I’m Adrienne Arno. You can define me a lotta way— I’m the daughter of a hero-cop. I’m that neighborhood kid who befriended animals and always had her head in a book. I’m that weird but brilliant creative chick you went to high school with. I’m a criminal psychologist that spent my early twenties cutting my professional teeth on serial killers and rapists in New York’s largest maximum-security prison. I’m a woman whose been to dark places. I’m a heretic and a troublemaker and whistle blower and “one of those crazy creatives” who’s been privileged to be able to scream into the void for almost twenty years. I’m brave and raw and driven on by a force so much bigger than me that demands expression.

Very few of these definitions I chose for myself. But all of them are fair assessments.

But the definitions that I did choose, the ones that have empowered me, are the one’s I’m most proud to be called. I’m a seeker of new dreams. I’m a keeper of old nightmares. I’m a storyteller. And most of all I’m a best friend. Of all the stamps I have on my life-experience passport, these are the ones that fill me with purpose and give my life deep meaning.

Of course, none of those definitions paid my bills for a long time. If they did, I’d be the Beyonce of Boo’ya Moon by now.

Being a working writer did not come easy to me. I watch my best friend and writing partner Kal-El Bogdanove work next to me some days and marvel at how effortless he makes it look.

Story comes easy to that guy— just ask Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Blizzard, SONY and whoever’s running things over at Lucas Film these days.

My writing partner Kal-El Bogdanove

As I write this I’m remembering when I helped Kal-El scrape three-hundred dollars together from couch cushions and bottle redemptions and watched him turn that into the most successful online video Disney’s ever released (just google “Disney Pixar’s Dug In Real Life” – if you haven’t seen it, you’re in for a treat) then get on the phone with AMAZON and spin that single video into a sixty-plus-million dollar arm of the Walt Disney Company in a YEAR—a year.

He’s a story super star. I’ve learned so much from him over the years.

His involvement with the forthcoming Warner Brother’s Multi-Versus game is just another feather in his many feathered cap. When you hear Batman say, “Eat this, hippie” or Bugs Bunny ask Aria Stark “Why the long somebody-else’s face?” that’s Kal-El’s deft sensibility at work.

Yet, despite his lengthy list of media achievements in the service of global franchises, and my unique background as a criminal psychologist we’ve hit numerous roadblocks to have our own stories told.

This is where Stage 32 comes in.

Our involvement with Stage 32 has been an investment that unlike many of the seminars and courses and networking events has paid off in tangible rewards (Ugh! Networking events! I really do have the greatest best-friend, in the world, possibly in the Universe— dragging me out to a networking event was an emotional rodeo and that guy didn’t get the aid of a saddle)

Thank God for Stage 32, through their services the networking events can come to me— you too.

Cue Sarah Elizabeth Timmons, the dynamic one-woman powerhouse behind LIFE OUT LOUD FILMS. I don’t remember what made me book the hour consultation through Stage 32’s Script Services— it was an instinct... a good one it turns out.

I don’t have to tell anyone reading this that getting someone in a position of power to actually READ your script is one of the biggest challenges unknown film and television writers must overcome. It’s a jungle out there. You gotta love the work, like really LOVE the work to do it because everything we do outside of writing is about being an advocate for the work to be SEEN.

Sarah Timmons is a woman who loves the work as much as I do. I feel incredibly lucky to have followed that instinct, booked a consult, and sent her the semi-autobiographical limited series BOUND. Based on my experience working as a criminal psychologist in NY’s largest maximum-security prison at the age of twenty-two. It’s a raw story. Early on in our writing of the pilot we made the conscious choice not to pull any punches. Let them land. Let people know what it was really like... give the audience honesty. Shine your literary light into the shadowy corners of the human experience and bring us the stories of those who are caught in the darkness. Show your audience what is true with the medium of story.

That’s the thing about the work Kal-El and I do, we’re always thinking about the viewer on the other end of the story. We’re writers who understand that a storyteller’s work is a SERVICE profession and true service requires empathy, compassion, and honesty. It’s more than just a dream job, it’s a calling and an honor to be able to serve an audience.

Sarah Timmons understands this, and it shows in everything she does. McMillion$ earned her five Emmy nominations, including Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series. Watching the series, it’s apparent how Sarah’s influence humanized every single person in the documentary— from the crook to consumer. It is a subtle kind of empathy that makes the story a HUMAN story. She pulled out of the historical events the real PEOPLE involved with all their hopes, dreams, fears, and flaws. She made the story personal and relatable— it’s not just another documentary about how corrupt and unfair big business is.

In this way, Sarah Timmons was the perfect person to bring into the fold for BOUND.

