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.

Plots: Writers Love Espionage

What you don't know about me is that I love to read and watch anything that has to do with espionage. This season, I'm watching Cinemax's "Hunted", which stars Melissa George as Sam Hunter. Good writing is what makes this genre work. If there is no plot, there are no characters. The show is produced by X-Files writer, Frank Spotnitz. His production partner, Stephen Garritt worked on the BBC's MI5 series (which I also loved). Spotnitz wrote the majority of the episodes this season and he is known for complicated plot lines. Apparently, the BBC has decided not to renew the spook series which is a shame. Melissa George played a spook in JJ Abrams' ABC series, Alias. Her character Sam Hunter is slightly similar to Syndney Bristow's Season 3 nemesis, Lauren Reed.

I'm reading a thriller by author, Jerry Jenkins. His Paul Stepola, is a stereotypical double agent, which sets up predictable chaos. I read Soon and now I'm reading Silenced. My Nook has come in handy. In a writing class taught by Neal Chandler, we had to practice writing for plot. I failed miserably. It has taken me over a year to write again because of the criticism I received. My classmates didn't know that I've been trying to write science fiction all of my life. They would like me to stick to non-fiction. I'm not going to listen to them.  Back to Silenced.  Jenkins knows how to race against his own clock and I need to learn that craft. People loathe Jenkins' work because he's a Christian writer, but I love his books. They are page turners, and I started reading them because of the Left Behind Series, whether you agree or not with their religious beliefs, were captivating. How do you learn how to write plots? 

Jenkins has written over 150 titles, the most famous of which are the 16 titles in the Left Behind series. Tim LeHaye and Jenkins revolutionized Christian fiction, which I had never bothered to read. I had preconceived notions about the genre based on the poor quality of Christian music. My niece Carol had given me a copy of the first title in the series and surprisingly, I read it in a day. I was hooked. My niece dropped off the next two books and I finished them each in record time. I didn't really understand Christian eschatology, however, I did know espionage and the protagonist, Rayford Steele and his team of resistance fighters were good.  Admittedly, I laughed and cried with journalist, Buck Williams and his wife, Chloe Steele-Williams. They fought their nemesis, Nicolae Carpathia to the death. After I read the last book, I had realized that I  was reliving my childhood. 

I remembered the Happy Hollisters mystery books that I got in the mail each month. Plot-driven and page turners. I remember hiding under the steps in the basement and reading my new book--we fought over books in my family. Like it or not, I'm going to keep reading Jerry Jenkins' work because I enjoy it and there is espionage involved. Right now, Paul Stepola is in Switzerland and I'm spending Thanksgiving with my Nook.  I have to learn how to write plots.

Later tonight, the next episode of Hunter. Sam now knows about "Hourglass".

When Writers Reach Other Countries

A writing device.Old School.

You don't know this about me, but I've got readers now in foreign countries. This short blog is a shout out to my reader in Romania. Bună Ziu, which is supposed to mean "Good Day" in Romanian, but how would I know? I'm trusting my Babelfish, my translation site to handle the particulars.


Then there's my reader in Italy. I'd like to say hello to you as well. Why are you reading this stuff? What could you possibly be getting out of these ramblings? I'm just grateful to have you as a reader. And I do love Italian food, although what I'm eating here probably pails in comparison to what you eat on a daily basis. And now I'm jealous.Anyway, to my four readers in Italy, send me some sauce.

Ahh, I see I have a reader in both Germany and in Mexico. I don't know much about German food, but I do love authentic Mexican. Don't look for me south of the border because I hate hot weather, but don't let that deter you from reading about my love affair with writers and words. How did you find this blog?

To my reader up North in Canada, hello! I love Toronto and long to see Montreal. You have great pancakes in Toronto. And I'm dying to see the Mapleleafs play.

People who love writing will read anything as demonstrated by my new international friends. Write me. Tell me how you're doing. Tell me how you stumbled upon this place. Or don't write, just keep stopping by to read me. I knew the pageviews you know, helps to encourage me to put words down on the page or screen,

You don't know this about me, but I need to produce words, lots of words because it keeps the creativity flowing. A friend just gifted me a new PC (new to me). For the first time, in a long time, I am working on a fully functional machine. God knows how I've produced work over the last three years. I could barely get my thesis out because of all the technical problems--hard drives cashing, keys breaking off, and printers dying. Computers are wonderful at processing words, but they are so temperamental.

If you're old enough, then you remember the typewriter. I do. I remember I typed my articles on an electric typewriter for the first time. Never had to worry about a hard drive crashing.

The nuts and bolts of my communication device. Don't laugh, I'm reaching the world.

When Good Writers Write Great Scripts: Goodbye Nora

Rolling Stone Magazine coverage of the death of Kerr-MGhee whistleblower Karen Silkwood

The death of writer and screenwriter on June 26, 2012,  Nora Ephron made me sad. You don't know this about me, but I loved her work. She was a woman director, her work was funny and she was married to journalist, Carl Bernstein--which scored points with me. He was after all, the Washington Post post reporter who along with Bob Woodward, had brought down a president. But back to Ephron, I grew up during the Rolling Stone Magazine glory years. I recall vividly getting my magazine every other week and reading about the suspicious death of Karen Silkwood, a whistleblower at Kerr-McGhee Fuel Fabrication Site in Oklahoma. Her death in 1974 became the subject of  Imagine my chagrin when the film came out and it starred Meryl Streep and Cher.

