, this tug in your bones for your craft, if you’d rather chase what you love than settle for something else, it’s never too late to start.

I can’t trudge the unworn path for you. But I (and this growing community) will be trudging on our own paths beside you, looking at the same horizon.