Whether your interest is screenwriting or nonfiction, making the decision to write takes passion, persistence, and patience.  But more than any of that,    you must do one critical thing.  You must actually sit down and write.  Jeanne Bowerman is a perfect example of someone who was dissatisfied with her career and had the drive and desire to make a change.  A self-taught writer, Jeanne is proof that you don’t always need degrees or extensive training to follow your dreams, just a lot of chutzpah!

TM:            How did you start writing?

JB:            I went to Cornell for hotel and restaurant management and I owned a motel and restaurant for 15 years, but I hated every minute of it.  After 15 years and after I had my kids, I said I can’t do this anymore. It’s just too much. I always wanted to write. I had taken a couple of creative writing classes in college, but I had a classic problem, which I’m pretty sure a lot of writers have, which is I’m extremely insecure.  I remember I was 40 thinking; I’m a stay at home mom with no kids at home because at that point my kids were in school, and what the hell am I doing? And somebody convinced me to do medical transcribing.  When I was doing the medical transcriptions I realized that I still had a brain and that I liked all those little things; the editing, the punctuation, the grammar, all of that.  It reawakened that desire in me to write, so I started to write a novel.  I immediately got sidetracked by one of my college friends into writing screenplays and I wrote a couple with her.  Then, I adapted the Pulitzer Prize winning book, “Slavery by Another Name,” with its author, Douglas A. Blackmon. We’ve been pitching it and having great meetings on it.  But now, I’m getting back to writing a novel. I’m finally going to write that novel. I’m craving writing alone. I’m craving being able to crawl inside the characters’ heads.

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