I used to think life was a series of fates linked with intoxicating synchronicities. Now I know life to be a series of choices – and sometimes accidents – that shape each celebratory or tragic outcome. When I was 13, I assumed my fate as a poet and wrote one of the best pieces of my career.

When I was 15, I dreamt of writing film and scribbled my first script on stained scraps of paper and napkins I carried everywhere, until a boyfriend gleefully destroyed my work and my drive to continue with my movie writing dream.

25 years later, my first comedy script won me a seat in a writer’s room. I’ve decided, at age 40, that my soul’s fate may stem from the blood of a poet, but my choice is to dive into my truest of all dreams: to write screenplays. After all, Jean Cocteau, perhaps my biggest artistic influence, showed me in my formative years that film IS poetry.