Help Me Attend Tin House
Donation protected
Most of you know I just graduated from Antioch University with half of a manuscript. Shortly after graduation, I left Los Angeles to move to Joshua Tree to finish my book, titled "I Got Fired So I Became An Actress".
Here is an Excerpt:
"The Hollywood Hustle
Some people would be mortified, I guess. I was used to exploiting my dirty secrets to make people laugh at parties or in bars. I perfected my art of storytelling around bad dates or unusual jobs just for the award of that one precious moment: a stranger’s laughter. I lived to get that laugh. There was the throaty, polite laugh, which was a throw away. There was the genuine delighted giggle which would allow me to walk away satisfied. But then there is the gut eruption cackle. The moment when someone’s head is thrown back and I can see the fillings in the back of their teeth. The moment I have to stop talking until waves of laughter finish billowing out of their throat and mouth; the less dramatic and somehow more fulfilling version of an orgasm. That human treasure is what drew me into show business and was the same spark I followed to Van Nuys that morning.
My call time was 7am at Saticoy Studio. It wasn’t one of the old studios in the belly of Hollywood. Paramount, Fox, Gower: the studios with castle walls and statue sized movie advertisements on the side of the building. It was another studio, north in Van Nuys. You would drive past it on Saticoy Street unnoticed if there wasn’t a line of people waiting outside to enter.
Usually, I am in that line. About 100-200 unemployed actors, all lined up waiting to work the day as audience members. You are paid in cash to sit in the audience of game shows, either because they are lesser known and do not have a tourist draw or because they need skinny, fresh faces; people who look like Los Angeles, not Oklahoma City, Phoenix or Riverside County . It is a well-kept secret and an easy way to make spare cash.
You would see the same faces day after day, sometimes year after year. Like the married couple who booked themselves together on all the shows. The wife was meatier and older than most girls with streaked blonde hair, black vinyl boots and clumpy mascara around her eyes. She was always kind to me. The husband slicked his black curls back in hair gel and always wore the same leather jacket. Every time you looked at him, you discovered a new tattoo drizzling down the cuff of his sleeve. They always stood arm in arm in line together. There were always a few Russian twenty-somethings who just arrived to Hollywood from the Mother Country wearing loud pink and orange leggings. Their thick accents wrapped around the smoke from lipstick stained cheap cigarettes. The shaggy haired white boys who ignore the pretty girls, stood like mannequins and kept a worn copy of Hamlet in their back pocket for credibility. The Black and Mexican girls who refuse to let anyone cut in line, especially when the bathrooms were always kept protected just beyond the security gates and the cash kept sealed at the end of the night. Only after the show “wraps” or stops for the day were we allowed to wait outside the studio for our clean white envelopes of crumpled cash. Sometimes you have to wait up to an hour for the booking company to arrive with the cash. Sometimes a newbie will try to make conversation with someone near the front of the line and blend in as the line moves. Sometimes the cash is short. The experienced ones always stand nearby and count the bills before heading back to the bus stop or their rusting Honda several blocks away. “Audience” aren’t allowed to park at the studio and the nearest block of street parking is metered. So we jogged back to our cars to get the circulation in our bodies moving again, to get warm, to find food, to call it a day."
Writing is a difficult process, even more so without a group of talented writers and mentors reading your pages and providing you with notes on clarity, ambiguity and direction.
Today, I found out my book was accepted into a very prestigious workshop program: Tin House.
In 2002, Tin House ventured into the world of book publishing as an imprint with Bloomsbury. In 2005, the independent press Tin House Books was launched, Spearheaded by editorial director Lee Montgomery, Tin House Books publishes a dozen titles a year, and its authors have garnered attention from the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, and O, the Oprah magazine.
In 2003, Montgomery founded the annual Tin House Writers’ Workshop, where some of Tin House’s most esteemed and exciting colleagues gather together with ambitious and talented up-and-coming writers for a week of workshops, seminars, and readings on the beautiful campus of Reed College in Portland, Oregon.
The program costs $1200, a hefty bill for someone flipping pizzas in the desert. I am not asking for help with the entire tuition and boarding, but half.
I believe Tin House is the beginning of the rest of my life. Not only could it really elevate my writing to the level of a publishing house and literary agent, but it will raise the quality of my work. If my friends, associates, believers toss a few dollars my way to help me get there, I would be forever grateful.
