Dear Los Angeles,

We came here 'cause you let us hope.

HOPE we could still sell a spec feature in the high 6 and buy a house in the hill and forget everything that happened that got us here -- and I mean everything --

HOPE your upstairs neighbor with the OCD will settle her lawsuit against your other upstairs neighbor, the 18 year old Korn roadie who can't be vocally hamstrung when he's entertaining his ladies --

HOPE you moved into the right ethnic neighborhood, the one with good barbeque and people known the world over for their politeness and proclivity for robots instead of the one with the firecrackers and the bandits --

HOPE you don't RSVP to parties too soon and miss the better opportunities --

HOPE you don't marry too soon, same reason --

HOPE your folks forget to check up on what it is you're doing out here --

HOPE you forget your religion, if you come from one of them religions they do documentaries about and your friends mock in the form of interactive theatre at the holidays --

HOPE your visiting relatives don't wear shorts and don't want to visit Citywalk or Jay Leno or your work or your YouTube -- HOPE no one ever utters the words "dry heat" --

HOPE you see all movies on opening weekend and the hottest viral videos the second they upload and the lowest rated TV shows and theatre so underground you have to bring your own shovel to find it -- and if not, HOPE you don't ever want to make conversation in Silverlake again --

HOPE you can get friends to come see your reading and your improv and your stand-up and your one-woman show and your puppetry arts -- HOPE you'll stop being invited to theirs --

HOPE you never hear the words "not in our wheelhouse", "we're going in another direction" or "Michael Bay's attached to direct" --

HOPE you learn to fake self-deprecation in order to fend off all the jealousy you'll elicit from people who imagine your life is much better than it really is --

HOPE you hook up with the right mentor, the right cult, the right alternative healer who prescribes the right supplements, the right biomeridian channels, the right home-delivery vegan diet system--

HOPE you get a show and it's a hit so you can throw your cousin some work, the one whose couch you lived on for two years when you first got out here when you still thought you had any chance to make it as a novelist --

HOPE your vibe and your energy and your essence and your chi all resonate in a gnarly positron annihilation --

HOPE your project moves forward, and by project, we mean life.

HOPE you love me, Los Angeles, as much as I love you. Thanks for everything.

Julie Bush

Dear Los Angeles,

Now, I'm not complaining. That would go against everything I learned in film school. Persistence, perseverance, all those "per" words they drilled into my head have been my first line of defense in awkward conversations about my career for the past four years. Because being a screenwriter is like, so different.

Hey Los Angeles-- you know what a MacGuffin is, right? You must've had writers telling you this for years. I can tell you, too. It's what drives the plot in a work of fiction. It's rosebud in Citizen Kane. It's the unobtanium in Avatar. That one was a little on the nose, though. I can tell you about on the nose, too. And the perfect three act structure. I even read the Chinatown screenplay like, twelve times.

I was being groomed for greatness. Well, me and my entire class of aspiring scribes. We were all equipped with the tools we needed to turn Hollywood upside down and, just maybe, write the next Little Miss Sunshine. Then we graduated.

I've known a lot of cities like you, LA-- cities who exist in the minds of young and hungry film students and dreamers in only the most idealistic way. Cities that are super metropolis' equipped with the potential to unseat the very entertainment industry and reinvent the idea of storytelling as we know it. Or at least that's what you think when you get here.

I swear I'm not complaining, though. It's just-- I'm staring at a long list of missed opportunities on my dry erase board. It's a list of TV shows. Shows that I was up for a writer's assistant job on. Each rejection a small twist, if you will, in the second act of the movie of my career trying to write movies and TV.

Yeah Los Angeles, everyone's a screenwriter. Honestly, I could've driven out here on a cross country whim after my high school all night graduation party and been in the exact same spot as I am now. Suddenly those four student films I helped write, light and direct seem sort of pointless. Now it's all about producing a web series and having a hilarious Twitter feed. That gets you a young and hungry agent. Knowing what a MacGuffin is doesn't.

And my classmates? One guy knew a guy who wrote three freelance episodes of Northern Exposure. He said he'd put a good word in with a hot young drama producer he knows. And we pretend be happy when that guy gets a meeting, then an agent then, finally, we clink glasses of beer over that guy's first staff job. But the whole time, we're all thinking the same thing: "Why isn't this me?"

A friend once said to me, "Absolutely, go to LA. Go make people laugh and cry. Just don't wake up and realize that it's five years later." So I'm not complaining, Los Angeles. That would just make me a bitter writer. And they definitely don't teach that in college.

Aaron Kaczander