According to a Chapman University survey on American fears, our top phobias are public speaking, heights, and bugs. (Fear of clowns rolled in fourth on the Chapman list, but is #1 on my personal scared-sh*tless-o-meter.)
Most people panic the instant they realize they must, at some later date, speak in public. Personally, I don’t freak out until I step out of the car at the venue and walk the green mile to the podium. Since my novel was released in June I have been on a “book tour”—a loosely organized schedule of speaking engagements designed to give me just the right amount of time between events to forget any validating feelings of adequacy and success that I may have had after a good talk, and focus instead on all that could go wrong at the next one.
The pithy tips I’ve been given, like “imagine the audience in their underwear, “drink plenty of fluids,” “wear a favorite article of clothing,” and my personal favorite, “snap a rubber band across your wrist to distract yourself from anxiety” have been more problematic than useful.
The first time your former brother-in-law walks in and you spit a mouthful of hydrating Evian across your notes while your rubber band zings a lady in the first row across the eyeball, you realize that people are staring at you, and not because they admire your lucky blouse.
If our #1 fear is public speaking, then, ipso facto, nearly everyone must be afraid to do so. So when you stand on the dais and stare blankly into the audience like a cow at dusk, people are thinking, “Holy crap, I could never do that.” Boom. You are a hero. No one needs to know that you begged your boss to send someone else, faked your own death, or downed an entire bottle of Imodium and still have the runs.
Here are a few tips that have helped me overcome my anxiety, and actually enjoy the public speaking experience:
Know your topic.
Memorize three key points about your subject that you could spout in your sleep. No matter what happens, or what someone might ask if there’s a Q&A involved, you can always expand on your three main points even if you have forgotten everything else.
I once heard a CNN newsman ask George W. Bush about similarities between the war in Iraq and Vietnam, to which Dubya replied, “I’m so glad you asked that. I thought you were going to ask me about the Medicare drug benefit program we just signed into law. The Medicare drug benefit program I just signed into law is the greatest expansion of…” Bush went on to speak for five minutes about that without ever addressing the reporter’s question.
Genius. Use it.
Get organized.
Write and rewrite your notes until they are perfectly organized on index cards or papers that are numbered and impossible to mix up.
Create a check list: glasses if you need them, two sets of notes – in two places on your person in case your purse or satchel is snatched, or you encounter a clown and drop everything into the sewer, Imodium (for obvious reasons), Chapstick or Vaseline so your lips don’t stick to your teeth, business cards, and any props or visual aids you use in your presentation.
Be 100% clear on the location of your event and how to get there. Mapquest or GPS the route days prior to the event, then print the directions in case an electromagnetic disturbance on Mars wipes out our satellites, rendering GPS useless. Figure out how long it will take to get there, at that time of day or night, and allow an extra 30 minutes in the event of traffic, lack of parking, or another trip to the restroom.
Gas up the car earlier in the day. You don’t want to risk being late or smelling like gasoline at your event.
Practice makes perfect.
Stand and rehearse aloud. Over and over. This will usually create the need to modify your notes. If there are words you trip on, highlight the words or write them out phonetically.
Rewrite your notes in “breaths” or paragraphs of “dialog” that mimic your speaking style. If you take a breath after two sentences, or after you’ve made a particularly strong point, place spaces in your notes accordingly.
Highlight or “bold” words you want to emphasize. Seriously, do it over and over, aloud, rewriting the notes until you can deliver what’s on the page effortlessly and with the emphasis you want.
Embrace silence.
The most powerful people on earth rely on silence rather than words to make their most dramatic points. Whether you are speaking about widgets or financial planning, begin with a rhetorical question such as “what is a widget?” Then pause dramatically for a few seconds while you glance from person to person.
Watch the body language. People will sit up straighter. You will almost be able to see the cogs turn in their brains. The silence will have given you power. Anything you say thereafter will seem more important. It’s a cool little trick. It also buys you a little time for a couple of deep breaths, which will lower your blood pressure and give you the further appearance of not being nervous.
If you have lost your place, or your mind has suddenly gone blank, again, pretend it was part of your plan. Stop fully. Take a sip of water. Regroup mentally. People will think you’re “saying something” with the silence. Let ‘em!
