As I told you in my last post, Laura in Paris, I was able to purchase last minute tickets to the Cannes Film Festival, 1991 edition. I was ecstatic. After four cups of tea and two cigarettes, I decided I would go disguised as a Brazilian journalist, covering for a local newspaper. I spend precious hours carving a stamp out of a big raw potato with a sharp knife: I engraved the initials of the newspaper and the current date. Well, of course I used a letter-headed notepad that

It was a bright afternoon in Paris, maybe too luminous for my spirits, when I left the small screening room after watching La Strada, by Fellini. To better cope with the impact the film had on me, I decided to walk back home. A long but delightful promenade. Spring was already pushing throughout the city, coloring corners of once lifeless streets. The sun was warm enough for me to enjoy it at the Jardin de Luxembourg. I let myself sink in an uncomfortable iron chair, amazed b

One of the biggest barriers in my career has been being a woman. The film and TV market, from which most of my income comes from as a screenwriter, development executive and producer, has always been dominated by males. Today I want to share a story that really affected my reputation and caused me to break up with the entertainment industry for a while, and turn back to writing books -which I believe is a much safer realm for women. Just to be clear: not that we should have t

How do you go from being an aspiring writer to becoming a professional one? I get this question a lot, and I know everybody has a different story – I can only tell you mine. Although I have always wanted to write, I never really thought I would become a published book author. Or that I would be the creator and screenwriter of a top TV show at age 27. But, as John Lennon once sang, life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans. In a way, my life has always

I wrote my first book when I was 8 or 9. I can’t really precise the exact date. It was a time travel middle-grade fiction that my journalist and very patient father typed on his gray Remington. It was called “The Punjabi List”, about a boy who would travel in time after switching groceries lists with an older man, the guardian of a secret. We made copies, stapled them together and I bounded them on the long edge with a cool turquoise blue tape that gave it the aspect of a kid