Once Upon a Time: Writers and their excuses

You may have figured this out about me, I haven't been writing lately. I've been teaching composition to people who don't want to write and in the process, my writing has been neglected. Once upon a time, I wanted nothing more than to get up in the middle of the night and go to my office and write. I dreamed about a life where I had a space and the equipment so that I could do nothing but write. Well, I finally have a working computer and a space--although there is some damage to the roof thanks to the remnants of Super Storm Sandy--and now I don't have the urge to write.

When you teach composition to people who want nothing to do with writing, it frustrates you. My students have no desire to find out who they are. They have no desire to be heard. They certainly don't want to be published--to see their name in print. Well, I do.

Here is what Franz Kafka did in his lifetime, he studied Law and worked in Insurance. I studied English, and taught English; I studied Journalism, and worked as a reporter and finally, I worked in Insurance as an Accounting Specialist, Billing Specialist and Bookkeeper. If he could cram all of that into one life, I should have something meaningful to write about in my stories. 

I am not going to make any more excuses. I am instead, going to make time to write whether I am inspired or not. You don't know this about me, I am a writer even when a pen or pencil is in my hand. I am always thinking about what I will write. I just have to sit down and do it. 

To all the writers who may one day read this blog, don't give up. Don't ever quit. Writing is who we are and it is why we are here.

The Sementimental Writer

Young rock journalist, Cameron Crowe (center) with shock rocker, Alice Cooper, right.

Writer-director, Cameron Crowe has been on my mind ever since I posted the blog on director-writer Billy Wilder. I have been working on my play and my screenplay--inspiration sends me off on paths of unexpected destination--and one wave of inspiration led me back to the Wilder and Crowe conversations. See, what you don't know about me is that when I was a teenager, I read Rolling Stone Magazine.  Jann Wenner's magazine was the paper of record for the music world and young Cameron Crowe was my favorite rock music journalist. Why? I loved his work.  And Cameron Crowe wrote about rock musicians and events like he was one of my best friends and as if it was the best time ever. As fate would have it, Crowe wrote and directed my favorite film about the music business, "Almost Famous". I knew he was an ofttimes sentimental, but not self-indulgent writer. I thank him for inspiring me to go to the newsstands and magazines racks to read about rock music. I certainly thank him for making me want to be a cool music journalist.

Caroll Drug store on Coventry had a nice selection of magazines.

I took the entire day and looked through the Billy Wilder-Cameron Crowe Conversations book. And maybe you don't know this, but we writers have a tendency to go off on tangents (non-inspirational)--anything to keep us from writing. Distractions are a necessary evil in our business, so, I sat at my desk and re-connected with why I love Crowe so much--he reminded me of myself. I remembered when I was a young music journalist thrust into a world that I was too young to comprehend. I had seen those youthful and wide-eyed photos of Cameron standing next to rock superstars and it reminded me of how I felt and must have looked as I sat in hotel rooms or backstage waiting for the latest music celebrity to sit down and tell me their story. I religiously read Crowe's byline. I enjoyed going to the newsstand and gazing up the colorful array of covers. I loved magazines. I loved journalism. I loved Cameron's work. His coverage of Led Zeppelin's tour in 1973 stands as a benchmark in my life. The article appeared in the Los Angeles Times, and yes, I read the LA Times. You could read any major newspaper if you visited a newsstand on a regular basis. I knew I would write about music one day just like my hero, so I had to read all the right magazines. I had to prepare by learning how to hang out. The British rock magazines were filled with lurid tales about ligging--getting all the freebies that come from gaining access to the backstage area of a venue. American magazines were filled with stories about groupies like Miss Pamela (Pamela Des Barres) and I wanted nothing to do with that scene. I wanted to write about it all.

Crowe's cover story: A legend was born and an idol created.

In 1975, Led Zeppelin performed at the Richfield Coliseum. My friend Jeff Wright and I ventured down to Swingo's Celebrity Inn on 18th in Euclid Avenue to hang out with Led Zeppelin. When Crowe wrote about Led Zeppelin, he made you feel like you knew the band--he was able to bring you the inner workings of the band. And I knew his Zeppelin interview was a coup for Rolling Stone. We drove down the ramp to the parking garage of Swingo's and we instinctively knew to ride the elevator up to the second floor. We got off the elevator to look around. Oddly, there seemed to be nothing going on; there were other teens--pairs of pretty young white girls in tube tops and bell-bottom blue jeans--looking for the band. We smiled at one another. I knew we were on the right floor. We saw a bearded man sitting on a chair in front of the door of a room--Jimmy Page was behind that door!

The Colonial Arcade,  a place for thoughtful magazine shopping and newspaper reading..

