I’m changing things up over on Patreon. You might want to check it out.
I’m going to start posting my daily writing practice there, starting–well, now. I need the accountability of going semi-public, and writing just to patrons helps maintain a level of privacy at the same time. No one will see what I write there but patrons.
So if you want to join for as little as $1/mo., you can feel free to give me shit if I miss a day… and please forgive frequent lapses in quality. Much of it will be journaling—aka Morning Pages—but it’s a great way to jumpstart what I think of as Actual Writing.
I won’t share it here on The Complete Flake or social media unless a piece actually gets finished, but if you are a patron you’ll get all the behind-the-scenes stuff of a writer’s life-—good, bad, and ugly—-on Patreon or in your inbox.
If you have followed me for long, you know that I whine—I mean write—a lot about not being able to write. It’s boring, I know, but for some reason that seems to be a good way to warm up to Real Writing. So I hope you will bear with me while I try this out.
I want to experiment with new ideas and forms, and share with you the behind-the-scenes of this writer’s life, including first drafts of pieces I’m working on for publication. Which reminds me, here’s a sneak peek:
This recent pitch got accepted by one editor, who handed it off to another editor, who then rejected it. Argh. But such is the life of the writer:
“Hi [Editor’s name],
I’d like to write a piece about the simmering conflict between Southern California cities and people who live in vehicles.
Homeowners and business owners are angry about the growing number of RVers and van dwellers who seem to have taken over city streets up and down the West Coast in the past few years. In San Diego, I talked to one woman who echoed concerns expressed by other locals in the media: drug use, trash, and her biggest fear—sex offenders.
City officials in San Diego and Los Angeles responded with ordinances against sleeping in vehicles, which were struck down as too vague in court, and now against living in vehicles within certain boundaries.
The new laws were met with demonstrations and class action lawsuits. Families, disabled, and elderly people, who have been priced or forced out of their homes, feel threatened by what seems like a police crackdown. Some “Safe Parking Lot” programs have tried to address the problems with limited success.
It’s an emotional, complicated issue.
Last year I took a seven-month road trip up to Canada, and saw that what’s going on in California is happening in every city I visited. Why?
The piece I have in mind, called “Van Wars,” would tell the history of that conflict through the lens of one town, Ocean Beach (near San Diego), which feels overwhelmed by so-called #vanlifers.
I want to tell this story with voices from all sides, interlaced with my own story as a 73-year-old retiree who has lived in a van full-time for six years. Much of that has been in San Diego, where I’ve lived off-and-on since 1972.
In a previous life, I had a 22-year career as a radio journalist and correspondent for ABC Radio News Networks. My recent clips:
- Wealth Simple Money Diaries: “Life Among America’s Four-Wheeled Nomads”
- Los Angeles Times: “Opinion: I’m 73 and I live in a van. It feels like there’s no place for me in California anymore”
I would love to work with [publication] on this. Thank you for your consideration.
Warm regards…”
Like it? Join me on Patreon.
Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay
