A Writer Writes

I’ve mentioned the writing habits of some famous authors in a previous article, here, but I wanted to dig a little deeper.  All writers have things that work for them, to make the hard art of staring at a blank page and filling it with thoughts a little easier, but habits can become a crutch and an excuse not to write. There’s always something or someone that comes along and kicks the crutch out from under you.  But if you want to write, or call yourself a writer, you write, no matter how hobbled you are.

                There’s a debate as to whether F. Scott Fitzgerald drank while he wrote.  Personally, I don’t think he did.  Or, if he did, he certainly cleaned it up in a sober draft.  It is a fact, however, that when he was on the wagon in Hollywood and working for the movie studios, he drank Coke-A-Cola constantly while he suffered away in his office, trying to conform to what the studios wanted.  Both of those are crutches, even if one is worse than the other. 

                Suffice it to say, the man was out of his comfort zone.  He lived most of his life on the east coast, or abroad in Europe, writing when he wasn’t too drunk or occupied with his manic wife, who was in and out of asylums (say what you want about Zelda, but she did try to kill them both by driving their car off a cliff after a party – and that’s only one of the documented episodes of their tumultuous life together), so the man had his hands full. 

                But, he continued writing.  And he wrote a lot. Maybe the quality of the old Fitz wasn’t always there in the short stories he was hacking out to pay for his daughter’s schooling and his wife’s medical bills, but he kept writing.  At the end of his life, when the most popular writer of the Jazz Age was all but forgotten, he managed to produce another classic novel from his sick bed.  The Love of the Last Tycoon, though he died before it was finished, is considered by some to be on the level of Gatsby, or better, if he had lived long enough to finish it.

                The point is, he was a writer who didn’t let his own habits and crutches get in the way of producing words. He wrote.

I wrote my first novel on a typewriter.  I found the rhythm of punching keys conducive to putting words on the paper.  The thing about typewriters, though, for all you kids out there who have never used one, is they use ink ribbons, which run out of ink.  These days you can’t exactly run to the corner store when you need a new one.  You have to order them and wait for them to come.  So, when the ink ran out, I was stuck.  I would have to break out of the habit, grab a pencil and notebook, and try to find that rhythm without the clackity clack of the typewriter keys.  It was hard, at first, but I managed to keep going until the mail arrived with my ribbon.

Another habit I formed was writing outside.  In the summer, when the mornings are warm and the sun comes up early, I would go out on the patio with my typewriter, or computer, or whatever other habit I had found necessary to help me get the words down, and write until the sun was to high and bright, or I had spilled to much sweat onto the paper.  It was glorious.  When I was stuck, I could light a cigarette, take a puff, and the word I was searching for would just come magically from the atmosphere.  (Smoking is a bad habit.  Don’t do it.)

I started that habit (the writing outside one) when I lived in California.  I live in the south now.  One big difference between the two, is that it rains a lot in the south.  So, when the rains come, and I stare outside at my flooded patio, pen and paper in disappointed hand, I get stuck.  How will the words come if I’m not outside to catch them?

Well, I sit on my couch, put pen to paper, and they come.  Not easily, mind you, but they do come.

If you want to be a writer, even one who only writes for themselves, you have to put the words down.  It’s not always easy.  You won’t always have your crutch.  But if it’s something you have to do, you’ll do it.

Five Things That Influenced Me As A Writer

I get asked a lot why I write, or where my ideas come from.  I don’t know the answer to either of those questions.  I started writing at an early age.  It’s something I’ve always known I wanted to do, and I’ve never given it up. 

                While I can’t answer either of those questions with a satisfactory answer, I can give you a brief list of what has influenced me as a writer.

1.        Comic Books

Comic books were my first literary love.  I discovered comics when I was a little kid.  My father worked the flea market circuit and took me on a trip to Canton, Texas.  There was a comic dealer there who had boxes and boxes of them, all for a quarter a piece. The cover art drew me in and the stories kept me going.  I’d devour the stories about super heroes, beg a quarter off my dad, and go back for more.   I was enthralled. 

