We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Yvette Wren. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Yvette below.

Yvette, appreciate you joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

I was really self-taught. There are many paths to becoming a writer. You can go to school, Some of the top schools out there that people attend to learn writing are UCLA, USC, NYU, Northwestern, and the list goes on and on. I sometimes do think that going to one of these schools would have sped things up for me, but that’s what makes becoming a professional writer so interesting, you can come to the art by a lot of different paths. With writing the most important skill you need is knowing how to tell a story. I actually never stop learning. I’m always listening to podcast, watching Youtube videos and reading books to learn more.

Yvette, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m a writer. I work in TV and film but the journey here has not been easy. I moved to LA from Chicago because that’s what everyone said you should do. I didn’t know a single soul and I moved here with my son, something I would think twice about if I had a do-over. I wrote a coming-of-age book in 2008 titled Diamonds Are Forever. After that I wanted to see how could I take this writing thing to the next level. I had learned about Mara Brock Akil and Yvette Leee Bowser from magazines and was fascinated by what they did. I wanted to do that. So I picked up and left my life in Chicago behind to pursue writing. I have never looked back. Even through all the ups and downs, I wouldn’t change a thing. In my writing I feel like I tell stories about Black folks really well, I’ve always been an observer and because of that, I feel like I am in tune with the nuances in Black stories that nobody else seems to find.
I’m most proud of the film that’s being released in May of this year, which will be premiering on Tubi as a Tubi Orginal. I think what sets me apart is I have lived a lot of the life that I write about for me and my characters.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

My goal is to make people happy and make life a little lighter. I write comedy, so I love making people laugh. I also want to make you feel something, and maybe relate to a character and see yourself in one of them.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

The books I have read that have really helped with my writing and also being an entrepreneur are

Story by Robert Mckee
Save The Cat by Blake Snyder

A book that got me to push through is The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron

Atomic Habits is great if you need to learn how to do things in a more disciplined way, which writers need.

The Operator: David Geffen was also a good. A biography about that man who bought and sold Hollywood. Very good for entrepreneurial thinkers.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @yvettewren