See, what know is that I had the pleasure of meeting Cher one night at the infamous Swingo's Celebrity Inn. There was a party for Cher's dance album and I was able to get an invite from my friend at Casablanca Records in Hollywood. I'll never forget Bea Frankel--greatest PR woman I ever met; well, can't forget about Simoe Doe in New York with Atlantic Records; but Bea was my girl on the west coast. She called and had arranged for me to be on the guest list for Cher's exclusive record launch party.

Anyway, I go to the hotel and there is Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter, the late Jane Scott who asks me which one is Cher. I don't want to speak ill of the dead, but Jane was clueless. This is the woman who stood in the middle of the aisle at the Richfield Coliseum and asked me which one was Emerson and which was Lake, as if she had figured out which one was Palmer. During the disco era, we were at a Village People show at a club outside of town, and Jane asked me which one was the Victor Willis. She actually thought the guy I was with, Jeff Wright was Victor. And they did look a lot alike, but you're the reporter who was Beatle Paul McCartney's best bud and you don't know Cher. How could anyone not recognize Cher...anyway. By the way, Cher was the one standing next to me with the hair!

I was first struck with how petite Cher was and next, how beautiful her hair was. Her facial features  were chisheled and her skin was shiny--I knew she belonged on the big screen. Not a stretch of the imagination, I know. I stared because I was amazed by how tall Cher looked on the small screen. Hell, I was taller than Cher and she had on platforms. Sonny Bono must have been very small.

And no, I haven't gotten away from my subject, Nora Ephron. I'm working my way back. If you didn't know, this blog is also about those six degrees of separation operating in my life. Just because I lived in Cleveland, Ohio didn't mean that I wasn't somehow connected to Ephron. I'd had the opportunity to meet Cher who would co-star in "Silkwood".

There were other films written by Ephron; but none of them struck me as being better than a mere screenplay--"Silkwood" was one, as was "When Sally Met Harry". They had taken on an iconic quality which caused me to place Ephron near the top of my list of female screenwriters. In fact, I couldn't think of who I loved better than her? I mean there weren't that many female screenwriters who came to my mind. I mean there's Leigh Brackett, who wrote "The Big Sleep" and parlayed her sci-fi background into work on "The Empire Strikes Back". There was Callie Khoury, who wrote the seminal chick flick, "Thelma and Louise".

These other screenwriters all are special in their own way, but Ephron was the master of the romantic comedy and I happened to be someone who loved romantic comedies if for nothing else to see the Billy Wilderesque "cute meets" where the guy and the gal get together for the first time and realize they like one another. I thought Ephron had mastered the skill and even used her on-screen avatar, actress Meg Ryan to embody that quality of sweet and sassy (when pushed) that became endearing to me in her writing.

Today, when I came home, "Julie and Julia" was on television. I had to stop and spend the afternoon with Nora Ephron. We miss you. We miss your wit. We miss your passion.

The Biographer Inspires Reading and Writing

Montgomery Clift with his "Misfits" co-star, Marilyn Monroe.

You don't know this about me, but I love to read biographies. I love the writing. I love the research. I adore visiting someone's life through the words written by their biographer. In particular, I love Hollywood biographies. Patricia Bosworth is the author of the 1978 Montgomery Clift: A Biography. I consider this to be the best biography that I had read as a teenager. Clift had starred in several of my favorite films: "A Place In The Sun", which was based on the Theodore Dreiser novel,  An American Tragedy;  "Suddenly Last Summer", which was based on the one-act play by Tennessee Williams (it was also directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz); "The Misfits" which was directed by John Huston and featured a screenplay written by Arthur Miller; and "Freud: The Secret Passion" which featured a screenplay written by Jean-Paul Sartre.  Sartre's name was removed from the screen credits by Huston.

Montgomery's films featured collaborations and the works of novelists, screenwriters, playwrights, and directors that I admired. Sometimes reading a biography causes you to go back and explore the works of other writers and or filmmakers. Clift and his generation of actors which included, Monroe, James Dean, and Marlon Brando, were well-read and admired by writers. This love affair between actors and writers is all over the pages of this biography. Also as a reader, when I discovered the connections between writers in the text, I was motivated to read the works of writers that I hadn't yet read. For example, I had read Jean-Paul Sartre, but when I learned of his relationship with Simone de Beauvoir, I immediately went to Mac's Backs on Coventry to get a copy of The Second Sex.

Nobody wrote about Hollywood like Vanity Fair's Patricia Bosworth.

Now about Patricia Bosworth, she is one of my favorite journalists and biographers. She presently serves as a Contributing Editor with my favorite magazine, Vanity Fair. Bosworth has worked at the magazine for nearly 30 years and a reason why I don't throw the book out for at least three or four years--her articles can be read and re-read on the cloudy gray Sunday morning over a cup of Celestial Seasonings tea. Her brief career as an actress featured appearances in films like "Inherit The Wind" and "Young Dr. Malone". I admit I didn't remember seeing her onscreen in either picture. She made the change to journalism and has held positions at Screen Stars, Harper's, McCall's, and of course, Vanity Fair.

A young Elizabeth Taylor with an older, Montgomery Clift

  Bosworth's biography was a tender portrayal of a troubled actor who lived a duplicitous, well confused lifestyle because he wasn't certain about his sexuality. This becomes the crux of the complex story that Bosworth pieces together after conducting her research. The loner whose beautiful looks belied his tremendous acting ability, died alone. His co-star Elizabeth Taylor became one of his closest friends; one of his great loves. Bosworth writes of their relationship:

Copyright 1990 Patricia Bosworth.

 If you enjoy biographies, Bosworth's work is worth reading. There is the Brando book, the Diane Arbus, and the most recent, Jane Fonda biography. I'm glad I spent a couple of weeks re-acquainting myself with the Montgomery Clift biography, it was a welcome, no needed, bit of inspiration.

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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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