Since our meeting through Stage 32, Sarah, Kal-El and I have signed a shopping agreement for BOUND and are currently developing a film project together based on the autobiography of therapist and founder of the THRIVING HEART HEALING ARTS ASSOCIATION, Kristine Medea. Like our protagonist, Charlie, from BOUND— Kristine Medea survived a more-heartbreaking-than-fiction youth to triumph over the pain, medical and sexual abuse, and neglect she was forced to endure.

To Kal-El and I, Kristine’s story is one of an unsung hero even though the material is tragic, the circumstances infuriating, and the story hard to take in because so much of the suffering this child endured was overlooked. I know from my professional experience that Kristine’s story is one of millions like this: children mistreated, labeled, and then shoved aside when what they needed from us as a society was protection, love and security.

It’s for these stories that we are proud to be the artists who won’t look away, won’t shove the pain aside in favor of something less confronting. Because it’s not just a sad, hard-to-look-at story of a victim, it’s the amazing story of a child who had the grit, imagination, and incredible will to thrive. That’s about as badass as it gets. It’s easy to get stuck in the victim story. But she’s not a victim, even when her family victimizes her, her school system victimizes her, the mental health system punishes her brutally for needing help— she fights. She survives. She went on to thrive.

Me and Kal-El at Applause for Cause

But it takes someone who can SEE that hero story in the cruelty and the pain. It’s there, the girl who refused to be broken, and we’re honored Sarah Timmons saw in us the storytellers to pull that story out of Kristine Medea’s book.

I’ve been blessed, there’s no other way to say it. I’m living my life, even in the hard times, even when money’s tight, even when another ‘no’ comes in from a pitch meeting or film competition. I get to live all of this as an artist and a storyteller. LIFE is a story. WE are each a story. And the writer has a unique advantage, we understand story and that gives us POWER. Not only the power to tell a story but to RE-WRITE our own stories, a new page, sometimes whole new chapters, in the moments, hours, days, weeks, months and years of our lives on this planet I like to call “earth school”.

I’ve been asked to share advice with my fellow writers. This prompt has always made me a little uncomfortable— I am and always have been someone who has something to say, but more than anything I believe in the sovereignty of the individual. We all have different motives, means and methods that drive us to write. I don’t have advice but what I can share is something that has been an incredible gift that’s helped me stay afloat during the rejections and soar that much higher during the validations: TRUST.

Me on the Red Carpet

Every note you get from readers, reviewers, and executives can and often does provide an opportunity to learn and improve—an invitation to change or evolve your story. But what they can’t give you is an invitation to TRUST your instincts as an artist.

Remember, you are not for everyone.

Your work is not for everyone.

You are not doing this work for everyone.

You’re doing this work for the right people, for the audience that wants or needs your story. And those people ARE out there, and there’s more of them than you can know.

I think of it like this: I have three scripts I’m ready to shop. I assign each script a parking spot in my mind. Every person who engages with the script on a business level parks in that parking spot while reviewing, shopping, and/or producing the script. That’s what the parking spot is for, it’s a place they get to have when they are part of the story.

But if that person/company turns out not to be the right fit for the story for whatever reason, I get them OUT of that mental parking spot as fast as I can. I don’t let that rejection take up that mental space— because I need that space OPEN and available for the right person to park in. If the wrong person’s still taking up the space, I don’t have a place for the right person to park when they come around. Which means they drive on by.

How does one build trust in themselves as an artist? That’s a much bigger question that would require a lot more than a soundbite. That requires turning the writer’s gaze inward, going internal— again it’s individual. But you can start by thinking the thing I came to shortly after leaving my work as a psychologist and moved into media production full time:

I realized that I am the only person who will be with me from the moment I was born to the second after I die and probably beyond. Me. No one else will ever know me the way I know myself because no one else can be part of me the way my consciousness is. It’s not possible (yet) to share every feeling, thought, experience and perception with anyone else.

I realized this and then I realized how little I actually KNEW about that “me”. I knew what I wanted to be, why I wanted to be that, and I knew who the world told me I was with their grades, tests, labels, and categories and all the opportunities for failure. But in the process of living, I’d lost touch with that “me” buried underneath the conditioning we’re all shaped by.

Get to know YOU again. The you under the conditioning. Who are you really?

Once you get to know you again, you’re ready to trust yourself as an artist.

Then... the real magic can happen, on the page and off.

Of course, these are the words of a heretic, an investigator, a “crazy creative”, a seeker of new dreams, a keeper of old nightmares and above all a storyteller. That’s who I found under the conditioning. That’s what I know I can trust. If you can say the same I implore you to put it on the page.