Close big.
Everyone likes a compliment. When it’s all said and done, take one last deep breath and tell the audience that you were a little nervous about your presentation, but this audience, these wonderful, receptive folks made you feel completely comfortable. Give them a little applause, and they’ll applaud you doubly, because 99% of them are thinking, “I could never do that.”
If you are in the Milwaukee area, visit me at the Wauwatosa Public Library on Wednesday, October 28th at 7PM. See if I practice what I preach. Click for details.
One thing I’m not terribly nervous about is writing, and this week Feng Shui and Charlotte Nightingale received the best review ever from Windy City Reviews! Click below for the review.
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Writer’s block.
The condition of being unable to think of what to write or how to proceed with writing.
I have a deadline. The words will not come. The muse has left the building. What’s the first thing I do to deal with the situation? I google writer’s block, of course.
(Ina Garten’s succulent chicken potpie.)
Whilst researching writer’s block I stumbled upon this delicacy, and immediately went to the grocery store for the ingredients, which I brought home, unpacked, organized according to the recipe, or formula as my pops calls it, and just scant hours later, voila! I still had writer’s block, but now I also regretted having consumed approximately 3,500 calories in one sitting. (That includes the KitKats I purchased with the potpie ingredients, which I allow myself as a “tool” when I suffer from writer’s block.
Next, I fell asleep on the keyboard. More accurately, I was in a cholesterol coma. When I awoke my deadline was even nearer, and pure panic set in. I returned to google where I learned from other writers that the way to beat writer’s block is to:
I don’t know about you, but when my task is to sit at the computer and write, getting out and doing something seems like a distraction. I “got out” and made a damn chicken pot pie and where did that get me? (A few words on chicken potpie, but I mean, other than that, zilch.)
Here are a few lo-cal, legit tips for overcoming writer’s block:
1. Write the ending first.
Work backwards from there. Sounds ridiculously simple. It works.
2. Pretend you’re writing it in a letter to someone you know.
John Steinbeck once told George Plimpton, who was suffering from writer’s block, “Pretend that you’re writing not to your editor or to an audience or to a readership, but to someone close, like your sister, or your mother, or someone that you like.”
Dayum if that doesn’t work, right mom?
3. Freewriting.
Set an alarm for 10 minutes and write continuously without regard for spelling, punctuation, grammar or topic. This exercise usually produces raw, unusable material, but it ameliorates the “arthritis” in your brain and fingers, and helps overcome the apathy and self-criticism that sabotage our writing efforts. Freewriting is great for uncovering ideas and giving inspiration a little kick in the pants.
4. Write as if you’re John Kennedy (or an amazing speech-giver of your choosing).
For many years I was the family eulogist, a particularly difficult task in the case of my beloved grandpa Ferderbar. I couldn’t get a single thought down because my emotions had flooded the engine with a million memories at once. I had to get it done—the pressure was unbearable. I closed my eyes and for some reason John Kennedy’s famous inaugural speech popped into my head.
I heard the peculiar cadence of Kennedy’s delivery as clearly as if he were standing beside me. What if J.F.K. were writing grandpa’s eulogy, I thought. And the words tumbled out and through my fingers like magic. I read aloud as I typed, trying to replicate Jack’s inflection. This little “trick” allowed me to write without being swept to sea on waves of grief, and it helped me define the key points I wanted to highlight in my grandfather’s life.
5. Lower your standards.
American poet William Stafford wrote, “There is no such thing as writer’s block for writers whose standards are low enough.” I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean we should write garbage. I think he might have been referring to act of just getting something down v. staring at a blank screen until your eyes cross—a lot like dieting. If you intend to lose 20lbs by Saturday you will fail, much as if your goal is to write the world’s best blog. I think we can all agree where that sort of pressure gets a person.
In closing, a quote from one of my all-time favorite authors, Charles Bukowski:
“Writing about writer’s block is better than not writing at all.”
Mic drop.
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What could go wrong? —the four words most responsible for inertia, stagnation, and old age in people who are not chronologically old. Sure, I don’t look at a perfectly slanted roofline overlooking a swimming pool and automatically calculate my trajectory into the deep end like I used to (for one thing I don’t see as well, and “broken bones” is not a good color on me), but I have found that risk is what defines a life well-lived.
