That was my first taste of Hollywood. Nobody pauses for your learning curve. You move fast, or you move out of the way. I was unpaid, over-caffeinated, and starry-eyed. I read TV Writing 101 books in the control room, secretly hoping someone would notice and strike up a conversation. One editor did—a horror buff who talked about scary movies every morning like clockwork. I pretended I was a horror buff too, watching whatever he mentioned just to have something to chat about. We became friends—still are! That friendship landed me my next job on a live-action WB event called Horror Made Here. My fake love of horror turned into a lesson I still stand by: the best connections aren’t transactional. They’re human.

After that, I went to ICM Partners. Pre-MeToo. Pre-HR that cared. The Wolf of Wall Street meets Entourage. The mailroom was toxic. Assistants were disposable. Agents strutted the halls, big dick swinging. During an active-shooter lockdown across the street, we were told to keep delivering mail. Police outside, sirens blaring, and I’m in the elevator with a cart full of screenplays. Another humbling moment from the bottom of the food chain.

Eventually, I worked for a TV Lit agent who was not only good at her job but also kind. She taught me the unspoken rules, the politics, the lay of the land. When ICM started gutting its staff during COVID, she vouched for me. That referral got me to HBO, where I became a COVID Coordinator. Not glamorous, but it kept my foot in the door.

From there came Insecure, then The Sex Lives of College Girls, and finally The Girls on the Bus. I was now a showrunner’s assistant—the top of the assistant food chain. I had an office, a couch, a parking spot, and my name in the credits.

Was I writing? Not officially. But I had a seat at the table—surrounded by Hollywood heavyweights, listening to stories break, watching writers spar, taking notes while studio heads spiraled. My job was to anticipate the showrunner’s needs before they were spoken and absorb her stress like a sponge.

The days were long, unpredictable, and sometimes thankless—but I didn’t care. I was drowning in emails, sure, but I felt alive. The kind of alive that makes you forget how tired you are. That’s what keeps people chasing Hollywood: the buzz of proximity, the thrill of standing close enough to the story to feel it.

Cut to:

The WGA Writers Strike—2023.

My momentum flatlined overnight. The industry was on pause, indefinitely. One week I was juggling production calls, and the next, I was walking a picket line surrounded by fellow writers. The same studios that had built entire empires on our ideas suddenly couldn’t remember what those ideas were worth (looking at you, David Zaslav). AI wasn’t just circling. It was coming for our jobs, our paychecks, and most of all, our relevance.

We’d spent years mastering story arcs and three-act structure, then learned the new skill set was branding. Craft gave way to metrics. We were told to grow followings, launch newsletters, and build “personal brands.” The job stopped being about telling a story and became about selling content.

Content meant threads on Twitter, TikTok day-in-the-life clips, IG carousels with tips, Substack think pieces, YouTube scene breakdowns, LinkedIn polish, Discord or Patreon to “nurture community.” What used to be private—process, failures, rewrites—became public currency. Every post was a pitch deck. Every script, a potential clip.

What we used to call art is now “content.” And that shift is everything.

Art is about expression. Content is about extraction, AKA how many views, how fast, how often. The algorithm rewards speed over substance, predictability over risk. Writers are now measured by impressions, not impact. Platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and even studio-backed streamers optimize for engagement, not emotion. And it shows.

The result is endless output. An influx of content no one has the time or patience to sort through. AI can mimic voice and tone; influencers can fake authenticity. Together, they’ve turned art into filler—something to occupy attention, not earn it.

But here’s the thing: human connection doesn’t go viral. It lingers. It resonates. It reminds you that someone else out there feels what you feel. That’s the part the algorithm still can’t fake.

Art has always been our proof of life—the human experience in motion. It’s how we process, connect, and remember. What we risk losing isn’t creativity; it’s the fire that fuels us. Authentic art keeps culture alive. It binds us through empathy instead of analytics.

If the new economy demands that we trade meaning for visibility, maybe rebellion is the refusal. Create for connection, not clout. Outwrite the machine by writing what it can’t replicate: the messy, inconvenient truth of being alive.

Because as long as there are stories worth telling, there will be people stubborn enough to tell them.

To all my writers out there, write on.