About Your Muse...

Quick Overview:

Optioned Screenplays and TV Series:

The Right One (romantic comedy, optioned twice)

Valentine's Day (romantic comedy ensemble)

Countdown (who-done-it drama/thriller)

Giving (news/doc. TV show)

Top 10 Most Produced Plays:

A Grimm Fairy Tale (musical comedy)

The Case of Bloody Murder at Sherwood Manor (comical dinner-theatre mystery)

Starmaker! (live variety show format)

When The Bell Rings (musical dramedy)

Judi Jackson, Live! (live talk show format)

A Piece of Soap (comedy spoof)

Everybody (modern morality play)

Our Holiday Show (variety show)

Trouble Brewing at Sumerville Academy (all female dramedy)

Improv-it! (improv-styled variety show)

Full Bio:  (For those still curious...)

Melissa L. Pilgrim is the author of scripts for both plays and films, as well as an experienced director with twenty-two original staged plays for children, teens, and adults to her credit at the Sheil Park Community Theatre which she ran for five years in the Wrigleyville area of Chicago, Illinois.

Ms. Pilgrim has had sixteen staged scripts for children and teens produced in theatres around the country.  Eight of them were chosen to be published in the Chicago Alliance for Playwrights Directory as some of the best new plays available for young audiences.  Her musical comedy, A Grimm Fairy Tale, then went on to get produced at the Fort Lauderdale Children's Theatre in Florida, which runs the biggest theatre for young actors in the south, and then shared the marquee that summer with William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.  (She wishes all bards that feeling of awe at least once in their lives!)

Ms. Pilgrim took the opportunity at the Sheil Park Community Theatre to teach adult classes on playwrighting, which then turned into a successful workshop that produced eight new adult staged plays.  Several of these shows then went on to be produced at other, larger theatres in the Chicago area as well as cities like New York and London.  Her unique talent of being able to revise a script as it was being directed scene-by-scene made her writing workshops a popular class for both beginning playwrights as well as directors.  It also lead to her becoming a sought-after script consultant to many aspiring playwrights, screenwriters, and novelists around the Chicago area and beyond, many of whom went on to have their work produced as well.

After spending most of her early writing career working in theatre and also getting over a dozen poems and several articles published in various magazines and anthologies, Ms. Pilgrim decided to branch out into screenwriting.  Her first script placed as a semi-finalist in the Illinois/Chicago Screenwriting Competition as well as a quarter-finalist in both the Writer's Network Screenwriting Competition and the Nicholl's Fellowships. She then attracted an agent in Beverly Hills (whom she's still with) and set off to Los Angeles to write full time.  She has since optioned four screenplays with companies such as Swingin' Productions (pact with Nu Image & Millennium Films), has been hired to write both scripts and treatments for several independent film companies, and wrote a TV series book bible for Martin Sheen's ESP Productions (pact with Warner Bros. Television).

Before moving to L.A. Ms. Pilgrim also completed Donna Cooper's Coverage Workshop, which she co-sponsored at her Chicago theatre along with CineStory from Columbia College. This led to her getting certified to do script coverage by The American Film Institute which enabled her to be a judge for CineStory's Screenwriting Competition for two years in Chicago, and then for the Kingman Films International Screenwriting Competition in L.A.  She then continued to work for various film and TV companies in L.A. doing writing for hire, script coverage, story notes, and script doctoring over the next ten years while she also became an accomplished book editor.  She edited several manuscripts for both traditional book publications and internet e-books in various fictional and non-fictional categories.  (One of her author's traditionally published books was awarded both "Publisher's Choice" and "Editor's Choice" by its publishing company.)

After finally gaining enough contacts and experience in all forms of writing and editing, Ms. Pilgrim was then able (and ready) to move back to the beautiful White Mountains of New Hampshire where she grew up to create her writing, editing, and script consultant business over the internet as well as start doing her Budding Authors writing workshops again to help other aspiring writers. 

And due to Ms. Pilgrim's extensive marketing background learned from promoting her theatre in Chicago and by pitching her own movie and TV projects around L.A., besides helping with writing and editing she is now offering her "Public Relations" experience as a P.R. consultant to help others create and build their own P.R. platforms for promoting their finished projects, websites, and businesses.  She is skilled at developing clear, concise pitch pages, press releases, and press kits for others as well as teaching them how to write their own for future projects.  She also currently writes and edits several monthly website newsletters for various clients.

Ms. Pilgrim is a graduate of the University of New Hampshire where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and a minor in theatre.  She studied screenwriting at San Diego State University and is a graduate of The Institute of Children's Literature in West Redding, Connecticut.  Her combined background of education in theatre, film, and prose writing along with her over fifteen years of experience working in all these distinctive media gives her a specialized, unique way to approach each story and project.

Her life's passions are writing and helping others write!