Some folks are wired to take bigger risks than others, like those guys who fly around the Alps in squirrel suits or have extramarital affairs with fitness instructors. But that doesn’t mean you’re not living on the edge when you mix plaid with paisley. Or try to save a marsupial.
My dear friend Sheryl is an animal lover. In fact, there’s very little Sheryl wouldn’t do for an animal. A lot of people will tell you they are animal lovers. Compared to Sheryl they are amateurs.
One day as Sheryl was driving on the 405 Freeway in Los Angeles (the busiest expressway in America) she spotted what she thought to be a frightened opossum in the center lane. There are seven lanes, so we are talking lane 4, with three lanes of speeding traffic to either side.
Being a cautious driver, Sheryl immediately put on her car’s warning flashers as she slowed to a crawl. She opened the driver’s door and scooped up the little fella, causing 789,453 other vehicles to react in pinball pandemonium.
The trouble was, the possum was dead; stiff-as-a-board road kill. Sheryl was en route to my place for a dip in the pool as it was 117 degrees in the shade. Dear sweet Sheryl couldn’t, in conscience, just throw the decedent back onto the freeway, so she brought him to my house where my dogs attempted to rip her Lexus apart the instant she came down the driveway.
I suggested we place the critter in a solid steel trash compactor bag and seal it up, but Sheryl felt this was to desecrate God’s creation, and she insisted upon wrapping him in a towel and putting him in my garage until she was ready to leave, at which time she would take him to the Wildlife Way Station where, it was Sheryl’s feeling, they would give him a proper burial. (I will argue now, as I did then, that they don’t perform ritual animal burials at the Wildlife Way Station, but I can’t say for sure.)
Two hours later there were vultures circling overhead, and a stench like the end of the world emanating from my garage. I am ashamed to admit I threw Sheryl and her decomposing buddy out at that point, but I learned something about risk and reward that day.
I learned that no matter what thousands of other drivers think of you, regardless of whether your friend berates you because the garage needs to be fumigated, and aside from the fact that you may have died on the 405, some risks are so noble, and so loving, that they earn you a tiny little piece of immortality, and my undying love and admiration.
I like watching the Youtube videos of the dudes in the squirrel suits, but they have nothing on my friend Sheryl, who has also mixed plaid and paisley. She is badass.
What’s your badass risk and reward story? email me. And be sure to follow me at Huffington Post.
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1. Are you sleeping?
Firstly, we are not sleeping. We are “working,” which means although our eyes are closed and we are possibly drooling, we are hard at work, mentally stringing together words in what will ultimately emerge as a perfectly crafted sandwich, I mean sentence. A sentence sandwich, if you will.
Secondly, although technically we are not dogs, if you come upon what appears to be a slumbering writer, by all means let her lie. We don’t respond well to being roused from our “work.”
2. What are working on?
When is your baby is due? Oh, you’re not pregnant? My bad. Okay, seriously, if you want to go out on a limb and risk everything, sure, ask this question. But be prepared for the onslaught. It goes something like this;
“What am I working on?! I’d like to be writing my next book, which the publisher is breathing down my neck about, but since I am not JK Rowlings nor the chick who wrote that 50 Shades thing I must do 99.99% of my own promotion and marketing on a book that narrowly got published in the first place, to which I dedicate 18 hours a day blogging, guest blogging for other writers, trying to get other writers to guest blog for me, learning what a blog tour is, trying to organize a blog tour, rescheduling a blog tour because everyone is too busy trying to do their own blog tour to do my blog tour, emailing reviewers, sifting through reviewer rejections, begging people to write reviews on Amazon just to sell one book from which I make 10%, which earns me about $35.50 per year, broken down to less than a penny an hour, which I reinvest in the form of wine. How nice of you to ask. Where did you go?
3. Do writers always drink this much?
The answer to this is not as simple as it would seem. First, we must quantify “this much.” Do you refer to the amount in the writer’s glass at the time the question is asked, or the cumulative total of wine consumed in your presence on this particular occasion, or do you refer to the empty cabernet bottles rolling away from the recycling bin?
