Hey, no problem. And welcome.
I'll try to explain this as best as I can, from what I've seen and experienced firsthand. I'm sure there are a bunch of articles you can find that touch on the broader advantages of being a screenwriter in LA, but as someone who's been both indirectly involved with the behind-the-scenes of multiple screenwriting competitions, and also has a business partner who did the whole write-from-another-state thing, here's what insight I can offer...
At least for the immediate, foreseeable future, an aspiring screenwriter simply cannot become a professional/successful screenwriter without representation, meaning an agent and/or a manager. And LA is, of course, where all the agents and managers are (though, yes, they are also in New York, but not nearly to the extent they are in LA). These are the people who not only guide your career, but get you the meetings. And the meetings are what result in the writing assignments, and the writing assignment are obviously how a writer makes a living. Very few screenwriters make a living writing on spec, meaning writing an original script before receiving payment, or before even knowing that someone might want to buy it. The way most screenwriters make a living is by taking meetings with production companies and studios, and either pitching to get hired to write a project a company already has in mind (an "open writing assignment") - or - pitching an original idea of your own that a company will then pay you to write.
Either way, the writer is getting paid (at least a portion of their fee) before they commence writing. In other words, it's what separates a career from a series of gambles.
So, the process of not only acquiring representation, but then taking meeting after meeting after meeting - for basically the duration of your career - is made infinitely easier by actually living in LA, where all of the studios and most of the production companies are as well. For instance, if you're a writer writing in your apartment in LA, your agent calls and says so-and-so loves your writing, wants to meet Tuesday at their office in Burbank, you say "great," hang up the phone, and then simply drive to that office at the scheduled time. If you're even halfway successful, this is likely going to happen multiple times a month, if not multiple times a week in some cases. And it's so much easier when you can just say ok and be wherever whenever someone asks you - when it accommodates THIER schedule.
But let's say you've somehow managed to land representation while still living in Texas or DC or even New York or wherever, and you get that same call from your agent. Now that meeting suddenly requires booking a plane ticket and a hotel room that you are almost assuredly paying for (unless, of course, you're big time/being courted). But writers in this instance never fly out for just one meeting. Your agent is going to have to bend over backwards to try and schedule a bunch of other meetings over the course of the five days or so they're going to want you to be in LA in order to maximize the trip and squeeze in a couple months worth of meetings. So you not only have to marathon these meetings, zipping all around town for five straight days, you're only meeting with the companies that can accommodate YOUR very limited schedule. And because meeting times are sparse, and execs are always cancelling last minute anyway because of some on-set emergency or a bigger name was available to meet in your time slot, you're severely handicapping yourself in terms of potential job opportunities that you would have otherwise been available to meet for had you been living in LA.
This speaks nothing then of actually having written a film that's in production, collaborating with execs, producers, and directors during development, working with other writers, etc - most of which is happening in LA. Or writing for TV. Again, certain successful screenwriters *do* find ways to live/write outside of LA. But no matter your level of success in the TV world, if you want to write for TV, you HAVE to live in LA (or New York, in some cases, if that's where your show is located) because of the nature of writers rooms and how all of that works. You simply can't write TV apart from your writing team, and that team is almost assuredly located in LA.
As for Atlanta, Austin, New York, Toronto, etc, if you want to be on a production crew or a featured extra, sure. Those are great cities to live in and still be a part of the film world. But I would venture to guess that, say, 90% of the projects filming in those cities are still written in LA (unless, again, the show you're working on is filming in New York, and even then, most of those are written in LA), or you're Tyler Perry living and writing in Atlanta.
If anything, at the very least, even just the willingness to live in LA shows everyone that you're serious, but actually moving here cements your dedication in the eyes of the gatekeepers. And you're going to need every advantage you can get in that regard. Again, you'd have to be an immensely talented aspiring screenwriter to insist on not living in LA and yet still have someone willing to take a chance on you. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, and either you or kais77 may very well be that good. I have no idea. Generally speaking, though, the chances are slim.
That said, both of you seem to have the necessary dedication, or at least level heads about the whole thing, and that's a good chunk of the battle right there.
