Meet Amber Gelinas
Oh! Hey there!
I completely forgot
to introduce myself...
My name is Amber Gelinas, and I am the owner and copywriter behind
The Write Choice.
I’ve always been a writer. I grew up in a tumultuous home and felt like I had no where to turn to when times got tough, so I leaned into writing. I would write down my thoughts and feelings on little pieces of paper and hide them under my mattress, hoping no one would ever find them. As I got older, those little pieces of paper graduated to notebooks of short stories and poetry. I fell love with words at a young age and had my first piece of work published at 17-years-old.
My dad is Chinese, and my mom is French and Metis. I grew up in a household where education and success were valued. I was always told, “Go to school, get a good education, and be the best at what you do.” In my family, getting a “good education” meant that my parents wanted me to be a doctor, lawyer, or engineer. Anything creative was definitely off the table. I dreamed of having my own advice article or working for a magazine one day, but my parents saw my creative endeavors as “cute hobbies” and “they would never make any real money”.
I did “the right thing” but I didn’t do “the write thing”. I went to post-secondary and studied Oil and Gas Land Administration. I put my creative dreams on pause, and I sold a little piece of my soul to the white collared world.
Being in oil and gas taught me a lot. I was the youngest person (at the time) to ever graduate from my program. I was full of life and eager to crush the corporate world. Along the way, I met some amazing mentors who taught me the world of business and branding. I started my own company at 22-years-old and dealt with the contractual side of buying and selling of oil and gas lands.
I loved my career because it paid me well and I was good at it, but it didn’t fuel the fire in my belly or the passion in my heart. I dabbled in the arts on the side and worked as a model, actress, and a part-time writer for a couple of local magazines.
After a health scare at 25, I completely reevaluated my life. I’m also pretty sure I was having a quarter life crisis (like any good millennial haha). I decided to leave my cushy oil and gas lifestyle behind, sell all my possessions, and move to Australia to pursue my dreams of acting, modelling and writing.
I told myself, “I’m going to follow my dreams full-time for a year. I’m going to hustle hard, do everything I can, and put all my energy into my creative career.” I also told myself, “If this all blows up in my face and I completely fail at everything, I’ll move back to Canada, go back to oil and gas, and never speak of being a creative again… but at least I’ll be able to say, I tried.”
Life in Australia unfolded quickly and I literally went from living in Canada, to living in the outback working as a live-in nanny for a gay single father of twin boys, to living in a mansion with 20 women, to my whole life exploding on a national scale. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, I was cast on The Bachelor Australia (hence the living in a mansion with 20 women haha).
My experience on The Bachelor Australia opened up a lot of doors for me. One of those opportunities was writing for New Idea magazine, one of Australia’s leading tabloid magazines. I did coverage for The Bachelor and had my own little segment on episode recaps. I had a blast doing it and I am grateful to New Idea for seeing my talents and making my dreams of working for a magazine come true.
After my gig with New Idea, I had offers pouring in to work on a variety of different projects. I started writing TV pitch documents and became absolutely enamored with it. I was doing all the things that I love, working in TV and writing. That’s when it came to me, “Instead of writing other people’s ideas, why don’t I write my own?!”
I was a natural born writer but had never gone through any formal training. That’s when I decided to apply for Writing for TV, Film, and Videogames at the prestigious, Vancouver Film School.
I received a full scholarship through Metis Nation BC and began my film school journey. My favorite elements of the Vancouver Film School were story structure and copywriting. I fell in love with story templates like the Hero’s Journey and enjoyed analyzing the pillars of storytelling. When I was introduced to the copywriting module of our program I was instantly intrigued.
Copywriting is about sales, marketing, and advertising through written word. A good copywriter will carefully select and arrange words to encourage, educate, convince, and inspire readers to take action and buy a service or product. Copywriting incorporates storytelling and selling (two things I'm very good at), and I was sold! Thus, The Write Choice was born.