Secondly, we must qualify the term “drink.” Much like “sleeping,” which we covered above, “drinking,” or “to drink” have different meanings in the context of “the writer.” While you may think the writer is drinking, she is actually working, mentally stringing together words in what will ultimately emerge as a perfectly crafted sentence. Staggering, slurring, even falling down are attributed to the sheer volume of words, and their weight (especially the really big words), shifting from one side of the brain to the other, knocking the writer off balance—disturbing the equilibrium, if you will.
Hemingway working. Cuba, c. 1944
4. What made you decide to become a writer?
As a child, the writer discovers her ability to use words to entertain, to express doubts she has about her place in the world, and to write notes that say “help me I’m being held prisoner,” which she then ties to the dog and sends into the “grown up” dinner party to which she has been forbidden to attend, and must stay in her bedroom as it is past her bedtime.
At the age of puberty, the writer discovers the great poets, chief among them Bob Dylan, and she gets a taste of the rebellious, majestic, and meteoric power of words.
In college, she has a professor like Marty Jack Rosenblum, who doesn’t tell her she should be a writer. He tells her she is one.
Martin Jack Rosenblum, in memoriam 1946-2014
Photo courtesy Peck School of the Arts
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An eponym is a person, a place, or thing for whom or for which something is named, or believed to be named.
Example; theologian John DUNS Scotus, mocked and thought by many to be a nincompoop. Today, a nincompoop is a dunce.
In the mid 1800s, Amelia Jenks Bloomer, a suffragette and temperance advocate, donned the original form of granny underpants, modeled after pantaloons worn by women in the Middle East and Central Asia. Known as bloomers, these undergarments were subjected to ceaseless ridicule in the press and harassment on the street.
Considered a form of birth control, bloomers were banned by the Church in 1874.
Over in Germany in the late 1800s, Rudolf Diesel, monkeying around with ammonia vapor and a Bunsen burner, was nearly blown up in one of his experiments to produce an alternative to gasoline. It could easily have gone another way, and truckers would be looking for the best price on something completely other than diesel.
The inspiration for the 1867 hit song “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze,” Jules Leotard, a French acrobat who developed the art of the trapeze, also invented a one-piece knitted garment streamlined to prevent his testicles from getting caught in the wires. It showed off his “physique” and impressed the ladies (according to Jules himself).
We have Monsieur Leotard to thank for the “yoga pant.”
EPONYMS IN MODERN TIMES
In September 2015, Martin Shkreli, a former hedge fund manager, acquired the rights to a widely used AIDS drug which cost $13.50 per dose when he bought the company, and which Shkreli increased to $750 per pill after he took over.
Today shkreli refers to the clumps of canine fecal matter stuck in the treads of a sneaker that can only be removed by ruining a perfectly good toothbrush or by the use of a professional grade pressure-washer.
Shkreli is also a verb. Slang. To defecate in one’s clothes, as from terror or illness; to soil oneself.
She was so shocked by the cost of her AIDS meds, she shkrelied her pants.
Walter Palmer, the soulless dentist who illegally killed a beloved lion in Zimbabwe, is responsible for the word micropalmer, a noun; an itty bitty penis accompanied by a larger than normal anus.
Used in a sentence; I’d be driving a Prius if it weren’t for my micropalmer.
We have New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady to thank for the adjective bradulent; attended with, caused by, or suffering from an accumulation of gas or hot air.
The crybaby QB is also the essence of the verb brady; to release gas or hot air from balls, and also; to release oneself from integrity, honesty and sportsmanship.
Dude, did you brady to get an A or did you actually study for the math test?
See if you can guess the root of the eponyms in the following 3 sentences:
Sally and I can’t join you and Kelly for dinner at the club tomorrow because I will be busy duggaring my neighbor’s wife. Where, you ask? In the jong-un, of course.
It was the worst date in the world. All I kept thinking was ‘I shaved my putin for this’? He was so boring I wanted to simpsonize myself.
I was trumped on my head as a child and have no use for reality. The accident left me completely kanyed.