I remember spending weekends riding the St. Clair bus to downtown Cleveland. I would go to my favorite newsstands to buy magazines. There was a newsstand in the Colonial Arcade and one on 4th in Euclid. I read everything from Rolling Stone to CREEM Magazine! As I grew older, I had a friend who drove to Coventry where we went to Caroll Drug to buy magazines.  We'd buy Rolling Stone, Right On!, Soul, Andy Warhol's Interview Magazine, NME (New Music Express), Melody Maker, CREEM, Billboard, The Village Voice, and any other popular music magazine. I never understood why they let us read the magazines before we bought them, but the newsstand owner in the Colonial Arcade always let us browse through the magazines looking to see whether they were worth purchasing.

What you don't know about me was that I was so inspired by Crowe's work as a music journalist, that I decided to write about my time as a music journalist as part of my Master's thesis, I contacted him. I told him that I was writing about the death of vinyl music. Below is his response:

While I didn't score an interview with Cameron Crowe, in a future blog, I'll begin sharing some of the interviews I did snag with legendary music critics like Anthony DeCurtis (Rolling Stone), Robert Christgau (Village Voice) and Dave Marsh (CREEM Magazine) to name a few. Reading those magazines turned out to be preparation for writing the biggest project to date--my thesis.

How Google Inspires Writers

Syd Field's classic Three Act Structure

I was listening to some Public Image Ltd. and writing a blog about Cameron Crowe when I decided to take a detour and read Syd Field's Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting. Well, yes. You don't know this about me, but I love to read about the craft of screenwriting. Check out the graphic above -- Syd is known for his three-act structure. (You would do well to learn it.) I was inspired to read the text by an Internet search engine. See, Google has been reading my email and gathering information about me when I run searches. That's fine, you can snoop if you like. Writers are always snooping on people, listening to their conversations, stealing turns-of-phrases which sound not only clever to the ear, but look pleasant on the page. I had never read this seminal book by Field and I knew that I could always come back to the Crowe blog because well, I am in charge here. I try to be in charge, but there are times when I am swept by inspiration to new directions. Today's distraction was provided by the Internets premier search.

Snoops.

Google, or "Big Brother," had suggested this particular Syd Field text after spying on me as I wrote an email to a friend about a screenplay that I was writing. (Yes, I have multiple projects, I told you this. I'm not a put-my-eggs-all-in-one-basket writer.) My colleague had encouraged me to release the caged tiger -- as she referred to the project.  I smiled, I knew it was a large scale project that I could manage to rein in, if I had a  plan. I needed help. 

I didn't click on the advertisement because I wouldn't give Google the satisfaction. I merely headed over to the Cleveland Public Library website and ordered the text. It arrived days later and I was surprised by what I discovered on the opening pages of the first chapter, "What is a Screenplay?".

Page 17

Well, Mr. Field, you have my attention. Joseph Mankiewicz, and Fitzgerald in one paragraph!

Page 17

Joan Crawford never starred in a Fitzgerald script -- Joseph Mankiewicz rewrote it.

My favorite author, F. Scott Fitzgerald was a bust as a screenwriter. Writing skill in one medium apparently doesn't translate to another one. While in Hollywood, Fitzgerald wrote to make money and according to Field, to seek redemption. He died without getting that redemption. Syd Field writes: "Talent is God's gift; either you've got it or not. But writing is a personal responsibility; either you do it or you don't." (Page 14) Well, Fitzgerald was talented and it was well-known that his lifestyle had ruined what was a brilliant career -- he had failed in that personal responsibility that Field's what was talking about in his text.

Page 16

Acquiring Field's book was a stroke of genius by Google. I doubt they knew about my affinity for Fitzgerald; but wait, they do provide the platform for this blog. Google brought together Fitzgerald and Wilder! Maybe snooping on me was a good thing. Here's something you don't know about me: I believe that the intersection of Billy Wilder, Joseph L. Mankiewicz and  F. Scott Fitzgerald was divinely orchestrated. 

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The King of The Deal, Super Agent Swifty Lazar

Chuck Pick at Spago's with Irving "Swifty" Lazar, super agent.

The 84th Annual Academy Awards air Sunday, February 26th on ABC. I am a writer, so when Oscar time arrives, I find myself filled with anticipation. I actually find that the build-up to the Academy Awards is maddening--I want to watch, I don't want to watch.

