At an Industry Interview by Writers Boot Camp Founder Jeffrey Gordon (JG) with Nancey Silvers, alumnus, writer, and producer of dozens of TV movies for Hallmark’s Chesapeake Shores series. Her best known projects include William and Kate and the Elizabeth Smart Story.

After her first script written through Writers Boot Camp sold multiple times in various versions, her career segue from actor to writer and producer led to continued success in all formats, expanding her range of performance to spontaneously wax poetically during pitch meetings, turning story set-ups into more complete frameworks for satisfying and inspired stories.  More recently, she just completed writing an Alzheimer’s love story, LOVE AGAIN, and is currently developing a television series about “sisters from different misters”.

Here’s a key exchange excerpted from the interview:

Writers Boot Camp cultivates a professional atmosphere where writers not only develop their work on the page, but their capacity to collaborate and communicate professionally about their work.  Once the industry is attracted to one’s writing samples and projects, a writer’s ability to pitch, discuss, and deliver in the room is almost as important as their ability to do so on the page.

JG: “The pitching business is an experienced writer’s game. Which doesn’t mean a newer writer doesn’t have to express themselves clearly when mentioning their project at a cocktail party and a producer asks, ‘What’s it about?’ And the writer will ideally ask, ‘Do you mean what it means or what happens?’ Because I wouldn’t want someone to pitch me the plot. So, you want to know the distinction, the clever approach, what it’s doing that we haven’t seen before.”

NS: “Learn to pitch. Our whole industry is based on fear. I learned early on if you have a high concept and can tell it in a room where everybody gets it, and it’s something you really know, only you can write this (and they’ll keep you on the project).”

JG: “Can you describe getting ready for a meeting on that level. Someone has responded to a conversation or there’s a current event you’re working on—”

NS: “I took the easy route. I wrote what I knew. Meaning I wrote what was in front of me. When something new happened, I would write about it. An actor has to wait for the phone to ring. We (writers) can write…I can track my entire life based on the movies I wrote.”

JG: “So, in a way you’re doing the work in advance, but you’re being open to the questions in the room.”

NS: “Everything I learned, I learned in (Writers) Boot Camp… One day, you may sell something or you may sell nothing. Fear and judgement will hit you every day. You have a good day. You have a bad day. But as a writer, you have to be writing. You have to be creative every single day. You have that one line you write over coffee and you think, ‘ I’m a writer.”