If you have eponyms to add, email me and I might just post them next week if I’m not too benghazied by the beautiful weather!
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Thought you’d be a bazillionaire by 30? Have 19 kids and counting, and a 10,000sf Cape Cod in the Hamptons prior to hitting the big 4-0? Discovered a cure for cellulite before lunch?
Our culture has made it easy for us to focus on the stuff we haven’t accomplished rather than all the things for which we should really be proud, such as getting out of bed when it’s raining, and not slapping Time Warner “team members” although they mostly deserve it.
I look at just about any reality TV show and start feeling bad about myself because I don’t have a $35,000 Birkin bag, a closet just for my shoes, or my own reality TV show.
Then I ask myself, is this what I really want?
I’m thinking…
Okay, so I’d rather have world peace, a dog farm, and a recipe for fat-free/sugar-free/no carb/paleo/made-from-clouds-but-tastes-like-frozen-custard, frozen custard.
The reality is that I, like you, racked up quite a few accomplishments along the way—just not exactly the things for which I thought I’d become rich or infamous. (I find infamy preferable to fame. It just seems like it would be more fun, and way cooler in a Wikipedia profile, or an obituary.)
While some, like, illiterate mollusk with lips bigger than brains tried to break the internet with her oily butt, you and I were likely making someone’s day by holding a door, smiling at a stranger, dispensing a random compliment, or *knocking a pedestrian out of the way of a speeding taxi.
(*This might have been heroic had the taxi not veered at the last second, and I tackled a falafel vendor for apparently no reason whatsoever. My heart was in the right place, which it turns out is a viable defense strategy.)
We have trained ourselves to measure self worth against what other people have rather than what they’ve done, which brings us to the concept of the late bloomer.
Mother Theresa was 36 when she got “the call within the call,” leaving the convent to live among Calcutta’s poor. Although she improved the lives of millions, Theresa lived by one simple credo, “If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one.” She never owned a Birkin bag.
America’s most celebrated primitive artist didn’t pick up a paintbrush until the age of 75. On the occasion of her 100th birthday, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller declared it “Grandma Moses Day.” Today, Grandma Moses’ paintings hang in the White House and every major art museum in the country. She died at the age of 101, still painting. Never had Botox.
Peter Roget suffered from an extreme form of OCD. The only thing that calmed him was to make lists. When he retired from medicine at the age of 61, he would spend all day every day making one huge, all-encompassing list of all the things, ever. At 73, he published his list as a book, Roget’s Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases—otherwise know as “the thesaurus.”
While the Kendras, K-dufuses, and housewives from Hooterville try to tell us we are nothing more than the sum of our Twitter followers and collagen injections, I believe, that for as long as we may live, what defines a real person of real quality is the dents, dings and wrinkles that show we’ve been in the trenches, and have emerged victorious. We made the world a better place, if only one smile at a time.
The turtlehead pokes through the earth in the springtime after the thaw, and remains but a bud until autumn, just before winter sets in. One of the loveliest flowers of all, the turtlehead is a spectacular late-bloomer.
Here’s to all we beautiful turtleheads!
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Oh all right, I am not technically a scientist, but the following story could totally be a sciency study in support of my hypothesis that it is a waste of time to teach some children “good touch/bad touch”—an exercise that illustrates the difference between being pat on the head for doing a trick well—good touch, and being touched improperly—bad touch. (Sociologists are developing a third touch category for anything Miley Cyrus gets her hands on, including herself.)
Case study: Glendale, California, September 12, 2012. Trader Joe’s.
A boy entered the store with his mother approximately 3 feet in front of me. The mother heaved an ottoman-sized Louis Vuitton bag into a cart, and headed inside with the child trailing slightly behind. The subject was maybe ten years old, but because of extra growth hormones in his milk and mutton, was over 5 feet tall and looked to be about 200lbs.
The kid stood by, gorging on a chocolate bar large enough to feed a Belgian family of six, as his mother struggled to hoist a case of wine into her cart.
As they exited the liquor aisle, the brat child finished his candy, and then threw the wrapper on the floor. I tapped him on the shoulder and began to say, “Young man, you dropped some…” but the lad spun around, gave me the Augustus Gloop stink eye, pointed directly at me with a chocolately hand, and screamed at the top of his lungs, “BAD TOUCH! BAD TOUCH!”