I want to be in that audience. I can't wait for that category--Best Original Screenplay--to be announced. Of course I want to win. In order to get my original screenplay produced, I need an agent--a super-agent. When I was a kid, besides reading books, I spent the remainder of my time in a movie theater. I had figured out that writers wrote movies. And writers need agents to represent their work. Irving "Swifty" Lazar was featured in one of my Academy Award books. Decades later I would read Michael Korda's great piece, "The King of The Deal", which appeared in the New Yorker in March of 1993. More recently, Lazar's appearance on screen in "Frost/Nixon" reminded me what a player he was--Swifty represented ex-President Richard M. Nixon. Korda is best remembered as an editor-in-Chief at Simon & Schuster.

Korda paints a picture of an agent, a short, perhaps foppish man with gigantic glasses who wielded power whether he was on the east or west coast. Korda writes, "At “21,” I had only to mention Lazar’s name to be treated like royalty. I was swept to a red-checked table downstairs, opposite the bar, and given a bowl of celery and olives on ice and a basket of rolls." Korda in his reportage, reveals the truth about this super-agent--Lazar never considered himself an agent at all. He saw himself as a deal-maker. Hollywood stars had an agent and Swifty Lazar to make deals for them. With big name authors, Lazar would offer them up to rival publishing houses whether he actually represented the writer or not. The story about Lazar offering up Truman Capote without his permission is a classic:

“Truman Capote,” Lazar said, way back at the beginning of our relationship. “Wanna do a deal with him?” At the time, Capote was high on the best-seller lists, and was one of the bright stars at Random House, while I was an unknown junior editor at a house not then famous for fiction. It seemed to me unlikely that Capote would want to leave Random House, or that Random House would let him go, and I said so. “I can see you don’t have the guts for this kind of thing, sonny,” Lazar sniffed—he always called me “sonny” when he was pissed off—and he hung up, no doubt to offer Capote elsewhere. (Capote was still a Random House author when he died.)

But back to the Hollywood angle. As a child, my parents indulged my love of Hollywood by gifting me a subscription to the Academy Award club. Each month a new volume arrived in an envelope and inside was a look at the awards by year. There were in-depth articles on the Best Picture winner, the Best Actress winner, etc. I was of course struck with the fact that there was a category for writers.  It was at this point in my life that I began to learn the names of screenwriters.

I learned about the Writer's Guild of America. I discovered that there was one on each coast, but it was the one on the west coast which interested me the most. There was a list printed with some of the best film scripts ever written. Lazar not only represented some of the top writers, he also made deals for screenwriters, directors, actors, and  producers whose work appeared on that list. I wanted my work on a list like that and I certainly wanted Lazar for an agent. However, his real claim to fame came Academy Award night time, when the A-list stars -- many of them his clients -- attended his Oscar party held at Wolfgang Puck's Spago's restaurant. 

When Lazar died, Hollywood lost not only an iconic deal maker, it lost one of its most glamorous parties. I lost an opportunity to be represented by one of the great deal-makers. I love the Oscars.

The stars gather at Spago's. (At left, Lazar and his trademark glasses.)

Everything Old Is Cool Again

Screenwriter and director, Joseph L. Mankiewicz

As a writer, I am always thinking. I am thinking about what to write next. I am pondering how to write narratives that I think will sell. And I am always thinking about my audience. When I was a kid, writing was for me and me alone. I had my writing idols, they inspired my work. I was a kid remember, so the work was so poorly written that there was never any chance of it getting published. But, lo and behold, by the time I was eight years old, I had my first newspaper job. I worked as the editor of the Stephen E. Howe Elementary School newspaper. It was just a mimeographed sheet, but it gave me the experience in running a publication. And sure, I was the only staff member, but that was because none of my peers saw the advantage of knowing what you wanted to do in life. They didn't know what they wanted to be; while I knew that I wanted to be a writer. I learned over the years that my friends were never truly close to me because they didn't know who they were and my vision for my life seemed to offend them. I was always studying some writer or director. I had to find someone to inspire me -- and you will find that I talk about inspiration a lot because I can't just get up and write without being moved to do so. I find that when I read about a writer, or watch a film about writing, it causes me to go to my keyboard.

The photo above is of a writer I have admired most of my life. Joseph Mankiewicz has penned several of my favorite screenplays. I love writers and I don't care what they write and I love what Mankiewicz wrote. "The Barefoot Countessa" and "Letter to Three Wives" were two of my favorite screenplays written by the former Hollywood dialoguist. His most famous screenplay of course, was "Cleopatra", starring Liz Taylor. He's a hell of a director as well. "All About Eve" is one of the American Film Institute's Top 100 Films...in 100 Years. Joe's witty dialogue is what attracted me and in this Bette Davis tour de force, the screenwriter is at his best. And don't forget, the screenplay was based on the 1946 short story by Mary Orr called "The Wisdom of Eve". Writers write words and cause more words to be written.

