Sibyl Gardner can’t stop writing and why should she?

Story by Elisabeth Sherwin

Glen Haven resident Sibyl Gardner is a self-confessed writer. She writes everything from screenplays to novels, memoirs to essays. 

In a recent talk at the Estes Valley Library, Gardner described her three decades in TV, working in New York and Hollywood, on projects as diverse as MTV music video production in the 1980s to screenwriting for “Law and Order” and “Nashville” in the 2000s. 

She moved to Los Angeles in 1988 to make movies. While that didn’t happen, she’s still not ruling it out. She’s the kind of person who has a screenplay under her pillow. 

What did happen in L.A. was a series of jobs on various TV shows like “Frank’s Place,” “Law and Order,” and “Saving Grace.”

“I wanted to do it all,” she said. “Movies, dramas, comedies, novels.” 

Gardner said her career was full of ups and downs. But she managed to make a living. You could join the Writers’ Guild and make money off residuals when the episodes you wrote were rebroadcast. She had a friend who signed a million-dollar deal as a writer for “E.R.”

Previously, networks had to appeal to broad audiences. Shows couldn’t be too edgy.

Then came cable TV, then HBO, then streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and YouTube came along. 

Now, writers can be very edgy, if you can find the work. 

In the land of TV and movies, Gardner knows one thing is true.

“There would be nothing without the writers,” she said. “Actors can’t come up with it.” 

She recalled once having to rewrite an episode of “Nashville” on a plane flight.  

That’s the kind of pressure that writers occasionally have to face. She also stressed the need for sparse writing that goes into a TV script.

At the library meeting, Gardner read a descriptive paragraph from Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises.” 

“You couldn’t get that information into a script,” she said.

She said the best job she ever had was writing for a friend’s TV show, “Any Day Now.”  The plot followed a group of black and white kids, and she described it as way ahead of its time. 

“You can see it on YouTube,” she said. 

But she would hesitate to recommend a young person head out to Hollywood to chase down a writing career.

“Writers are not making the money they used to in salary or residuals,” she said. 

Still, Gardner knew she would always return to family property in Colorado. She left Hollywood 11 years ago but hasn’t given up on her many projects. 

She’s writing a novel called “Old Moms” and a time-travel novel. She has a comedy set in Boulder. She self-published her memoir, “Sibyl Rights.” 

Who knows what will happen next? 

Perhaps her novel, “Old Moms,” about new mothers in their 40s, will be made into a movie. 

“Heck, it’s worth a try,” she said. 

“I can’t stop writing,” she added. “I’m a writer.”