                It wasn’t long after this I started writing and drawing my own.  First, I wrote stories about Superman and the Incredible Hulk duking it out, then I graduated to my own set of heroes.  The first stories I sold as a writer were comic books, written for my dad.  He’d give me a dollar to find out what happened in the next issues. 

                That counts as self-published, right?

2.       History

History is another influence that got me at an early age.  History is full of fascinating stories about heroes and villains.  Great adventures that lead to great discoveries.  It was always one of my favorite subjects in school, and when I got my hands on the history book I’d be studying that year, I always skimmed through and picked out the most fascinating stories.

                I’m still a history buff, and read biographies when I get my hands on them.  It used to be the Civil War, or Native American histories, but now, it’s just about anything I can get my hands on.  History is so much more fascination than fiction, because it really happened.  Lewis and Clark jumped into the great unknown west and mapped rivers and mountains no American had seen before.  John Dillinger escaped from jail, locking up thirty people in the process, and rode out of town in the sheriff’s car.  You can’t make those kinds of things up, but you can draw inspiration from them.

3.       Books

Books.  I just love them.  I love the smell, the feel, the covers, and what’s inside them.  You’d be surprised how many people there are that want to be writers who refuse to read.  Not me.  I read every chance I get and go through withdrawals when I don’t.

                I can’t name a particular book that made me want to be a writer.  I will tell you a brief anecdote about Earnest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls.  In my freshman year of high school, we were given a summer reading list, which I almost immediately lost.  The only book I could remember being on the list was, For Whom the Bell Tolls, so I picked it up and read it.  I loved it.  I had no idea who this Hemingway fellow was, but that book changed everything for me.  It wasn’t just good versus evil.  It was, why is there good, and who is evil.  There were questions posed.  Nothing is clear cut. This was life put into fiction. 

                Turns out For Whom the Bell Tolls wasn’t on the reading list.  It was an optional, or something.  But I’m glad I read it, and I’ve been a Hemingway fan ever since.

4.       Teachers

I have bad teachers and I’ve good teachers.  The bad ones don’t care.  They go through their lesson plan and rarely look away from the board to the little faces staring up at them, or lost in their own world waiting for the bell to ring.

                The good ones pay attention to the faces.  They give feedback.  They listen.  The ones who inspired me to try my hand at the craft of writing weren’t all English or Lit teachers.  Some of them were history teachers, and some were science.  But they infused imagination in their lesson plan.  They saw what their pupils were good or interested in and encouraged them to pursue it.  Teachers play a huge role in a person’s formative years, and this is no less true for a writer.

5.       My Dad

I’ve already mentioned him in this article, but he bears mentioning again.  The Old Man could tell a tale, as they say.  He was so good at it, it was hard to tell where fiction and fact merged.  He knew how to put a little bit of truth into every tale.

He was a natural storyteller and a voracious reader.  My interest in history comes from him.  He encouraged me to write and draw and supported my comic book habit even when he only had a few dollars in his pocket.  He wasn’t a perfect man.  We had our fights and disagreements, as fathers and sons always have and always will, but I wouldn’t be the person I am today if it wasn’t for him.

 Aspects of him turn up in my writing probably more than I am aware and I wish he was still here to read my stories, and give me a quarter to finish the next chapter.

Five Ways to Handle Rejection (From a Writer’s Perspective)

We all face rejection.  It’s a fact of life.  Nobody gets everything they want, even if they seem like they do.  As a writer, or someone who struggles to be a writer, we face it with every word we type.  How we handle the constant stream of rejection letters and just straight-up snubs can play a crucial part in our writing.  Here’s a few ways to handle rejection, and you can apply it to any area of life where rejection is a constant factor.

1.       Give Up

So, you’ve written the best piece of writing ever.  You’ve sent it out to all the publishers you can think of, and even a few agents.  This is going to be your big break. 

You check your inbox everyday for three months.  Finally, you see it.  A reply.  With a tight smile on your lips, you click the email.

                “Thank you for Submitting.  Unfortunately, the novel you’ve spent three years writing does not suit us at this time…”

                Well, a week later, you get another reply.  

“Thank you for Submitting.  Unfortunately, the novel you’ve spent three years writing does not suit us at this time…”

                And then a week later, you get this.

