Why I write
The first story I remember making up was at age four. I was alone in a stranger’s living room as my parents and their friends talked at the dining room table. They finally moved into the front room, only to find me in my underwear, jumping off a couch. The question, “What are you doing?!” was not meant to receive a reply, but was an accusation. I innocently explained I was scuba diving, having recently seen the TV show Sea Hunt with Lloyd Bridges. The couch was my boat, the rug the sea, and dangers lurked everywhere. “Put on your clothes,” ended my adventure, but not my imagination.
At ten years old, my father, after seeing James Bond’s Thunderball, convinced my mother I had to see it. The question she asked when I got home, “There were a lot of naughty ladies in the movie, weren’t there?” Half clothed people again— my nemesis. All I could remember of the movie was the spectacular underwater battle scenes between armed scuba divers.
I did convince my parents, at age 13, to drive me halfway across Chicago to take scuba diving lessons. I cannot tell you how freaked out I was, sitting on the bottom of the pool— being forced to take the regulator out of my mouth and put in the one offered to me by the instructor. I truly believed I would suck in a lung full of water and die a lonely fat boy at the deep end of the pool.
To pass my certification we had to have a checkout dive in 40 feet of water in a quarry north of Chicago. I barely fit into my wet suit, but there was no other way to go in this almost freezing water in the middle of winter. Fifteen feet down I had one of the biggest panic attacks in my life. The water was murky. There was an abandoned junked automobile at the bottom that the others quickly dove to explore. I thought that the car was a perfect place for the Chicago mob to dump a body, locked in the trunk. I raced to the surface, gave the instructor the excuse that my mask didn’t fit properly, and never went scuba diving again. The imagination of a writer cuts two ways; marvelous for inventing new worlds, but acutely deficient for courage in real life challenges.
Coffee
Fear is rampant in the life of a writer. Am I brilliant? No, this is shit. To sit at my keyboard and type is a daily struggle of epic proportions. Procrastination is legendary among us. JRR Tolkien spent all of World War II tending his garden instead of finishing Lord of the Rings. “The war effort needs me.” His wife was constantly on his back to get him to stop making excuses and finish the damned thing.
I recently was inspired to come up with a motivator to write. I love coffee. Witness the coffee plants I’m growing in Starbucks cookie jars. I really look forward to my first sip in the morning. I read something on how to get around procrastination and I came up with a plan. I cannot have that first cuppa until I’m in my chair, laptop on knees, fingers pressing keys. It really has done wonders for my page count. I guess I can’t see over the rim of my Starbucks coffee mug to imagine my future failures.
Research
I think every writer must be comfortable with being alone. This plays into a love of doing research. Maybe a little too much love. It can be endless and too often gives an excuse to avoid writing. But it’s so much fun to discover trivial facts to put into the body of a story.
Unfortunately, I’ve spent hours wrestling with the importance of a really amazing bit of trivia. Like Gollum, I say, “My preciousss…” But if what I’ve discovered doesn’t propel the storyline, it must be tossed into the volcanic lake of Mount Doom, never to be seen again. So hard to let go— it’s like biting a finger off.
My Library
I don’t think much needs to be written about this. A picture is worth a thousand words (I do really hate cliches).
Hats and Fashion
I will be making a video showing how the wearing of a hat is evidence of great intelligence— using brain chemistry to prove my thesis. I got my love of fashion from my father, an artist, and my mother, who as a teenager aspired to become a fashion designer. This picture was taken on the iconic stairs of Christian Dior in Paris in 1970. The dress is my dad’s silk batik, sewn into an outfit by my mother. He was offered a job on the spot by Dior’s head designer, but my mother didn’t want to move to France.
Dad was an early adopter of fashion. The white turtle neck of the 1960’s. Dad wore a Neru jacket. Went to Hong Kong and had a suits made by a famous tailor. He took me to buy my first hat (Eddie Bauer) when I was 40 years old because I struggled with chest infections and bronchitis. Turned out, when he was 40 his father bought him a hat for the same reason. It’s astonishing how the genes we receive are our destiny. This is a big reveal to the book.
X-Files
I took a course on writing for television and my Brood Parasites script was the result. It got me in the door of the X-Files, but it was too close to the mythology of their series and they rejected it, though they told me to get an agent (the fax of the letter is because the Vancouver post office stole the original as they recognized the iconic return address).
I did have a good connection with agent Chris Von Goetz (founding partner, ICM agency, now founder of Adventure Media— Abbot Elementary’s staff went with him), who said the script was better than 100’s of X-Files scripts he had received and asked me to also write a half hour comedy episode (I had a great one for Third Rock From the Sun) but fear stopped me from following through on it.
I was also in conversations with Naran Shankar of The Outer Limits sci-fi show. The show often bought people’s X-Files episodes and turned them into Outer Limits single episodes. Unfortunately, as I was in talks with Shankar, he took a job with CSI as ‘showrunner’ (top-level executive producer of a television series who oversee the writers). He has since overseen each of the series; Almost Human, and The Expanse.
While a combination of changing circumstances and fears ended my screenwriting aspirations, I’ve since taken courses with the University of British Columbia creative writing department and began writing my novel (I got great encouragement from my favorite teacher, John Vigna who said my writing was ‘second level’). Now, after 10 years of hard labor, 17 drafts and revisions, and help from 3 editors to make a book I love, it’s ready to publish!
Pizza!
I grew up in Chicago, so pizza was an important part of life. My family would travel across the South Side to go for pizza at The Home Run Inn. Deep dish at Uno’s and Gino’s was a favorite date spot. And most of all, there was homemade pizza mom made that was always a request for my birthday (It does take a couple hours to make). It still is comfort food for me. [Picture of slices of homemade pizza] Mom got the recipe for pizza from Good Housekeeping Magazine. Men came back from serving in Italy in World War II and there were no pizza restaurants. GHM’s recipe was an attempt to replicate Italy. When I serve others the pizza they say it reminds them of bruschetta as it doesn’t have pizza sauce on it. Here’s a picture of mom’s recipe book with pizza. I figure this was written out probably 70 years ago?
Tagged: Batik dress, Christian Dior fashion, hats, fashion hats, G. I. Joe deep sea diver, creative writing, Creative Writing, Writer’s Block Solutions, Coffee, Starbucks coffee, Coffee Plants in Starbucks Cookie Jars, X-Files spec script, Writing Life