Some of the best info you can have in your first year out here can be found in great hardcopy and online subscriptions. You’re also gonna need a solid support system. Get some folks who can help you out! Lastly, the person who is going to represent you to the casting world on a day-to-day basis is your Agent. Now is the time to get together with your agent and make sure that you are both on the same track concerning your representation. If you don’t have one, it’s also time to start looking.

You speedily logged into ActorsAccess.com after reading my previous article listing it as the #1 place for LA actors to be online. Your salivary glands began performing their self-titled function, salivating, upon hearing me herald the bountiful opportunities available therein. You signed into the website, chock full of anticipation, and started bellowing into the ether “Oh my goodness! What must I do next? If only someone would write an article detailing how to do this effectively!” I heard you.

You are going to need certain tools to start and sustain a career out in LA; tools that you just can’t go without. And the number one tool: Your Headshot and Resume. These are crucial. And in order for you or your (soon-to-be) agent to submit yourself for projects, you have to be registered on the appropriate sites. Time to put your headshot to good use! Hardcopy submissions are still around but they’ve almost gone way of Black and White headshots (um, to the grave, that is) and I’m pretty sure 100% of commercial submissions are online now too.

Alright. I’m gonna start these articles off with a caveat. These are by no means the secrets to instant success for a flourishing acting career, especially within your first year of arriving in LA. And I am not a coach or an expert on the “necessities” for your individual success. However, these are the things that I wish I knew when I first came to this town. Things that I’ve slowly learned and developed over the handful of years that I’ve been here. Many of them are basic. Some of them are obvious. But a few of them are crucial. We’ll be talking practical, applicable, and motivational.

If you’re an actor in Los Angeles in 2009 and you haven’t started marketing yourself via the Internet it’s time to wake up. We’re living in the future. If you’re new to LA, want to learn the commercial market, yet you’re not following LemonLime on Twitter, you’re out of the loop. If you’re sipping a Regular Black Forest, waiting to be discovered at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf at Sunset and Fairfax, look to your left. That extremely good looking hipster squinting under his jauntily tilted fedora at the screen on his MacBook might just have a leg up on you. It’s time to stop being an Ottoman.

So, you’re on your way to Hollywood with hopes and dreams of becoming a professional actor or actress. Well I wrote a short story of your future weekly routine.