                “Thank you for Submitting.  Unfortunately, the novel you’ve spent three years writing does not suit us at this time…”

                In the world of writing, consider yourself lucky if you get that much of a reply.  There are, after all, a thousand other writers submitting to the same houses (or more, I’ll pulled that figure out of the air, but you get the idea) so what are the odds they’re going to pick your story?  I don’t know, to tell you the truth.  But if you’re not ready for a constant stream of rejection letters, then give up.  At least the slush piles the editors wade through will be shallower, and they can send me my rejection notice that much quicker. 

                You might want to remember this, though.  It took Jack Kerouac ten years to get On the Road published.  Sure, he went through a few drafts along the way, but it got published and he became a literary star.  I’m not saying this will happen to you, but I will say it won’t happen if you give up.  That’s a certainty.

2.       Come At It From A Different Angle

You’ve sent the same story out to twenty publishers, and every one of them sent you a rejection (or just never replied -  I hate those the most).  This is the time to sit back and re-read your story.  If you’ve sent it out to that many publishers, I can only imagine you’ve had time to put it away and forget about it (which is helpful to do before sending it in the first place).  By this time, reading your story should be like reading it for the first time.  You’ll see what makes sense and what doesn’t.  You’ll catch typos that, somehow, even after reading it a hundred times, you somehow missed.  Or you’ll that one paragraph you loved so much doesn’t move the story at all, and doesn’t add anything to it. 

When you’re too close to a story, you’re blinded by it.  You see things that aren’t really there, or miss things that are there.  It’s like not seeing the forest for the trees.  If you love writing enough to want to have it published, you’re going to have to put the work in.  I know writers who re-work a story twenty times before sending it out.  They change perspective, write it from different points of view, switch main characters.  All just to see which works best for the story before ever sending it out.  You’d be surprised how much better your story can be, if work at it from a different angle.

The worst that will happen is you’ll get another rejection notice.

3.       Get Angry

Who do these editors think they are anyway?  Don’t they see how ingenious my story is?  I’ve got themes upon themes, in this.  Symbolism you’d have to be blind not to see!  I’ve touched upon the isolation of the common man and the unity of societal woes all in under 5000 words!

This is gold baby! Pure gold!

                Who knows why the editor didn’t pick your story.  Could be it just didn’t fit in with the theme of their issue or publication.  Could be they filled their quota before they even read your world changing manifesto.  Or, it’s possible, and even likely, they just didn’t like your story. 

                Let that sink in.  They didn’t like your story. 

                It happens.  It happens a lot. 

                There are an infinite number of writers out there, all trying to break into the same small market as you.  In a field where everyone is doing their damnedest to stand out, to be seen and heard, your story has to scream and shout and then, maybe you’ll have the ball thrown to you. 

                Anger can help.  If you use it constructively.  Don’t let it eat you up, and don’t let it make you throw your laptop through the window.  Use the energy anger gives you to write your story and to make it shine.    

                One of the rules for writing is to show, not tell.  It gives the page an energy that keeps the reader reading.  Keeps them from getting bored.  Anger is conducive.  Let it flow onto the page. 

                And if you still get rejected?

                Throw the story out the window, and start again.  Angrier, this time.

4.       Get Sad

Sadness has an energy to it, too, and it can be just as useful.  Put these emotions into your characters.  What does your character do when they are sad?  Do they cry, or become withdrawn and sullen? 

Think about it. 

If you want the characters you’re writing about to have depth, to really pop off the page and into the mind of the reader, they need to have range.  Think of all the emotions you go through in one day.  Or even just a few hours.  All the highs and lows.  How do you express them?  Probably in different ways to different people.  So should your characters.

                I’m not saying your characters need to be a copy of you.  In fact, they probably shouldn’t be, depending on what it is you’re writing.  What I’m saying they need to feel real.  Emotional highs and lows, and how your characters handle them, go a long way into showing, not telling, who a character is, and why we should give a damn.

                Don’t let sadness at being rejected get in the way of your writing.  Use it.  Harness it.  As a writer, you have to you use all your resources.  Sadness is just another tool in the shed.  Pull it out when you need it.

