Hollywood is all about connections. Networking is how people make connections. L.A. has tons of networking events every week, helping people meet people who can help them move forward to the next stage of their career.

As a writer, it's easy to get so caught up in networking that you don't leave yourself time to keep writing. As an unproduced writer with no income, it's also easy to go broke joining all the various networking organizations all over town.

When I first moved to L.A., it took me a while to find the networking group that worked for my schedule, budget, and career goals. That group is the Scriptwriters Network, a nonprofit now celebrating its 25th anniversary.

Their flagship program is the Speaker Series events, held on the backlot at Universal Studios, right next to the "Desperate Housewives" and "Parenthood" soundstages. Writing can be lonely. Getting out of my cave once a month, hearing professional A-listers talking about their experiences as real working writers, always sends me home with my creative juices flowing, motivated to jump back on my computer and keep plugging away.

On a recent panel of Sci-Fi writers, octogenarian George Clayton Johnson held us spellbound with his tales of breaking into the business writing for the original "Star Trek" and "Twilight Zone" series, and inspired us with his perseverance to get around the tougher-than-ever obstacles that exist now to getting anything produced. (He also wrote the original Ocean's Eleven from 1960 and co-authored the novel Logan's Run, which is being remade with Ryan Gosling.)

With the feature spec market flatlined, more and more new writers are arriving in town with a focus on TV writing. So last month, Scriptwriters Network hosted a panel of writers from "Will & Grace," "Friends," "Desperate Housewives," "Once Upon A Time," "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," and "Family Guy."

Breaking into TV has a more clearly defined path than trying to sell an original movie script. You write a spec episode of an existing show to demonstrate that you can write within an established voice, and you write a spec pilot to show your originality. You're not trying to sell these. They are samples you're using to get a job as a writer's assistant.

Once you're through that door, as long as you can type fast and don't have a personality that makes everyone tense and uncomfortable, you will be given opportunities to contribute to the writing. From there, you'll follow a set hierarchy: staff writer, story editor, executive story editor, co-producer, producer, supervising producer, and then executive producer. (These are all writing positions. The titles can include other duties, but they mostly indicate how much you get paid.)

I never studied TV writing, so I found it fascinating and educational to be in a room with these professional writers, hearing them talk about writing the way real writers do in an actual writers room. How they break down a story. How they work with other writers collaboratively. Learning industry jargon like "hard jokes" (a standalone joke you can send someone in an email, as opposed to one where you'd have to be familiar with the characters or a storyline to get it).

I'm not plugging these seminars just because I'm a board member of Scriptwriters Network. I volunteered to run two of their programs because I get a lot out of attending these events and I wanted to be a part of helping to keep the organization a valuable service to the community of up-and-coming screenwriters.

And knowing how budget-conscious many beginning screenwriters have to be, I found Scriptwriters Network to be a great value compared to what other organizations charge or how much it costs to take a UCLA Extension course.

If you're not a member, or not in L.A., written summaries recapping many of our presentations are posted on our web site. We've also been videotaping the events and, while it's still to be determined where these will be made available or whether there will be a fee to view them, we have already posted, for free, the video (click here) of our most popular panel featuring the writers of the blockbusters Lethal Weapon, Shrek, Pirates of the Caribbean, Iron Man, X-Men, and Watchmen, all in one room!

Photo (left-to-right): SWN President Michael Engel, SWN Vice President David Kurtz, TV writers Jane Espenson ("Buffy the Vampire Slayer"), Jeff Greenstein ("Will & Grace"), and Cherry Cheva ("Family Guy"), SWN Executive Director Melessa Sargent, and Dan Margules!

Dan Margules! is a Los Angeles based screenwriter and novelist, co-founder of San Diego Filmmakers, and a board member of the Scriptwriters Network. His short film Begleiter is available in a Special Edition from Amazon.com or happy-the-dog.com.