How Cheryl Meyer Stays Focused on Her Creativity and Career Amid Industry Slowdown
The Elevate Collective member unpacks how this challenging moment for screenwriters is different from others, and how she’s preparing for when the production pause lifts and someone “will pick up your phone call.”
By Abbey White
“This year has been such a whirlwind because everything that started five years ago for me has come together,” Elevate Collective member Cheryl Meyer says while discussing the state of the screenwriting industry and her trajectory over the last several years. “This year was also the first year it felt like the festival circuit had the numbers that it used to have. Those first couple of years out [from the pandemic], it was quite dead. But people are coming back – to festivals, to the theater.”
Meyer has had a steadier last few years than much of the industry itself. In 2024, Hulu released her horror film, Carved, and her post-apocalyptic drama, All the Lost Ones, starring Devon Sawa, which received a limited U.S. theatrical release earlier this year. She started work on both projects in 2022.
She’s also had several projects in the works, including a horror-thriller inspired in part by her own experiences with chronic illness, which landed Wscripted's 5th Cannes Screenplay List in 2022 and has a producer attached. This year, she was named a Loreen Arbus AFF Writers Lab Fellow for a TV comedy pilot about a woman living with the physical manifestation of her chronic pain. It was a project Meyer pitched in April as part of the ReelAbilities Film Festival’s Crip Script Pitch Program, where she met up with several Inevitable Foundation program participants.
She and fellow writer Kara Harun were also the winners of a 2025 Canadian Screen Award for Best TV Writing for their work on Prime Video’s Beyond Black Beauty. “My episode, 'Everybody Hurts,' is a reference to the REM song and is about the frustrations of not being allowed to express anger as a woman. The messaging a lot of the time is that we aren’t allowed to have any, and in this episode, there’s a lot of justification to be angry,” she explains. “But the lead [Jolie Dumon played by Kaya Coleman] is struggling with what to do with it, and it's impeding her advancement in her Olympic dream.”
Despite all of that work, Meyer says she’s once again having to remind herself that patience is a virtue – nay, a requirement – of working in Hollywood as an industry-wide production slowdown continues. “The first movie I ever did, it took seven years,” she recalls. “There's an element of learning that's the reality. All you can do is just keep moving in a forward motion every day. A lot of things that are accumulating now in my career have been a long time coming and are all the result of small steps forward every day. I've seen results, but it can be very slow.”
That experience is why she also understands the ways this industry moment is different from the typical grind. “I haven't necessarily been hired in the same fashion since 2022,” she tells Inevitable Insider. “I've been pitching and doing small things like story editing, teaching, and some development here and there. Not the big financial windfalls necessarily, and I know that's the case for so many people.”
As she navigates this extended period of uncertainty, she’s leaning harder into her projects to keep herself focused. “My goal was to stay creatively motivated through this time, so that when the unconfirmed buying freeze -- that we're all feeling -- passes, I will have seven or eight projects completed to take out,” she says of her strategy for weathering the current greenlight pause. “I've tried to keep my head down to the computer. I know that's hard. I'm really privileged to be able to do that because of my previous work from 2022, but I would say the best thing is to try to find things that are small gains every day.”
As for what those small gains can look like, Meyer points to several creative and motivational sources, starting with opportunities outside the traditional work pipeline. “If there's a [program] application, put that application in. If there's an opportunity to go to a film festival, or an opportunity to be in a virtual group, or anything to keep you motivated – to remind you that you love this industry and the people in it, and you're excited about the work being made – do it. Get any sort of small win validation, even if it's just hitting the submit button,” she advises.
For Meyer, the Elevate Collective Award and program experience are one example of how this approach has positively affected her in the current industry moment. Program opportunities in particular are “extremely validating of your work, which is something we all need to keep going. Especially from a group of industry professionals, it's the check mark of knowing that you are on the right path and your work is at the level that you're hoping it is. It’s a huge emotional boost.”
It’s also a structured working environment that helps keep you creatively on track. “There's a professional development aspect to it, so every time I have stuff I'm working on on my own, doing a class or being in a fellowship gives me concrete deadlines for things that don't necessarily have them, and I end up finishing specifically for these labs, classes, and fellowships. It becomes a mission on its own to complete it, and that motivation is wonderful.”
In general, chances to practice the skills you’ll need when the market reignites are another way to find a win, says Meyer. “Any sort of professional development that is putting a deadline on you with expectations of deliveries,” she tells Inevitable Insider. “It is also prep for when you're working again. If you're having stagnant months or a stagnant year, and you're pulled into a pitch meeting, you might feel unprepared because you haven't been consistently doing it. If you're doing it through any of these programs where you're talking to people all the time, you're having people give you feedback, and you have to prepare deliverables, you'll feel more comfortable when you finally go in.”
And as a creative who frequently focuses on stories about women and people with disabilities within genres like horror and comedy, Meyer says that despite the current sentiment within Hollywood that suggests it's abandoning inclusive stories, writers should still listen to themselves as consumers and keep using any opportunity to work on those projects. “We're looking for new stories as viewers, as audiences, as storytellers and as producers, and the authentic experience has not been overly examined, so there's lots of space to dive into what the experience is like as something all viewers can watch because it's entertaining,” she says.
“The success of these stories is not an anomaly. Pointing at Barbie, Girls Trip, Bridesmaids, and saying that's an anomaly is admitting you haven't given certain creatives the opportunities to make more of that. Like any slate, with the one in 10 that blows up, just because the very next one wasn't also Bridesmaids doesn't mean the next number 10 isn't going to be,” Meyer continues. “We should look at other storytelling points of view in an authentic way to entertain the upcoming generation, as well as older audiences who have seen so much content they are burned out on what we've been given again and again.”
Meyer acknowledges that doing some of this work in this moment can feel challenging, particularly in a competitive industry where rejection is a regular occurrence alongside shrinking work opportunities. But remaining proactive can do more than lead to the promise of someone who “will pick up your phone call.”
“You can fall into the feeling of what is the point of any of this, but it will change, so try to put that at the back of your mind. It will pay off. It might be six months or two years from now, but you'll be sitting at your premiere and you can celebrate that you rolled that boulder up the hill one day at a time,” she says. “The work is never really done. It's just a new level of work.”