I was immediately surrounded by peasants with torches and pitchforks.
The mother swung her purse at me and screamed, “She molested my baby!” Her “baby” had 60 pounds on me, which I would like to have pointed out, but I was unable to find my words at that moment as I was ducking a giant designer bag.
A manager appeared and asked the lady whether she’d like him to summon the police, while the townspeople prevented me from fleeing to my cave in the Urals.
I explained what had happened and the manager took it all in—the wrapper on the floor, the chocolate all over the kid’s face and hands, and he seemed to understand.
He offered to pay for the mother’s case of wine if she’d just forget the whole thing. I stood, slack-jawed, as the woman actually took a few moments to think about it. The Spawn of Satan hid behind his mommy, smirking at me, like he wanted to be punched in the head and knocked unconscious.
The woman finally agreed to the manager’s terms, the villagers went back to their thatched huts, and I was asked to leave Trader Joe’s.
In the event I did not adequately describe the male subject, he was revolting. Inside and out. Top to bottom. Covered-in-chocolate-with-a-black-stain-on-his-soul fugly. There isn’t a pedophile or methamphetamine-addicted kidnapper who could have been paid to come within ten feet of that kid, so any breath that was wasted on teaching him good touch/bad touch did nothing more than give him a golden ticket to bullydom.
He would have benefitted more from a couple years in San Quentin, where, as the only inmate in history to not get “bad-touched,” he might have learned a little respect for his elders, and he damn well would have learned to pick up his trash.
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1. It could always be worse.
It’s a simple *clarificatory comparison. If you are familiar with the entity y (a wide range of your own personal failures, say), then we introduce x (any minute instance of a failure not occurring), by comparison with y, we generate a greater appreciation of x.
*Also known as the It Feels Wonderful When I Stop Punching Myself in the Kidneys Effect.
2. Expectations are lowered.
If you’ve skated through life with no hiccups or federal indictments, people expect nothing less from you, whereas if you’ve lost one measly pontoon boat or tripped over a power cord at your cousin’s wedding and unplugged the sound system in the middle of the groom’s father’s speech moments before he had a massive heart attack (from which he recovered completely so it wasn’t really that big of a deal) people hold you to a greatly reduced standard that is imminently easier to live with.
3. Say hello to my little friend, Humility.
Instead of Tiffany blue being your color, you’re now wearing suck-it beige, and the funny thing is, humility is not a bad shade. Sadly, most people are missing that Crayola.
Unless you’ve been taken down a few pegs in life, what you feel when you feel badly about someone else’s misfortune, is called pity. I have no trouble hosting my own black-tie woe-is-me bash, but when someone gives me pity eye I just want to smack them. Conversely, when their expression says “I feel you. I’ve been in your shoes myself,” I like them, and I put my hands back in my pockets.
4. People will feed you.
Do you know someone who has never endured a bad hair, work, relationship or fat pants day? No matter how much you truly love that person there are times you wish they’d slip on a banana peel and face-plant into a little bad luck.
On those occasions when you are less than perfect, celebrate your failure. Lift your chin and buy a pair of shoes because your friends—the ones who love you most—will be delighted. They’ll rally ‘round with cocktails, a shoulder to cry on, and a classic tuna casserole.
(Nobody feeds you when everything’s going your way.) Unless you are a TV commercials director. (See below)
5. You learn who your friends are.
When I first came to L.A. I was a TV commercials director. I was in a position to yay or nay the hiring of a large group of people such as actors, cinematographers, hair and make-up stylists, etc. Having this job apparently made me “successful,” because I had more friends than Taylor Swift, and they all wanted to buy me dinner and Blu Ray players.
After a few years I decided to stop making commercials, and pursue writing full-time. Having this new position apparently made me a “failure,” because I couldn’t get the guy whose job it was to put schmear on my bagels to return my calls. My real friends baked a nice tuna dish.
6. You’re still in the fight.
If everything were harp music and roses we’d be dead. Failure makes us get up, dust ourselves off, and come out swinging. We may be liable for restitution and medical expenses, but failure makes us winners, dammit.