Here is an Excerpt:
"The Hollywood Hustle
Some people would be mortified, I guess. I was used to exploiting my dirty secrets to make people laugh at parties or in bars. I perfected my art of storytelling around bad dates or unusual jobs just for the award of that one precious moment: a stranger’s laughter. I lived to get that laugh. There was the throaty, polite laugh, which was a throw away. There was the genuine delighted giggle which would allow me to walk away satisfied. But then there is the gut eruption cackle. The moment when someone’s head is thrown back and I can see the fillings in the back of their teeth. The moment I have to stop talking until waves of laughter finish billowing out of their throat and mouth; the less dramatic and somehow more fulfilling version of an orgasm. That human treasure is what drew me into show business and was the same spark I followed to Van Nuys that morning.
My call time was 7am at Saticoy Studio. It wasn’t one of the old studios in the belly of Hollywood. Paramount, Fox, Gower: the studios with castle walls and statue sized movie advertisements on the side of the building. It was another studio, north in Van Nuys. You would drive past it on Saticoy Street unnoticed if there wasn’t a line of people waiting outside to enter.
Usually, I am in that line. About 100-200 unemployed actors, all lined up waiting to work the day as audience members. You are paid in cash to sit in the audience of game shows, either because they are lesser known and do not have a tourist draw or because they need skinny, fresh faces; people who look like Los Angeles, not Oklahoma City, Phoenix or Riverside County . It is a well-kept secret and an easy way to make spare cash.
You would see the same faces day after day, sometimes year after year. Like the married couple who booked themselves together on all the shows. The wife was meatier and older than most girls with streaked blonde hair, black vinyl boots and clumpy mascara around her eyes. She was always kind to me. The husband slicked his black curls back in hair gel and always wore the same leather jacket. Every time you looked at him, you discovered a new tattoo drizzling down the cuff of his sleeve. They always stood arm in arm in line together. There were always a few Russian twenty-somethings who just arrived to Hollywood from the Mother Country wearing loud pink and orange leggings. Their thick accents wrapped around the smoke from lipstick stained cheap cigarettes. The shaggy haired white boys who ignore the pretty girls, stood like mannequins and kept a worn copy of Hamlet in their back pocket for credibility. The Black and Mexican girls who refuse to let anyone cut in line, especially when the bathrooms were always kept protected just beyond the security gates and the cash kept sealed at the end of the night. Only after the show “wraps” or stops for the day were we allowed to wait outside the studio for our clean white envelopes of crumpled cash. Sometimes you have to wait up to an hour for the booking company to arrive with the cash. Sometimes a newbie will try to make conversation with someone near the front of the line and blend in as the line moves. Sometimes the cash is short. The experienced ones always stand nearby and count the bills before heading back to the bus stop or their rusting Honda several blocks away. “Audience” aren’t allowed to park at the studio and the nearest block of street parking is metered. So we jogged back to our cars to get the circulation in our bodies moving again, to get warm, to find food, to call it a day."
Writing is a difficult process, even more so without a group of talented writers and mentors reading your pages and providing you with notes on clarity, ambiguity and direction.
Today, I found out my book was accepted into a very prestigious workshop program: Tin House.
In 2002, Tin House ventured into the world of book publishing as an imprint with Bloomsbury. In 2005, the independent press Tin House Books was launched, Spearheaded by editorial director Lee Montgomery, Tin House Books publishes a dozen titles a year, and its authors have garnered attention from the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, and O, the Oprah magazine.
In 2003, Montgomery founded the annual Tin House Writers’ Workshop, where some of Tin House’s most esteemed and exciting colleagues gather together with ambitious and talented up-and-coming writers for a week of workshops, seminars, and readings on the beautiful campus of Reed College in Portland, Oregon.
The program costs $1200, a hefty bill for someone flipping pizzas in the desert. I am not asking for help with the entire tuition and boarding, but half.
I believe Tin House is the beginning of the rest of my life. Not only could it really elevate my writing to the level of a publishing house and literary agent, but it will raise the quality of my work. If my friends, associates, believers toss a few dollars my way to help me get there, I would be forever grateful.
Organizer
Vita Lusty
Organizer
Joshua Tree, CA