       5.        Get Even

So, you’ve been rejected by every publisher you can find.  You’ve written story after story, polishing your prose and sharpening your writing skills, and still, no one wants to let you in the writer’s clubhouse.

                You’ve given up, tried different angles, got mad, and then broke down and got sad.

                Well, now it’s time to get even. 

                “How do I do that?” you ask.

                I’ll tell you how. 

                Start writing on your own terms.  Don’t wait for the approval of the literary magazines or publishing houses.  Don’t even worry about being published.  Just write and write and write.  Write the best you can.

We’re in the age of do it yourself writing.  We have avenues for writers our predecessors never had.  Self-publishing has existed for as long as the printing press has, or longer, if you count cave paintings (unless those guys were commissioned) but never have writers been able to reach such a massive audience.

 I’m not saying self-publishing is for everybody.  You’re most likely not going to get rich or offered a movie deal.  The chances of those things happening are slim, even if you get a book deal through a publishing house.  There’s also a certain level of cache at being accepted by one of the major publishing houses you don’t get from self-publishing.

But now the big houses are looking more and more to self-published writers who make a name for themselves.  You still have to do the work, just about all of the heavy lifting, but self-publishing is becoming more and more a viable option.  If you want to get even, then a successfully self-published book is about the best way to do it. 

And if you don’t make a dime off your self-published book?

Well, you’re not in this for the money, are you?

Ten Tips From Famous Writers, Interpreted by Me

A lot of people will offer you advice when you show them your work.  Some of it is useful, and some of it isn’t.  In the world of writing, different things work for different people.  Here, I’ve collected advice from some of my favorite writers, and thrown in my opinion for each one.  Some of them are interesting from a historical standpoint and some may even by apocryphal, but if you get anything out of what they have to say, you’ll be a better writer for it.

1.       Earnest Hemingway - “Write drunk, edit sober.”

This piece of advice isn’t the greatest, and is probably one of the apocryphal ones I mentioned above.  Hemingway wasn’t prone to doling out advise about writing.  Another one of his famous quotes, “There is nothing to writing.  All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed,” was, I think, a cheeky way getting around giving advice.  One thing I did pick up from Hemingway, is that he wrote standing up.  I don’t always do this, but sometimes it helps to get the blood flowing.  And like the man said, you got to bleed.

      

2.       F. Scott Fitzgerald

Fitzgerald was a sickly fellow and wrote a lot in bed.  I’ve never managed to be able to do that, but it seemed to work out for him.  The advice I found most helpful was a piece he gave to his daughter, Scotty.  He told her when writing a short story, get it all down in one sitting.  It helps to preserve the emotion and tone of the story.  If you can’t get it all down, then always read up to where you left off before beginning again.  Getting it all down in one sitting is hard for me, because I’m a slow writer.  But it does help to read up to where I left off before beginning again. 

He also told her, “Nothing any good, isn’t hard.” Ain’t that the truth.

3.       John Steinbeck

Steinbeck was a bit of a curmudgeon.  He wrote everything in pencil and the only person who could read his handwriting was his line editor.  When she died, his publisher forced him to start using a typewriter.  To get back them, he sent in a few pages typed in Russian.  One of the more useful pieces of advice I got comes from him.  Pick one person, and write for them.  For Steinbeck, it was his wife.  I like to change it up, depending on the type of story I’m writing.  But if you get stuck, its helpful sometimes to think about what that one person would find interesting and kick the ball that way.  Even if it’s in Russian.

4.       William Faulkner

For a man who didn’t do many interviews, Faulkner had a lot to say about writing.  He worked as the Writer-in-Residence at the University of Virginia in the mid-fifties, and much of what he had to say to his students has been made public.  What he had to say about stopping for the day has proved useful to me, especially when I’m working on a longer story.  He said, “Never write yourself out.  Always quit when it’s good.  Then it’s easier to pick up again.”  Basically, don’t exhaust yourself.  If you burn to bright one night, it’s going to be harder to get the flame going the next day.  That’s not an excuse to write one paragraph and call it a day. 

5.       Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler, author of hard-boiled detective stories who became a writer because he was broke, had this to say about writer’s block.

