LA: It's a Different Writing World

When it comes to writing, LA is a different world.

Actually, when it comes to everything, LA is a different world.  But that is a topic for another time.

The LA writing world revolves around screenplays (duh).  If, as a writer, you are not writing a screenplay, pitching one, writing a treatment, or sleeping with the producer who you want to make your movie, you are not writing. 

In other writing worlds, I like to think we are not quite so provincial.  This may not be true, but I like to think it is.  I like to think that when I go to the Mayborn conference on literary non-fiction this summer, my non-literary non-fiction pursuits will be given full respect and accord.  I like to think that I have equal respect for all genres of the writing world, screen-writing included.

Maybe it is because I attended a MFA program that emphasized, to the point that students got nauseous, the interrelatedness of the arts, and every semester we had to write in a different genre.

But this kind of broad-based respect for the arts just doesn't extend to screenwriters.  Hey--don't get me wrong, I love them to death, and some of my best buds (Hi, Brian) are screenwriters. 

But they just don't see any worlds other than their own.  The corollary to this is that people in the industry are the most provincial I've ever met.  I once had a lengthy discussion with an entertainment attorney, a guy who lived in Beverly Hills, and he couldn't believe that I regularly visited Nashville and Dallas.  I couldn't believe he rarely left LA.

Ah, but I'm just a girl from Oregon, where there are trees and fresh air and robins instead of the wild parrots that chatter outside my window here.

Photos courtesy of Wikipedia.