so that her husband could further pursue film work. There, Szymkoski
found work as a reporter for The San Bernardino Sun. "I liked reporting,
but it wasn't entirely satisfying to me." She sometimes found herself frus-
trated that the people in the stories she reported on were not giving her
the quotes she envisioned. Seeing an ad for a screenwriting class, she
enrolled and from the first day discovered that she loved it. She wrote her
first screenplay while continuing to work at the newspaper.
When her husband's career
began to take off, the couple
decided to move closer to Los
Angeles, and Szymkowski quit
her job to devote her energy to
screenwriting. Initially she
thought she would pursue
television sitcom writing, and
even performed standup
comedy in clubs, trying to
network and improve her
skills. At the same time, she
finished a second screenplay
and entered it in most of the major screenwriting contests. Although she
did not win, she was a finalist for the Walt Disney Writing Fellowship
and the Chesterfield Writer's Film Project, and a quarter finalist in the
Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting competition.
Szymkowski won the Carl Sautter Memorial Screenwriting
Competition, which got her screenplay into the hands of a producer and
led to a meeting at Imagine Entertainment. She is currently working on
an idea for them that potentially will be presented to Universal for
funding. Although she did not win the Set in Philadelphia Screenwriting
Contest, one of the judges, screenwriter Stephen J. Rivele, felt she should
have. He referred her to an agent and is interested in turning her screen-
play into a sitcom.
Since devoting herself to screenwriting, Szymkowski has completed
several writing classes at American Film Institute (AFI), UCLA, and other
extension courses. She also participates in a screenwriting group.
"I am very happy I've come upon [screenwriting] as what I want to do
with my life. Now, I'm at the point where if this doesn't work out, I don't
know what I would do. I can't imagine doing something else."
....
"There is a really
good web site: www.
moviebytes.com, that
has a link to contests."
--Beth Szymkowski
"Always be improving."--Beth
Szymkowski
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