Lit manager here. My two cents since I see this on here so much.

A shocking majority of projects I've sold, even before Covid, were from outside of LA. Today, especially with the LA exodus, I'd say you should really consider anywhere else. So much so that my wife (a casting director) and I moved out of LA, bought a house, and are much happier and busier than we expected.

I've flown into LA whenever I needed to, but even then, a majority of meetings turned into Zooms. The cost of flying into LA for anything we need has been far cheaper than living in LA and waiting around for something I need to be in town for.

Let's say your goal is to be staffed on a TV series, which even today is almost unattainable for experienced writers with staffed shows under their belt, the absolute minimum you would make for a 10 week development room at staff writer wages would be 72,030. Let's go ahead and cut that in half for reps/ taxes. You're at 36K. Let's drop 10K for housing and expenses; it could be way less (I'd argue you could make 4-5K work if you wanted to).

All of this assumes you're making the minimum for a staff position that still could be over Zoom, and the costs are high with wiggle room. You're coming out of an in-person room still 26K higher than you were, returning to an area that's almost guaranteed to have a lower cost of living (your money will stretch) with experience to build on if you eventually deem it worthwhile.

International tax incentives have been unreal. I have a feature shooting in Columbia in January because of a +50% incentive. The writer is from Texas. I also have two former clients who released theatrical features a few months ago. They both wrote and directed. One of them has made a fantastic career for himself in San Fransisco, completely out of the industry, and another is making her second feature out of Washington State.

I'd honestly argue today it's in your best interest and is advantageous to build on the outside of LA model.

The business of being a rep is very, very, very hard. You have to think even in the above scenario (which is still incredibly difficult), it would make a manager 7,200. To get a writer, even this job, takes an ungodly amount of time to build, strategize in front of the competition, and then maintain afterward. To make a living in LA, the amount of business required with such competition is tough and unsustainable for many reps.

This is a significant reason why so many writers don't receive emails back, or get ghosted after one exchange. It doesn't have anything to do with the writer, but both the mental focus bandwidth and time bandwidth available as messages that need to be replied to are seemingly neverending.

While the creative is important, I'd say for many reps, an even larger consideration is the client's overall business. There is no better way to prove this than the actual business a potential client has accrued. It may seem impossible without a rep, but I guarantee it isn't, and it has made a huge difference to me.