HOW DID YOU DECIDE YOU WEREN'T A WRITER?
How Writing Led to My New Short Film
EDITOR'S NOTE: This a newsletter #1 of 3 by #OTVAtlas fund Ambassador, Makeda M. Declet tracing her filmmaking journey and road to creating short film, Sleep'her. In the film, a depressed woman finds an unlikely ally (and eventual enemy) in the creator of a gig app.
Sleep'her drops on the #OTVAPP November 1st.
My sister called me the other day with what she said was a brilliant movie idea. She walked me through this action plot that was half dream, half high-concept pitch, and when she finished she took an incredibly long pause and said, so…?
And I said, yeah…?
And she said, impatiently, you should write it!
Friends and family (who don’t consider themselves writers) pitch ideas to me often. The stories are always personal and charged with an air of, ya didn’t think about that one, did ya? And every time, I wonder: why don’t you just write it yourself?
So, visionary. Artist. Creative. When did you decide you weren’t a writer?
The moment I fell in love with writers was the very moment I decided I couldn’t be one.
I was cast in an August Wilson play in the 9th grade and I thought, my god, I love these characters but I don’t think I could write something so deep. So lasting. So revered. I then thought, I’m such a good actor. My job is to, like…bring the writer’s words to liiife? I took classes, went to auditions, and booked some very cute roles. But every job felt like winning the lottery. There was always some gatekeeper deciding if I was worth presenting.
Around 2011, there was a hole blown through that logic. Creators took to Youtube and started creating actor-driven content, skirting the gatekeepers and building their own platforms. Inspired, I gathered a group of former NYU classmates (a bunch of us had just moved to LA). With their help, I made my own scrappy little webseries, Just Makeda. It was about a girl in a world where puppets existed and manifested as alter egos. Thus the multi-hyphenate Makeda Declet—actor-writer-producer-director (don’t roll your eyes) was born! I felt a great sense of agency.
And then… came a sense of crushing defeat. I poured so much energy into Just Makeda. I raised $3k on Kickstarter, called in favors, and gave friends directing opportunities. But when it wrapped, I felt like I’d failed. My friends weren’t always reliable (free labor + early twenties), and when views stayed low, I convinced myself I was a bad leader. After all the hard work, what I had was a hard drive full of files and a fear of trying again. For years, I stayed away from the camera unless someone else was steering the ship.
Enter the pandemic. Suddenly the stakes plummeted. We were all in sweatpants, baking bread, and streaming Tiger King. I started a podcast (don’t roll your eyes!) with Erica Lynn Castillo. We sat in our closet and chatted with guests about how to make a dollar out of fifteen cents as freelancer/entrepreneur/creatives. It was fun! And somewhere between sound blankets and Adobe Audition glitches, I remembered: making art doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t have to be sellable. It can be messy, in-progress, on-its-way-to-brilliant.
That’s the headspace where Sleep’her, my latest short film, was born.
Here’s the pitch: A down-on-her-luck Uber Eats driver gets her car towed, signs up for a new gig app, and wakes up in a strange waiting room with no memory of how she got there—or what she needs to do to finish the job. Here’s the heart: She’s grieving. She’s alone. She’s hustling through grief because capitalism insists she must.
The film grew out of that tension: the grind of work, the quiet weight of grief, and the fragile beauty of connection in unexpected places. These are themes I return to again and again.
So when you decided you weren’t a writer? Doesn’t matter.
What matters is when you decide to write your first—or next—story. Even if it ever only lives on your computer. Even if you shoot something and it gets twenty views. Even if only your sister ever hears it. Your characters will be grateful you gave them a voice. Your worlds will be grateful you built them.
The stakes are low. What do you have to lose?
Here are a few resources I return to often—for both playwriting and screenwriting:
Michaela Coel once said, “I have googled ‘how to write a TV show.’ I highly recommend it. There is a lot of information there.” If she can say that after her third show, we’re in good company. Take what’s useful, leave what’s not. Just keep writing.
Stream Sleep’her on the #OTVAPP November 1, 2025.
Makeda M. Declet is a Guyanese-American playwright, TV writer, and award-nominated actor. She is a current semi-finalist for the 2025 O'Neill Playwrights' Conference. Her play, DARLINGS, was a 2024 Honorable Mention for the Leah Playwriting Prize and she is a 2019 HBO All-Access finalist. Makeda served as a writer in the mini-room for the FX television show, Suckhole. Her stage plays include SERVICE/PLAY (EST/LA, Los Angeles and The Understudy, Chicago); Issa Was Here (Perceptions Theatre, Chicago and Runaways Lab Theater, Chicago); Hammer (The Belfry Stage, Los Angeles); Camp (MeetCute, Los Angeles); and FKA Gold is Deep (Ethel M. Barber Theater, Northwestern University, Chicago). Development programs include EST/LA’s New West Playwrights Under 30 (Los Angeles), Moving Arts’ MadLab development program (Los Angeles), and Mara Brock Akil’s Story 27 Writers’ Colony (Los Angeles). She is a member of SAG-AFTRA, AEA, EST/LA and Echo Theater Company. Makeda holds a BFA in Experimental Theater from NYU and an MFA in Writing for the Screen and Stage from Northwestern University, where she studied under the tutelage of Erin Courtney and Thomas Bradshaw (playwriting), Tracey Scott Wilson and Zayd Dohrn (TV writing), and Felicia D. Henderson (showrunning).
Makeda grew up in Brooklyn, NY and now splits her time between Chicago and Los Angeles.