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WITHOUT BEING MURDERED, SWINDLED OR EXPOSED TO MANPOOP
A dear reader/sisterwoman/photographer extraordinaire, Simone Van Kempen, suggested that I write about what I might do differently if I were 25 years old and moving to Los Angeles for the first time…now. I can’t imagine Simi suggesting there had been mistakes the first time around, but my 20 years in the City of Angels has given me a unique perspective.
Here are 3 ways a young person new to the city might survive:
1. PURE LUCK
Shortly after I moved to L.A. I went to a place called the Hollywood Athletic Club to meet a friend for lunch. If you consider playing pool and drinking an athletic activity, then this was in fact a sporty venue. Otherwise it was just a bar and restaurant.
When the check arrived after our meal I realized I had no cash, which meant I wouldn’t be able to tip the valet. (There is no place to park a car yourself in Los Angeles, unless you are Jerry Seinfeld and you don’t care how much the fines are, or whether your hairy orange Porsche is blocking a fire hydrant across the street from Ivy on Robertson at 2:45PM on a Wednesday in April of 2005. All others must have valet tip money on their person at all times.)
I borrowed a couple of bucks from my friend, said my good-byes, visited the ladies room, and headed outside. The valet took my ticket and ran off to retrieve my ride. Five businessmen in their 30s and 40s, healthy and hale, stepped outside with their claim checks.
A deranged man ran down the street and stopped when he got to me. “Give me your money,” he demanded.
wtf? I literally had two dollars. The psycho pulled a handgun from his pocket, pushed the barrel against my forehead, and screeched, “Give me ten dollars!” His breath reeked of booze, cigarettes and danger. (If you’re a writer new to L.A. you may want to avoid sentences such as the last one.)
I’m thinking, Jesus, someone give him a ten, would ya? But from the corner of my eye I see the beefy businessmen stealthily creep back inside the restaurant. “I only have two dollars,” I told my assailant, preparing to die.
Just then the valet came around the corner in my car. He saw the gun and immediately began blasting the horn. The lunatic ran away in a drunken serpentine fashion, knocking over a waste receptacle and a shopping cart filled with hubcaps. Once he was out of sight, the businessmen came outside, claim checks in hand, happily chatting amongst themselves.
It was pure luck that I didn’t murder them with my bare hands.
2. VET POTENTIAL ROOMIES
I was told by a musician friend who had arranged the whole thing, that the guy who owned the house from whom I’d be renting a room, was a big shot record producer in Venice. I naturally pictured Lionel Ritchie’s place in Malibu. I couldn’t wait to live at the beach!
This “house” was on a side street known colloquially as “crack alley.” It had no heat, so the “record producer” would fire up the gas oven, leave the oven door open and then go grocery shopping or out to molest sheepdogs or whatever the f@ck it was that Freakshow did when he went out.
You see, for the 2.35 days that I lived there, we shared a Jack & Jill bathroom, but prior to my occupancy Landlord Filthpig had removed my door—the one that separated my room from the toilet.
Each morning I was treated to his bodily ablutions, which he performed while reading the paper and talking to me as if I wanted to be alive at that moment, much less listening to the antichrist having a B.M. Did I mention the year was 1994 and I was to pay $895 a month for my little “room with a view,” plus a $2000 deposit. (That’s like a hundred grand in today’s money.)
He was out killing babysitters or having gerbils removed from his anus on day three of my tenancy; the day I rolled up my futon and moved to the Burbank Oakwood. I got my deposit back by hiding all of his pants.
Shoulda vetted him.
3. K.I.S.S.
One of the first things I wrote was a screenplay based on the true story of my grandma, mom and aunt as they struggled to make ends meet in Chicago in the early 1930s. The Housekeeper is like It’s a Wonderful Life meets A Christmas Carol meets Braxton Family Values.
Anywho, I sent the thing out to every agent I could find. People “in the know” told me it would be months before I heard anything back. Imagine my elation when a big agent from a big agency called me the very same day as I hand-delivered the script?!
“Yes, this is she,” I said breathlessly into the phone.
