54 days in LA: Tips for selling your script

Something had been slowly pulling me back to California for years. I was seven when I left, under complicated circumstances. I was 31 when I finally returned.
Still, while staying in Roseville with family, then Sacramento for business, then somewhere in between, something was still missing. I found so much here, from a family I wished I had growing up, to a home where it was weird if it wasn’t sunny with something to do. (I love California). I was still missing something. Something I had been coming back for my whole life.
It took an otherwise bold statement from a friend for me to realize what that missing part was. (It was bold because I had only met him a month before.)
Luciano, a native of Brazil, in America on business, was going to LA for two months to sell his TV script. He wanted to know if I wanted to go with him to try and sell mine as well. I told him I thought I could come down for a few weeks at some point and check it out. Completely non-committal.
“Can I ask you a personal question?” Luciano asked four beers in with a sort of cautious smirk on his face.
“Yea, of course,” I said. And I meant it. I looked forward to harsh criticism, a criticism I knew was coming in his next breath. I liked the way it shaped me.
“What are you waiting for?” He replied.
I was silent.
I thought about it. Hard. I had no answer for him.
What was I waiting for? I was waiting for this all my life. I’d been writing since I was a kid. I grinned and bared it through all the years that I absolutely sucked. I kept going when everyone would smile, nod their heads and say “It’s good” or “That’s nice.” And I finally felt like it might have all been worth it when I started hearing, “What happens next?”
I had been playing this game with myself my whole life. A life spent sticking around in small towns and empty streets with the wrong crowds talking about making it big, though never even looking at plane tickets and terrible get-on-your-feet jobs.
What was I waiting for?
I didn’t have an answer. So I left for LA on 3 weeks notice with a guy I only meant two months before to live in a hostel with stove-sinks from the 1950’s so that I could be like a million other people before and say I took a shot at the big times.
So this will be my journal for the time I spend here. Unfiltered and honest, educational and entertaining if possible. I will track my progress in trying to sell my TV script and document the transformation that LA often has on its passing nomads.
In some detail, without writing a book, I will give you the highlights of stalking studio execs and buying coffee for everyone. While also reflecting on how my perspective and motivations in life change, as I imagine they will to some degree. And I’ll try to do it every day. And God willing, sell a damn script.
Something about the Show (Its Name): “Field of Dreams” (Let’s try not to get sued)
People Are: Nearly empty canvases when born, predisposed to certain biological predetermination which moderately shapes personality. But this life transforms us, for better or for worse. At the end of the day, we all want happiness and recognition. Without it, we go crazy.
People in LA: Like to go fast.
I Am: Slightly intimidated by the scope, speed, and toughness of this place.
Thanks: I want to thank Luciano for having the brass to ask that question, that he said he almost didn’t ask. I shouldn’t have needed him to say it, but I did need it, and I am eternally thankful for it.