Meet Joelle Sellner

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Joelle Sellner a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Joelle, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?

I had a very difficult childhood. I grew up poor with a single mom who died when I was 16. She was basically my only family, and within weeks of her death I was evicted from our apartment. With no guardian and nobody in my extended family that was interested in helping, I was homeless and desperately wanted to avoid being placed in foster care or a group home. I reached out to my friends for help, determined to take control of my life. I was working hard to get into a good college and nothing was going to derail me. With the help of a friend’s mom, who was a lawyer, I became an emancipated minor. I bounced from friend to friend and worked after school to pay for my expenses until I went away to college. No matter how many obstacles I’ve faced since then, I look back on this period of my life and realize that I’m able to overcome anything.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I started my career as an advertising copywriter, which is probably how I learned to enjoy working in multiple genres. During one week I could be writing a TV commercial for a car, a radio spot for a fast food restaurant, and a print ad for a hotel. I moved from New York to LA so I could become a TV writer. While I was working full-time at an ad agency, I took TV writing classes at night and eventually got my first paid writing assignment on a kids animated series. Once I began to get more paid writing work, I was able to quit my day job and branch out into comics and videogames. I also wrote a spec screenplay, which didn’t get produced (yet!), but it was responsible for starting my TV movie career. I currently have over 12 produced TV rom coms, including holiday movies. No matter what I’m writing, I love to research and learn about new subjects. I interviewed an ornithologist to learn about bird migration for a preschool series, and spoke to vineyard owners so I could authentically portray the wine business in Hallmark’s PARIS, WINE & ROMANCE. If I find a subject fascinating, my hope is that the audience will as well.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

1) Perseverance.
When I first started writing, there was so much rejection that it was tempting to give up. But I kept working on my craft, talking to experienced professionals, and building a network of contacts until I eventually had a win.
2) Reliability.
Once I started working, I learned the importance of being reliable. Having worked in advertising, I had plenty of experience meeting tight deadlines. We would sometimes pull all-nighters for an early morning pitch. I definitely remember sleeping on my office couch and showering at my agency’s gym before a presentation. The script is often the first part of the pipeline so artists, actors and directors can’t start their jobs until I finish mine. Showing up to meetings on time is also important, though LA traffic can make that a challenge.
3) Stepping outside of my comfort zone.
Sometimes that means writing something in an entirely new genre like horror. Or pretending I’m not an introvert, and talking to a stranger at a networking event. I was always terrified of public speaking so I tried my version of immersion therapy and volunteered to be on every panel I could. Now I can speak to a full room at Comic-Con and have a great time.

One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?

I’m always looking to collaborate with people. On the screenwriting and TV side, I’m looking for producers to work with, especially is they are looking for a writer to adapt IP. For comics and graphic novels, I often work with artists and editors to develop an idea.

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