When I was about 14 years old, I wrote my first "screenplay".  If I recall, it was about ten pages long but it was for the television show (Not the movie!!) "The Mod Squad"  (I can't find a reference to the TV show on the web-- if you know of one, please let me know).  Somehow and I don't remember how, I tracked down the address for the production company, and sent my script away . . . hoping every week (not knowing the rigors of the industry at that age) that I would see MY episode.

It took a few weeks but, eventually, I got my show returned to me in an envelope that most certainly had to have been touched by the hands of the producer, Aaron Spelling, himself, with a nicely written letter that said they don't take submissions in that format from unknown writers.  Of course, they had to realize that it was written by a child but they were terribly nice about it and, a few weeks later, there was a character on one of the shows that had the last name of "Dykstra", something I swore was a sign that they had actually read my work.

You would think that, at such an early age, this rejection would have tainted me from ever writing for fun or profit ever again.  Well, that would be the easy way,wouldn't it?  Never being one to take the easy way through life, however, I continued to write and write and, obviously, to this day, I still write.

Currently, I'm working on what I believe will be  novel based on the career and times of a woman in Silicon Valley (Gee, I wonder where I got that idea?) and on a screenplay that I've been gestating for about twelve years.  The screenplay is about a young woman who moves to the big city and comes into her own while she's there.  Hmmm, there's another one that I have no idea where it came from!  ;>)

At any rate, when I moved to California, landing here on April 26, 1988, I moved here for the sole purpose of finally getting a feature produced from a screenplay that I'd written.  Unfortunately, the Fates had other ideas about how I'd spend the first ten years of my stay here but, I don't regret anything and am finally moving forward, with the support of a wonderful man, on a career that may eventually make some money for me!

I write under my maiden name because I always have written under that name . . . besides, my married life is a far cry from the ones I write about now, even if they are part and parcel to what got me here.


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Revised last 09/19/1999
Copyright © 1999 Marcia L. Dykstra. All Rights Reserved.