“Throw up into your typewriter every morning.  Clean it every noon.”  Chandler was an alcoholic, but I don’t think that’s what he was referring too.  If you’re struggling to get started, just sit down and start typing words.  Something will come of it.  And if nothing does, do it again the next morning.  Eventually, if you keep at it, something will come.  Remember, nothing any good is easy.

6.       Elmore Leonard

Elmore had a lot to say about writing.  In fact, he had a list of ten rules he liked to follow.  I’ll let you look that up for yourself.  It’s short, and worth the time.  The one I like to keep in mind is “if it sounds like writing, I re-write it.”   If it sounds like writing, its boring.  It’s hard enough to keep someone’s attention, and if you bore them, they’ll close the book on you.

7.       Stephen King

This guy’s written enough books to fill a library, so even if you aren’t a fan, his advice is worth listening too.  He’s even written books about it.  The one I live by is, “Kill your darlings.”  Kill them.  This pertains to editing.  Once you’ve written your story, put it away until you forget about it.  Take it back out once you can read it objectively.  Kill anything that doesn’t move the story.  Even if it took you two hours to write that paragraph, if it sounds like writing, kill it.  The delete button is there for a reason.  You’d be surprised how fast your story jumps when you take out the first few paragraphs.  Those first paragraphs were for you, not the ready.  Kill them.

8.       Cormac McCarthy

McCarthy is one of our modern recluses.  Aside from his appearance on Oprah promoting The Road, I have found very few interviews, either live or in publications, that he has done.  I did come across one quote that applies.  “I believe in periods, in capitals, in the occasional comma, and that’s it.”  If you’re familiar at all with his work, you’ll know he doesn’t believe in quotation marks, or translating Spanish dialog.  But the man is a genius and The Crossing is one of the best books I have ever read.  What you can take from this quote, is keep it simple.  Don’t try to thrill your readers with grandiose phrases and hundred-dollar words.  If it works it works, but remember what Elmore said, if sounds like writing, rewrite it.

 

      9.       Larry McMurtry

Another reclusive and another curmudgeon.  At least he appears to be in his interviews, but that might be the old Texas sense of humor.  His advice, and I’m sure all the writers I’ve mentioned so far would agree, is “Read, read, read.”  Read everything you can.  Even if your favorite genre is horror, or steampunk, read something you would never read.  Bust out a historical romance.  Or a fantasy.  Or true crime.  Just read everything you can, especially the classics.  See how the masters did.  See how the contemporaries do it.  If you’re not writing, then you should be reading.  It’s the only way to learn what works. Read!

10.   Truman Capote

“You must get into the habit of writing, even if it is only a paragraph a day.”

This is a must.  Capote, who wasn’t really very prolific, was one of the sharpest scribes who ever put pen to paper.  The only way to do that is to keep the pen sharp.  Exercise it every day.  If you only have time for a paragraph, then write that paragraph.  But write it.  You’ll be surprised at how much easier it gets if you do it every day.  Soon you’ll be doing a page a day. Some writers set a word count for the day.  Some do a page count.  Do what works for you, but get it down.  Anything.  Start a journal.  Make a list.  Just write something everyday to exercise that muscle and keep it in shape. 

These tips aren’t for everybody.  Use what you can and discard the rest because no two writers are the same.  I think some of these tips are universal, especially the write everyday one and the reading one.  Do both of those as much as you can and see where it takes you.  The rest is up to you.

The Toy (A Review)

All right.  I tried to write a review for one of my favorite Holiday movies (or what could be a Holiday movie) but this cold I’ve got won’t let me.  Instead, I’ll write about my cold. 

As a friend of mine likes to say, “The struggle is real, people.” 

That can mean different things to different people.  Today, it means I’m sick as a dog, but still must move forward.  I thought yesterday would be the worst, most peak part of the sickness, but I was wrong.  I woke up from a Nyquil daze feeling worse than before. 

Add to this the power has been out in my hallway and bathroom for two days, and while I’m sitting there, getting ready to leave for work, the maintenance guys come over and start trying to fix it.  I can see in their eyes they have no clue what to do.  But work won’t wait, so leave it in their hands, hoping its fixed by the time I get home. 

