“I wrote my way out”

In 2012 I wrote a script. It had three teenagers at the heart of it. They looked kinda like that picture above.

I then submitted it to various script competitions where I got deducted massive amounts of points because I didn’t have a cis white male lead. They hid their deductions in these areas calling them things like “Castability” & “Commercial Appeal”. I was told over and over that no one would watch the 2nd episode of a tv show with a queer girl discovering her super powers. That even though our world has told and re-told Superman, Spiderman, Batman, etc. No one was interested in a super-not-a-man, especially a queer one. They told me to re-write my story and base it around her father, a 40 year old white male with combat history working for the FBI and quietly looking for his wife that disappeared. Now that’s a “castible” show with “commercial appeal” that’s never been done before! (that’s sarcasm)

It shook me, doors being slammed in my face, one after the other. And I quit. I tucked the story away. And did what female writers were "supposed" to do. I wrote a Romantic Comedy that did very well at these same screenwriting contests.

Life happened, and I had to take all my energy and all my resources to create a stable financial world while I helped my partner and their son figure out major health issues.

It’s 2020 now. I watched “Hamilton” the moment it became available to anyone who can afford the Disney plus subscription. And these words keep replaying in my heart

“I wrote my way out”

Lin-Manuel Miranda - “Hurricane” from Hamilton

I haven’t gotten up and clapped at my television this hard since watching Brandi Carlile’s “The Joke” at the 2019 Grammy Awards!

(I digress! Back to "Hurricane") This song, this CONCEPT, that I can "write my way out" of this tiny box that is my life. It has lit a fire inside me that I thought was dead. It has refueled the writer inside me. That I can keep being a “step” mom, a caregiver, a provider AND I can find space in my life and my world again to write. And this time, all the things that I was getting penalized for in 2012 will actually be assets! There are actual screenwriting competitions looking for queer & BIPOC ensemble casts! (Creative Screenwriting Unique Voices Competition for starters, check it out at filmfreeway.com/CreativeScreenwriting) This world is finally ready to talk about gun control, high school shootings and how standing by and watching someone get bullied makes you complicit!

It is 2020 and the world is ready for more voices. It’s ready for more stories, more perspectives. Our hearts are opening and we are ready to step inside each other’s shoes and see! We can inspire each other.

We don’t have to have anything in common, we don’t have to check any of the same boxes, we just have to open our hearts and LISTEN.

Watch Lin-Manuel Miranda be inspired by the cis straight white founding father Alexander Hamilton. Watch Broadway be transformed and infused with Hip Hop!

Thank you Lin-Manuel Miranda for writing my 2020 Anthem. Thank you for not quitting when all those doors slammed in your face. I'm sure you had even more people tell you over and over why your show would never make it. I bet they all told you that no one would go to a Broadway Hip Hop show filled with a BIPOC cast. (My favorite is Christopher Jackson's George Washington) I’m sure you’ve had your haters Lin-Manuel, and I think you & Hamilton wrote your way out. You changed Broadway, you changed the world, and you changed me.

*This has got to be how dudes felt when they watched Rocky training montage listening to “Eye of the Tiger”