Rejection, rejection and more rejection is what one can expect if they decide to pursue a career in writing for films or television, a panel of entertainment industry professionals said Wednesday.

But Bermudians Alison Swan, Vanz Chapman and Jill Donnellan are all successfully scratching out livings with their pens in the entertainment industry and shared their experiences this week in a seminar alongside British writer-director Stuart Urban and actor Stephen Baldwin.

As a child sensation, Mr. Urban made a film at the age of 13 with his 11 year old brother and won an award at Cannes.

Despite the early success, maintaining an adult career in the industry has been more challenging, he said.

"Every script I've ever written has been rejected - even the one I won a British Academy Award for," he said.

From an actor's perspective, alternatively, Mr. Baldwin said finding a truly great script was very rare.

"When I read the script for `The Usual Suspects' I said, `okay, how much do I have to pay them'," he quipped.

As a result he has recently turned to writing - with partners - and producing to fill the glaring gaps in the industry - particularly at the studio level.

A lack of good material for actors she was coaching was the stimulus for Ms Donnellan's foray into writing.

Now writing for the children's show `Power Rangers' and other Disney projects, Ms Donnellan said she recently had to read through 85 screenplays as her employers sought out three new writers.

"Out of 85, there were two possibles and they may have needed work," she said.

Although Alison Swan experienced success with her first film `Mixing Nia' - which won the Audience Choice Award at BIFF 1998 and was broadcast on HBO - she has since struggled to sell scripts and faced confidence-sapping encounters with studio executives.

"A studio executive's job is to say `no'," she said. "They are all afraid they are going to lose their jobs. And they are all going to lose their jobs."

At the moment she is at work on a film for Twentieth Century Fox set in 1958 Newport. But suffered a tragic setback when she lost her film's star - singer Aaliyah - to a plane crash a few months ago.

Now the executives behind her project are pushing for Alicia Keyes as a replacement lead actress. "I said `can Alicia Keyes act'," Ms Swan said.

Vanz Champan feels a little more comfortable with his role as a TV writer in Toronto.

His latest show is about to go into production. "It's about a Jamaican storefront church," he said.

Armed with the one degree everyone the world over tells students they will never find work with - an English Literature major - Mr. Chapman said that in Toronto he has found the niche for the stories he wants to tell.

Specifically, he enjoys adapting "quirky" West Indian novels for film and television. "I'd never get money for these in LA," he said. "But I can in Toronto and these are the stories I want to tell."

All the panellists agreed that writing for TV and film has to be a "labour of love" to be worth while.

Ms Swan said she's assembled a group of people under strict order to read her work and be brutally honest.

"You meet with them and then you lay down on the floor and cry," she said "The next day you get up and write again."