No luck.  Five hours later I pull up and there’s an electrician’s van in front of my apartment.  All I want to do is take a shower and wash the grease off my face, but instead I sit down and wait, and watch the electricians jump into the same routine as the maintenance guys, running up and down the stairs, checking outlets and doing electrical stuff.  In the background, I hear the beep-beep of the smoke detector, which I guess lost power too. 

“It’s always something,” one of the electricians says to me, as he sees me sitting on the couch moping about my predicament.

“It sure is,” I answer.

It sure is.  It is always something.  That’s part of life, I guess, and life would be boring without it, but in the moment, when all I want is peace and to wash my face off and not feel sick, the element of surprise that makes life special and worth living can go suck it, and get flushed down the toilet with my snot rags.

Anyway, they were still working on the issue when I had to leave and have dinner with my mom and brother.  It was his last night in town, so I dragged myself out of there, hoping I’m leaving the power outage in good hands, to meet them for burgers at a diner down the street.  My aunt and uncle show up, and when I get there I’m not feeling so bad, just a little hard of hearing because of the head cold. 

It’s a nice dinner, and even with my greasy face and the constant feeling that I’m about to sneeze, I have fun and try to make the most of it.  The waitress is slow, but it gives us time to make conversation.  I don’t see my extended family very often.  These are people who have been in my life forever, so it’s like a mini holiday in between holidays. 

When I get back home, the electrician’s van is gone.  I slowly open the door and walk inside.  The apartment is dark.  With calm precision, I flip the hallway light switch.  The light comes on.  I smile.  Things are looking up.  I go upstairs to the bathroom and flip the switch there.  Light!

I look longingly at the shower.  I hear a beep.  I’m so close to the shower I’ve been waiting hours to take.  Another beep.  It’s the fire alarm in the hallway ceiling, beeping from a low battery.  I want desperately to ignore it, but every couple of minutes it issues another beep that drives a spear through my brain.  I reach up and unscrew it.  It beeps in my hand.  I pull the battery out and drop it to the floor.  I’m going to get that shower, dammit.  It beeps again.  The smoke detector is taunting me.  I stare at it in my hand like its my newest sworn enemy.  Even dead, with no battery, it to beeps at me.  I think about that episode of Friends where Phoebe has the same struggle, and now I understand.  It’s real.  The struggle is real!

I’m not going to let it defeat me.  I put off the shower, go out to my car and drive down to the store and pick up a battery and more Nyquil.  I come back to the sound of the alarm beeping from the dead on the hallway floor, and put in the new battery.  At this very moment, as I write this, the smoke detector is dangling from the ceiling because it refused to screw back into the attachment.  But I won.  The beeps have stopped, I got my shower, and finally, I could relax.

The movie I was going to review was The Toy, starring Richard Pryor and Jackie Gleason.  It’s good.  You should watch it.   

Lifestyles of the Broke and Anonymous Part 1.

This is the first article in a series about Los Angeles, California, and my time there as a struggling musician, my accidental movie career, and tips on how you, too, can survive the daunting task of leaving everything you know behind, and diving into what Tom Petty called, The Great Wide Open.

Twelve years ago, I moved out to L.A., or what I like to call, The Land of Broken Dreams.  I moved to the city of stars and guided tours, like so many others, to try my hand at becoming a rich and famous musician.  That didn’t happen.  I didn’t even score an Oscar or a Grammy out of the deal.  But I did learn a few things along the way about how to survive in a strange city, where friends are few and far between, and everyone is either trying to get something out of you, or over you, or in you.

1.       FIND A PLACE TO SLEEP

This is a tricky one, but it’s important.  We’ll start with it because it’s the first thing you need to do after stepping off the bus, plane, or train that brought you this magical place of panhandlers and pickpockets.  I was lucky enough to have someone waiting on me.  He had been out there for about six months and told me we had a place.  The night before I left my hometown of Huntsville, Alabama, nervously excited about boarding that Greyhound Bus the next morning, to leave everything behind, I talked to him on the phone.  Turned out he had secured us a place, all right.  It even had rooftop access with a great view of the city.  And it was true.  It did have a great view.  The place he had secured, and I use that term very lightly, was the rooftop.

                Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m as romantic as the next guy, willing to tough it out for The Dream.  Nothing come easy, right? And I was young enough to say, “Sounds awesome, man! See you when I get there!”  and hang up the phone, visions of Jim Morrison living on his rooftop in Venice, writing songs from the concert he heard in his head floating in mine.

Only, our rooftop was in Downtown, Los Angeles, not Venice, and not the free loving bohemia of Jim Morrison’s era.  Our trip was a little bit different than Morrison’s summer long LSD vision quest.

I didn’t know any of that at the time.  I didn’t know the difference between Downtown L.A. and Venice. Or Hollywood and Santa Monica.  It was all just L.A. to me.  Turns out, there’s thirteen cities that make up the greater Los Angeles area, and I was running away from a city with a population of less than a million people to become just another lost hopeful struggling in the streets of Lost Angels.

And, it was fun.  It was like we were getting away with something.  We’d sit on the rooftop and write songs on acoustic guitars, while people walked the streets below, or worked in the office spaces inside the building, oblivious to our own quest.  We were living the dream, baby!

The rooftop had elevator access. That’s how you got up there.  So, we could tell when someone was coming when the doors dinged open.  That was all the warning we had.  There wasn’t a lot of traffic up there though, and we had our bags stashed beneath the air conditioning unit, out of sight.  When someone did come up, that’s where we stashed ourselves, laying down flat beneath this giant HVAC unit, waiting for the interloper to finish their cigarette, or phone call.  Whatever it was that brought them up there.  

                We made the best of it, but this wasn’t a permanent solution.  Lucky for us, it was summer, and L.A. was going through its usual dry spell.  But people started to catch on.  It was a little suspicious, I guess, that anytime someone came up to the roof, there we were, two dirty guys strumming beat up guitars.  There’s one thing about homelessness.  You can smell it on someone.  Something about the desperation in the eyes and constant B.O. gives it away.

                Eventually, we got some money together, and got a band room.  If you go this route, here’s a few pointers.  First, it’s got to have 24-hour access, so you can come and go as you please.  Also, put a radio in there, and learn to sleep with music playing (this works especially well if you’re not really a musician) so when you’re in there at night, it sounds like you’re working.  And of course, make sure there’s a bathroom with a good faucet.  You got to be able to wash your feet in a situation like this.  Other body parts matter, too, but your feet, man, your feet! (more on this in a future installment)

                Another option, and probably a better one if you’re flying solo, is to get yourself a car or van.  Vans can be awkward, especially if you’re not used to the traffic of a big city.  But if you strap on your big boy pants (or big girl pants), a van will offer you the room and privacy you just can’t get sleeping in the backseat of the Kia hatchback you got off Craigslist.

                Next, scope out the neighborhoods.  Find a place to park that beast.  You’ll have to move it occasionally for the streetsweeper, but once you find a good location, you’re set for a while.  This isn’t the safest option, but life in the city ain’t never safe.

                Now, I just mentioned Craigslist. Craigslist is full of scammers and fake ads, but in a city like L.A., Craigslist is a vital tool.  If you have the dough-ray-me, you can squeeze yourself into a roommate situation, often without a credit check, or background check.  Lots of people rent out their couch, or section off their apartment with partitions and rent the space.  It’s not glamourous, but this is the real Hollywood.  Besides, if you had the money to get your own respectable place, you wouldn’t need any of this advice.

                My last suggestion for finding a place to sleep is to check out the hostels.  This only works before you get an L.A. license, so keep that in mind.  Also, thirty to forty bucks a day adds up quick.  While it’s nice to get a good shower now and then, I don’t recommend the hostels for any kind of long engagement. 

                So, if you have dreams of living in La-La-Land, and are hungry and desperate enough to make that leap, go for it.  Just know, it’s not going to be easy.  You have to want it, you have to work for it, and you have to suffer for it. 

                Unless you have the money to get into a nice $2500 a month apartment, plus deposit, and credit check.  In that case, can I crash on your couch?