“My lunch appointment today cancelled and I picked up your script,” he said, and I could hardly breathe. “I just had to speak with the person who wrote the most depressing piece of crap I’ve ever read.”
Present-day me would have said pleasantly, “F*ck you very much. Have a f*ck day,” and hung up. “What didn’t you like about it?” I asked plaintively, my throat closing and my eyes welling with tears.
“107 pages,” he replied. The script was 108 pages long if you counted the title page. “I liked the title,” he added. “That’s why I read the godforsaken thing.”
“What was so bad about it?” I asked, although my brain was screaming, “HANG UP HANG UP HANG UP HANG UP…”
The story involved sacrifice, hard work and that plucky immigrant spirit for which we love immigrants in movies.
“Nobody wants to see children washing floors,” he stated.
“But it’s an uplifting story about sacrifice, hard work and that plucky immigrant spirit for which…”
He cut me off. “It’s depressing.”
It wasn’t depressing. Exactly. “It’s a little Dickensian,” I conceded.
There was a long pause during which I had imagined he was rethinking the whole thing, and was mentally designing the poster…
Instead, he said, “I don’t know what it has to do with the devil, but I hate it.”
“The devil?” I asked, confused.
“The dickens, the Unholy One. Call it what you will. I won’t be in business with Satan.” Click. He hung up.
“Not the dickens!” I said to a dead phone. “Charles Dickens, you moron!”
When given the choice, listen to your internal voice if it tells you, “HANG UP HANG UP HANG UP!” And if your wish is to become a successful writer in Hollywood, for the love of Tiny Tim do not reference Charles Dickens or anyone who predates Paul Blart, Mall Cop.
K.I.S.S. Keep it simple, Scrooge.
For more tips on Surviving L.A. hit me up at pam@pamferderbar.com
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It is my belief that living a fulfilling and rewarding life is all about the risks we take, not the times we played it safe and maybe avoided some sort of trouble, heartache, or a prison sentence.
Imagine how colorless and tame the world would be if artists didn’t take chances. Painters, poets, and photographers will tell you there’s no BOOM in the safe bet. All the fun is outside the lines. Don’t tell me Ben & Jerry didn’t go out on a limb from time to time.
Every day I meet someone who tells me they have a great story inside of them, and then they ask if I would like to write it. I have tales of my own flapping around in the attic, so I suggest that they pen their own book/short story/ransom note. Usually they look at me as though I’ve belittled the discovery of a Starbucks on Mars.
The #1 reason people don’t write is fear. “I don’t know how and it would be embarrassing.”
There are dozens of authors who don’t know how to write, and whose books have become bestsellers, so “you really shouldn’t let a little thing like ability get in your way,” she panted, biting her lip, tingling erotically all over, biting her lip erotically. And tingling again.
Seriously. If reality TV has taught us anything, it is that there is nothing *so stupid, or so insanely insipid as to not be of tremendous interest to a fairly large swath of our “culture.”
I’ve compiled a few tips that might make it easier to overcome your anxiety and fear about getting started.
Ready, set, JUMP!
1. Carry a notebook. It can be small enough to fit into a bag or shirt pocket.
2. Pen. You’ll need a pen if you go with #1.
3. Write shit down. Ta da. The mere act of placing words on a blank page is technically writing. If you want to get specific about it, write something that you would enjoy reading. The law of averages dictates if there’s one of you, there must be more. Write for those guys.
4. Practice your authorin’ skills in everyday correspondence. You may use complete sentences with punctuation, spelling and actual words in emails. It is not forbidden to do so. 
To the person who felt an earlier blog was deserving of the ‘pile of dog poo’ emoticon,
5. Write two sentences each day. Make them count. You’ll begin to gain confidence. Think I’m BSing you? One rather successful author told an entire story in only six words:
Longed for him. Got him. Shit. —Margaret Atwood
BOOM.
Another author who was no hack wrote this,
For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn. —Ernest Hemingway
Those few words pack a wallop, don’t they?
6. Chew with your mouth closed. This is the first step toward writing like Hemingway. I promise.
*We do not refer to Feng Shui + Charlotte Nightingale, which is insanely smart and funny and in no way so stupid or insanely insipid.
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