Oh, Madonna, this is straight out of Mankiewicz's "Cleopatra"

 I've lived long enough to watch these old school Hollywood screenwriters become popular again. Recently, Madonna's Superbowl performance garnered rave reviews for its grandeur, but fans didn't know that she had used the grand entrance to Rome scene straight from Mankiewicz' s "Cleopatra" pages. She couldn't use the black slaves because it would have been in poor taste. But this is not about Madonna, it is about how everything old is cool again and we have to remember that those dramatic scenes are written first by a writer leaning over a typewriter with a pipe in his mouth and a shot of whiskey in a nearby glass. Thank you Mr. Mankiewicz.

Every Beginning Has A Start

Author F. Scott Fitzgerald

My start began with a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I was only three years old. Or maybe I started reading it by the time I was five years old. I think it was Tender Is The Night or was it This Side of Paradise? The first book was a gift from my father who had purchased it from the Salvation Army Goodwill store, which was located across from our house.

I remember being fascinated by the words on the page. A colleague at work said that he couldn't remember reading at such an early age, let alone reading Fitzgerald. I never said that I understood the big words, however, I said that the book transformed my life. I knew that I wanted to be a writer. My life had purpose.

I began a quest to find out as much as I could about Mr. Fitzgerald. I grew old enough to venture to the Glenville branch of the Cleveland Public Library on Parkwood Drive, and there I would browse the stacks to find the Fitzgerald books. My hands ran across the spines of books by men and women that I had never read. I would sit at the large wooden table and run my fingers across the words on the pages. This is what I wanted to do -- make words magically appear upon the page of a book.

Soon, I was confronted with a big question: How do I become a writer? I decided to read more about Fitzgerald. I read all of the novels and the short story collections so that I could become familiar with his characters and his style. I watched the film renditions of his books and found them always missing something. I became a student of the Roaring Twenties, and dreamed of lecturing on the authors of that period in a collegiate setting. However, I still didn't know how to become an author.

Interior of the Glenville Library

In the months and weeks to come, I hope to share more about my journey to become an author. At least now, you know something about my start--it began with F. Scott Fitzgerald.

A Writer Will Learn To Write

Kate Hepburn: Reading her biography was heavenly.

Someone asked me where I went to school and I had to tell them that there was no one place. I learned my craft at the library like many writers. We have a fine library system in Northeast Ohio. I spent part of my youth in the Fine Arts Department of my city's main library. I tried to read as many Hollywood biographies as possible and I continue this practice to this day. And sure, I went to college, however, I discovered that craft is not easily taught when you don't have writing faculty members. I don't mean scholarly writers, I mean, working writers who teach the craft of fiction and non-fiction writing. There were several British Literature professors at my school, but I only had one real writer-teacher, and that was the late Sheila Schwartz. She was beloved by her students.

Sheila talked to you like a writer. She took you to task for your sloppy work, she complimented you when your work deserved it. I took advantage of my time with her to develop my skills as a fiction writer--I had been told not to go there. But I knew I was more than a memoir writer.

But I go back to reading biographies and what it did for me as a writer. I received inspiration from the stories of famous people. You never realize what a person goes through to ascend to great heights in this life. Biographies not only celebrate the life of the subject, but also that of the person who spent those years researching that person. I cannot imagine the hard work that is involved in writing the biography of a Hollywood icon like say, Katherine Hepburn.

If I were to be given a chance to write a biography, it would be difficult to think of a personality that I would want to spend years researching. Therefore, I'd probably rather research some like writer-director, JJ Abrams (Lost, Alcatraz, Cloverfield, Alias, etc.). He is almost like an old-school writer-director--someone with a definite non-Hollywood point-of-view. I am excited by this kind of against-the-grain thinking. Abrams thinks like a writer.  A writer will learn to write--his life is his classroom.

When Writers Have Lunch

The famed Round Table at New York City's storied Algonquin.

When writers have lunch together, often the talk turns to the projects at hand. I had lunch with a writer who is working on a new book about family, food, fighting, and of course, love. I won't mention my writer friends' name, but what I will say, next winter, I will be cheering for her in the audience as she reads from her book. This Lit Chick is reaping from sowing into all of our lives when she was head of our literary center, and by the way, I am still angry that the place closed down. We miss the readings, the classes, and dropping over to visit our literary maven!

We don't have a place like the famed Round table at the Algonquin where writers could convene and shoot the breeze about what they were working on and where they were on their projects. So I went to Shaker Heights and caught a bite to eat with a writer friend; heard her read from her manuscript, and shared ideas from the play that I'm working on these days. I had my interest stoked and I swear she laughed at the thought of my musical numbers--"please support musical theater!"

If you write, you must have at least one writer friend to regularly lunch with  to exchange encouragement and ideas.