Matthew Hickman was born and raised in rural Georgia. After dropping out of law school, he started working an hourly-wage job at a UPS store, and saved money for a year in hopes of moving to Los Angeles to begin a screenwriting career.
Several months ago he arrived in Santa Monica, where he now works at another UPS store, writing in his off hours. He recently published a [novella on Amazon Kindle](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004LLIEZW/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=johnaugustcom-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399349&creativeASIN=B004LLIEZW”) and has just started work on his second feature length script.
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I want to stress my beginnings here because I know that for many of you, getting to L.A. is the battle before the battle. I think many of John’s readers may have a sensation similar to what I felt in the time I read this blog before I moved to L.A., and that’s one of isolation. In the middle of reading all this talk about getting an agent, pitches, script revisions, options, treatments, and copyrights, many of you probably feel left apart entirely from the ability to act on your ambitions. I know I did.
How it starts
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As I sit here in my two hundred square foot studio, water is boiling on the stove. I live in a guest house attached to someone’s guest house. I’m not completely broke, but I do eat a lot of spaghetti these days. I don’t have much money to go out with friends, much less go out looking for them.
On the other hand, I recently paid eleven bucks to see a screening of The King’s Speech followed by a Q&A with David Seidler, Tom Hooper, Colin Firth, and Helena Bonham-Carter. The next week it was Darren Aronofsky between screenings of Black Swan and Pi. At my day job I’ve had conversations with Marcus Dunstan, Lester Lewis, and others about advice for new writers. I’ve met Jessica Biel without knowing it, and walked by Paul Haggis on an empty sidewalk on a Sunday afternoon. If I hadn’t been wearing a Cookie Monster t-shirt at the time (don’t ask), I probably could have exchanged a few words with him about what it takes to succeed here. Lastly (and most importantly), I’ve met countless other transplants from Normalville, USA looking to carve out their place in the entertainment industry.
All this has happened during my first four months in Los Angeles. These are a few of the trade-offs I’ve gladly made for a shot at what most of you reading this column want: to be a screenwriter.
Unlike a lot of the first-person columns you’ve been reading the last few months, I haven’t accomplished much yet as a screenwriter. I don’t have any writing credits to my name, none of my work has been optioned. Hell, I don’t even have an IMDb profile. But I have made one significant step toward that dream of being a working writer we all harbor: I made the jump and moved to Los Angeles.
For those unconvinced about the benefits of moving here, see the above paragraph for examples of why you should rethink your position. I’m not just namedropping (Jessica Biel aside). If a guy freshly transplanted from the foothills of Appalachia can run into all these people, imagine who you could meet here.
And I don’t even have a car.