Night Life for LA Writers

Los Angeles — An Amazing City for Writers

Are you a writer? A wanna-be writer? A screenwriter? A wanna-be screenwriter? Do you live in the LA area? Then check out Meetup.com, Eventbrite.com, Jeff Gund’s infolist.com or any other site that tells you what’s going on around town for writers.  Here’s a look at what this writer did over the past week:

Magical Under the Moon — The Sportsmen’s Lodge in Studio City. Inside, a meeting of the Book Publicists of Southern California (BPSC) is in progress.

A BPSC panel discusses “How to Avoid PR Misteaks” for a group of book publicists. The organization was started 37 years ago by publicist Irwin Zucker (standing, right). The group meets monthly. (www.bookpublicists.org)

Driving out of the Sportsman’s Lodge looks magical at night.

The next night, it was “Stories Under the Stars” (with a musical intro) in a Sherman Oaks back yard. The weather was perfect and so still that every word was heard.

And there was food under the stars…

…and more food under the stars.

Here, writer Lila Silvern reads a humorous short story from her upcoming book of stories called Confessions of a Geriatric Prom Queen.

A totally different venue: The colorful digs of Office Slice, an energized center in Sherman Oaks which hosts many writer-related events, panels, seminars and workshops. Above, Managing Director Judy Santos (standing, in white) introduces a publishing panel. (www.officeslice.com)

Another Office Slice presentation, this one on blogging, and specifically the art of using images in blogging. Circe Denyer and Linnaea Mallette offered plenty of great tips.

Above: “The Table.”  This industry group for writers, screenwriters, actors, directors, producers, and anyone else connected to show biz has been meeting every Thursday night for 20 years. There are now “Table” groups popping up in major cities across the country. The LA group meets at Marie Callender’s in Sherman Oaks. (Their new website is still under construction but Google for stories and information).

A free monthly drop-in Writing Group at Crown Books in Woodland Hills, a daytime event — but there are nighttime groups going on somewhere. This one is sponsored by Independent Writers of Southern California (IWOSC) which also has monthly panels and seminars. (www.iwosc.org)

The Scriptwriters Network has been around for over 25 years. The organnizaton presents panels and speakers at least twice a month, as well as networking mixers and special events. Check them out at http://www.scriptwritersnetwork.org.

Toastmasters for Writers (known as TM4Writers), possibly the only TM club for writers in LA — although there are several hundred Toastmasters groups in the LA area focusing on all kinds of subjects — but you can attend any of them. Go to http://toastmastersinternational.org to find other clubs or http://748804.toastmastersclubs.org/ for TM4Writers (two Saturdays a month, 9:30-11:30 am. Splendid training for pitching and marketing your writing.

And then finally…

Starbucks is always busy late into the night with writers sitting behind laptops, inspired by all the writer events they’ve been attending all week.

(All photos in this post by Sylvia Cary)

(c) The Therapist Writer Blog, Sylvia Cary, LMFT, author of The Therapist Writer: Helping Mental Health Professionals Get Published