Ten minutes away, and in Woodland Hills constantly.

Local, in the actual sense

Plenty of essay coaches list Woodland Hills on a service-area map and have never set foot in it. I'm ten minutes west in Calabasas and in Woodland Hills constantly, which means the intro call can be a coffee near Warner Center instead of another video window, and it means I already understand the shape of a Woodland Hills senior's week: a school day that ends mid-afternoon, a practice or a rehearsal after that, homework until late, and a weekend that was supposed to be for the essay and got eaten.

Families here come from El Camino Real and Taft on the public side, and from Louisville right here in Woodland Hills, Chaminade and de Toledo in West Hills, Sierra Canyon in Chatsworth, and Viewpoint over in Calabasas. The amount of essay support behind a student varies enormously across that list. Some have had a class period on it. Some have had a handout. Some have had a college counselor since ninth grade and four adults already reading the draft. Almost none have had someone sit with them and ask what actually happened that day.

Own Your Essay is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or working on behalf of any school. I work directly with families.

What Woodland Hills students tend to show up with

Two versions, usually.

The first is the student who has written nothing because they've decided nothing in their life qualifies. They've read a few sample essays online about hardship and gone quiet. This is the most fixable problem there is, and it's usually solved in one brainstorming session. The material is almost always there. It just doesn't look impressive from the inside.

The second is the student who has three drafts and knows they're flat. Competent sentences, clear structure, nobody home. These essays fail the way a bad script fails: the writer explains the meaning instead of showing it, the details could describe a thousand other people, and a lesson gets attached in the last paragraph. Those are craft problems, and craft problems have fixes.

There's a third, and it comes almost entirely from the independent and parochial schools. This student has done everything right. The draft is on schedule, the structure is sound, a counselor has seen it, and it is completely inert. Years of good guidance taught them the register adults reward (measured, grateful, impact first), and that register is death in 650 words meant to make a stranger feel like they met somebody. The material is in there. It's under the polish, and getting it out takes someone whose job is not to make the student sound impressive.

How the work runs

The intro call is twenty minutes, free, in person or on Zoom, with parents welcome. After that, sessions are typically 45 to 60 minutes. Every draft comes back with written notes in the document and a short summary of what to fix first, the same way a script gets notes in development.

Students working toward Early Decision or Early Action get a schedule built backward from the date. Most ED and EA deadlines fall on Nov 1 or Nov 15, though each school sets its own. Students applying to the UCs get the four Personal Insight Questions treated as a set rather than four separate assignments.

Who I am

Screenwriter and film director, twenty years. I created TV projects that sold to ABC and YouTube Originals, with Kerry Washington producing, and to Warner Bros. TV, with John Wells producing. I wrote Sharon, the Osbourne biopic, named to the 2018 Black List, and the 2008 Fox feature The Rocker, and I wrote and directed This Is Happening. I studied History and Communications at the University of Pennsylvania, cum laude. For over a decade I interviewed applicants for Penn as an alumni interviewer.

Twenty years of being paid to make stories work on the page is an unusual thing to bring to a 650-word essay. It is also exactly the right thing.

Services

Single Essay Review, UC PIQ Package, Full Application Package, and a standalone brainstorming session for students who have no topic yet. The intro call is where we figure out which one fits. See full service details →