We were lucky to catch up with Virginia Shine recently and have shared our conversation below.

Virginia, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

Everyone has different metrics to determine success. In the creative field, that can be a bit different from traditional careers. Money should not be the only gauge of success. Creating a lasting legacy of our emotional intention in this world can be rewarding. Making people feel something through a creative work or when they take action because of it, is a powerful thing.

I think the most important thing to be successful is to keep moving toward what brings you joy, and to not give up. If the work is not it’s own reward, the money will never make it more rewarding. The key is to focus your intention and move forward. Any career will have stumbling blocks and failures, Writing in particular has a lot of rejections. The only difference is, some people keep going and some people give up. Success means not giving up on your dream.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m Virginia Shine, screenwriter with a degree in Psychology. I have a passion for writing supernatural horror and grounded science fiction. From the Toledo, Ohio area, I’ve written stories with a local touch “The Legend of Holcomb Road” and “Old West End”. Recently I was hired to write a Biopic/Documentary about Joyce Perrin. Joyce’s Any Wednesday gathering in the Old West End made her a legend in the Toledo Arts scene.

I started a writers group, Glass City Screenwriters, in 2016 with the simple desire to gather like minded writers to learn and connect because writing can be very isolating. You work on your story ideas, sometimes for years, and until recently, not many people wanted to talk about screenwriting in Toledo, Ohio.

The Toledo Lucas County Public Library has been instrumental in growing our group over the years. With the exception of the pandemic year, we have held our regular meetings at the library in reserved conference rooms. This allows the public to come check us out, to explore their writing and meet people who are creating films locally. This, in addition to coffee shop meetups, provide a social but focused environment to talk about our work and get advice.

The past few years the group has produced a few short films that have gone on to play festivals and win a few awards. This started as fun and practice, but our passions push us to stretch further each time. We all want to create something an audience is entertained or moved by, while using our creative skills.

This year my short film Old West End is finishing it’s festival run . It has screened locally at The Valentine Theater, Maumee Theater, and a Carriage House in the Old West End neighborhood where it was filmed in 2022. It’s been so wonderful to share the film with so many people, and open eyes to the beauty of the area. I work closely with the founder of FilmToledo, our local film commission, Michael DeSanto. Together, we both feel a strong connection and desire to share the incredible locations of our city and region. FilmToledo is doing an amazing job to help bring both local and outside productions and to showcase the versatility of our city as a film location.

After working in the Old West End for the past year and a half, I was drawn into an exciting new project about an amazing woman, Joyce Perrin. Sometimes a creative work becomes part of you and the universe guides things to put you in the right place at the right time. Even though this is the first I have written in this genre, I was chosen to write it because of this connection. Our team has been working very hard on research and timelines. We are excited to be moving forward to the interview phase of the project soon. I would like to invite any family or friends who knew Joyce Perrin, and would like to share their stories of her for the documentary, to contact me by email at [email protected]
This will be an uplifting and in depth telling of her story, mostly focused on her connection to the Arts in Toledo and the famous Any Wednesday gathering.

As a writer I feel my purpose is to create and tell stories, real or imagined, to help myself and others dream about the world and process internal feelings and emotions in a healthy way toward a better understanding of each other.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

People in non-creative fields often refer creative work as a hobby. This can be offensive to someone who takes their work seriously. When you start out writing, there is a ton of work before the work involved, for example, research to create a character with believable dialogue for the career that character has.

Another part of creative work, is that work doesn’t always look like work. I need time to daydream. Working through a story in my head takes time without a ton of distractions. Sometimes the TV is on but I am a million miles away in my story. We work in the shower and in bed, stories can keep writers up at night. Distractions like our phones and social media need to be kept in check to get work done, I think that is common in all fields of work today.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The most rewarding thing for me about being a writer, is dreaming up a different world and solving the puzzles within that world. It is very therapeutic to create something. What will happen next? What will my characters do? I get to control it, or sometimes it seems the characters get to decide. When it comes to screenwriting, the coolest thing is how the work changes when other creatives come together and make it their own. Directors envision, actors interpret the work, cinematographers, gaffers, set decorators, makeup artists, all have a hand in molding that script into a film.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.glasscityscreenwriters.com
• Instagram: @glass_city_screenwriters
• Facebook: Glass City Screenwriters
• Linkedin: Virginia Shine
• Youtube: @GlassCityScreenwriters

Image Credits
Michael DeSanto, Doug Hinebaugh