When it came to the Famous for 15 Minutes playwrighting festival, Helen Zoellner described herself as “always a bridesmaid, never a bride”.

Last month she finally became a “bride” when her play, Me-Ternity Leave, won the competition.

At a gala night performance at the Daylesford Theatre on Dundonald Street in Hamilton, she received the Golden Inkwell Award from Ian August, guest judge.

“Not to be too dramatic, but I was in shock when they called my name,” said Ms Zoellner, Corporation of Hamilton’s public relations manager.

“Afterward, everyone was coming up and congratulating me, but I just felt so overwhelmed. I just was not expecting to win.”

Me-Ternity Leave was about an office worker who falls in love with a co-worker while faking a pregnancy.

Che Barker, Maya Richardson, Adam Gauntlett and Allie Zuckerman acted in the play, while Emily Ross directed, competing against five other plays.

The script was inspired by her own pregnancies.

“I always imagined I’d have all this spare time during maternity leave to write while the baby napped – but as any parent knows, that was wishful thinking,” she said.

When she went back to work, after her youngest son was born, she thought: imagine if you could take five or six months off to do whatever you wanted.

“You could learn a language or take a cooking class,” she said. “It got me thinking, what if you could have the maternity leave without the baby? If you lived in a big city, could you fake a pregnancy?”

Initially, she was going to write a film script, but then Amy Schumer’s film, Kinda Pregnant, came out.

“It was not exactly the same as mine,” Ms Zoellner said, “but I thought maybe I could write my idea as a short.”

It took her a day and a half to write the script for Me-Ternity Leave.

“Famous for 15 Minutes is such a great opportunity to flex your writing skills,” she said. “To see your words come to life is really encouraging. A lot of us writers write into the ether and our words do not go anywhere. That can be satisfying but it is nice for other people to experience your work.”

She felt that many people have talent, but do not know it.

“Writing for Famous for 15 Minutes is not necessarily easy, but it is doable,” she said.

Being involved with the competition gave her the confidence to start writing film scripts.

One of her scripts, Toast to Love, was picked up by a production company last year and is now playing on Amazon Prime, Spark TV, Vizio WatchFree and Tubi TV.

A second script is now with a Canadian production company.

“It is a Christmas romance, mystery,” she said.

Through writing film scripts, she has learnt that much of writing is not writing at all.

“Often, it is just staring off into the oblivion and thinking about an idea,” she said.

When she first started writing, she liked to just start and see where the story took her. Since then she has learnt that structure is her friend.

“It saves you from so many rewrites,” she said.

She is already thinking about what she could write for next year’s Famous for 15 Minutes festival.