Alumni Creators Turning Creativity into a Career

Rick Bickerstaff ’08
Communication major, religion minor
Filmmaker, screenwriter, songwriter, musician, author

Publishing my first book
I started writing All Roads Lead to Dockweiler: Devotions from the Ocean in the City of Angels in 2016, after moving back to Charleston from Los Angeles. I had been writing for a surf/skate/snowboard storage company website, as well as blogging about surfing and its connection to life and spirituality for a few years. The real crux of the journey, however, is that I was freshly back in Charleston but deeply missing Los Angeles, much of which was because of surfing (the waves are better in LA), but also the loss of dreams, friendships, and the city itself. So, it is largely about letting go when life takes you somewhere you may have not expected.

Writing All Roads was the most fun I had ever had writing, but when I finished, I didn’t really know what to do with it! It was part memoir, part practical surf instruction, and part Christian devotional —and it came with a music album too! It sat on my computer until 2020, when I dug it up again to do another draft. I pitched it to Peter Harmon (one of my favorite writers), and he ended up loving the manuscript, as well as its connection to my music project, Yonder Breaks. He decided he wanted to publish it under his High Dive Publishing moniker!

Creativity as a career
I’ve spent my entire adult life trying to pursue creativity as a career, which has been a winding road for sure! Back in 2008 this meant filmmaking, which led to a focus on screenwriting. After several years of working in the industry, I started my first novel in 2014, though it was also around then that I felt a strong call to music. I had been writing songs since high school, played in a few bands, but never really took it all that seriously. But when you feel like God has asked you to head in a certain direction, you listen! It has been a slow road, but I have seen a lot of fruit and met some great professionals along the way who have shown me different aspects of the industry. Lately, I spend most of my time working on producing music (mine and others), as well as the content creation and the administrative tasks necessary to support that role.

Creative work rarely pays all the bills, and so I have a part-time job at Delta Air Lines working on the ramp. This job tends to have quite a bit of downtime involved, and so I write books in-between flights, which is something I never stopped doing, even after the focus became music. Much of the drafts for All Roads Lead to Dockweiler were completed in that break room at LAX!

As for my favorite, I think it’s working with words that I just love. Lyrics are my favorite part of creating music, and of course writing prose or nonfiction is more of the same. I love the pace of written word, the time it takes to collect it and the ability to constantly rework what you’ve written, increasing its impact and flow. It is just so fun to share ideas and stories that entertain and/or inspire through written word, be it in music or on the page.

West Coast vs. East Coast
Southern California is such a dream, but it took me a while to really appreciate it. I came out here in 2008 for my last semester of college through a program called the Los Angeles Film Studies Center. Back then, I can’t say that I really enjoyed LA — it was too big city for me. But as soon as I came back to Charleston after that semester ended, I inexplicably began to miss it! I spent the next year saving up to move back to LA and pursue that filmmaking dream. But even after arriving, I found myself thinking quite negatively about living here: smog, traffic, the expense, everything being so dry and brown (it is a desert, after all).

After seven years, getting married and having two kids, we decided to go back to Charleston again. As soon as we got to South Carolina, I started dreaming about California! The beaches, the cool air that always feels like fall and smells so sweet in the spring, the culture and, most of all, our friends. When you leave your hometown for someplace far away, your friends become more like family. We had spent seven years developing relationships with folks who also left their hometowns, and so we shared a bond that can only happen in those types of circumstances. So we came back again after two more years.

My ideal job
I love being home and working on creative projects so much that I would be extremely happy to wake up every day to write and produce music at my home studio, while also writing books in-between. I have a dream of releasing music and written content together, which All Roads Lead to Dockweiler accomplishes (you get a free download of my album, Golden Coast Summertime when you purchase). My day job at Delta (which is something I started in Charleston thanks to my friend and fellow musician, Chris Baur ’06) has turned out not to be a bad gig. I get to work outside; it is physical, and so I am getting exercise every day, and I also get to work with big cool jet planes! The job includes flight benefits, so my family and I get to travel quite a bit!

My inspiration
My family is such an inspiration for all of this, and the book is dedicated to my wife (CSU alum ’09), who has been endlessly supportive of my entire creative journey. My website (yonderbreaks.com) description reads “Beachy folk music from a Stay-at-home Dad.” It was an interesting realization when, after spending so many years pursuing creative projects as a career, being a stay-at-home dad turned out to be my favorite job. It flips the whole career fulfillment thing on its head! As a result, I have lots of songs about the kids, about going to work and missing them, questioning if I’m being a good father or husband, and whether I have any of this life balance thing figured out. It’s something I think everyone with kids can relate to, but isn’t always vocalized in music or media, which is where I hope my stories and songs can fit in. As far as the book goes, the fourth section of it is titled “Fatherhood,” and was written about my years of going from working at NBCUniversal and surfing as much as I possibly could, to staying home with the kids and still trying to surf as much as I possibly could! You can imagine the tension that goes on there, which again, I think is relatable, even for nonsurfers!