Time to Write

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Stranger than his fiction: Joe Eszterhas on screenwriting

Joe Eszterhas's story is stranger than the plots of his screenplays.

“Basic Instinct” sold for the highest amount ever paid to a screenwriter at the time, and he’d also worked on two big hits, “Flashdance” and “Jagged Edge.” He billed himself as Hollywood's first star screenwriter and claimed that those who found him annoying just wanted script writers to be neither heard nor seen--just paid well to go away once the script was done.

However, many said his ego was bigger than his talent and cite “Showgirls” as evidence (although a box office flop it became a best-seller on video). In 1998, David Plotz wrote in Slate: “No profession embraces the brash and talentless more warmly than the  movie industry, and no one is better evidence of this than Joe Eszterhas.”

 Plotz was writing on the occasion of the release of Eszterhas’s Hollywood satire, “An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood  Burn.” Plotz noted, “Critics have called it "bilious," "ham-handed," "a hapless display ... of groundless vanity," a "wretched fiasco." Even Eric Idle, the movie's star, dismissed the film as "not funny." Burn Hollywood Burn cost $10 million and grossed approximately ... nothing."

 For nine years after that, Eszterhas had nothing produced and his flair for self-promotion and his dedication to sex, violence and drugs faltered. He developed cancer of the larynx and had a breakdown. He turned to God and moved to Ohio and wrote his memoirs.

 In this clip he talks about screenwriting. It was shot in 2006 while he was promoting his book, “The Devil’s Guide to Hollywood.”

 

Creative? What you have in common with drug dealers

In this three-minute clip from the bigthink website, Professor Emeritus, University of Delaware, explains the link between risk-seeing and creativity. You may have more in common with drug dealers than you thought…

 (for help in being  more creative, sign up for my free monthly Brainstorm e-bulletin--just send an email request to BstormUK@aol.com)

How to create your own luck

Recently I put up a video of a great one-hour talk by the Director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, in which one of her key points was that successful people create their own luck. In case you didn't watch it (or as a quick review if you did) here's what she said about how to create your own luck:

• ·      When possible, meet new people—be curious. Amazing things start with random meetings.
• ·      You need to know how to fail fast and frequently. Failure is the secret sauce of Silicon Valley. If you want more successes, you will have to tolerate more failures.
• ·      Don’t wait to be anointed. In the context of work, she says when you get a job you’re also getting a key to the building—in other words, to the opportunities you see, not only the ones you are assigned to handle. Entrepreneurs build a ladder below them rather than climbing up one someone else created.
• ·      Never miss an opportunity to be fabulous. She says normally people in class do only the minimum amount to get an “A” but when you set the standard at “fabulous” people do amazing things.
• ·      Entrepreneurship is an extreme sport. You have to get out and do it.

(For how to be more creative and turn your ideas into action, see my newest book, "Creativity Now!", available from Amazon and other booksellers.)

Novelist David Benioff and how he constructed "City of Thieves"

Interesting interview by Edward Eveld with novelist and screenwriter David Benioff at the website of the Kansas City Star. Based on a high recommendation from a friend I bought his “City of Thieves” but haven’t had time yet to read it. It’s about two children on a quest in wartime Stalingrad. Here are a few things he said about how the book came about:

 “I always had that first sentence in mind — “My grandfather, the knife fighter, killed two Germans before he was eighteen” — so that became the framing device. I start in contemporary United States with someone very much like me, explaining how he got access to the story.” (This is an interesting counterpoint to novelist John Irving, who always starts with his last sentence.)

 “And this was partly inspired by European fairy tales, with the classic story line in which a young boy or girl sets off on an impossible mission, a quest, and encounter all sorts of obstacles, people or animals who will be their allies or adversaries. That’s very much the structure here. Because of that, it’s very appropriate to make this a straight-ahead story with that narrative propulsion. It’s a very dark fairy tale, but European fairy tales were like that.”

(Want friendly guidance writing your own novel? Get a copy of my book, "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon and other online and offline retailers.)

John Irving on how he writes & the thrill of the blank page

My previous post was a clip from the BigThink website of an interview with novelist John Irving about the qualities that helped make him a writer. In other parts of the interview he said his writing schedule, when he’s not travelling or interrupted by domestic demands, is to get up early and work for eight or nine hours a day.

 He never begins a novel until he’s written the last sentence—in twelve novels not even the punctuation of that last sentence has changed. He uses that as a roadmap from which to work backward.

 Here’s what he says about the thrill of the blank page:

John Irving on the qualities of a writer

On the bigthink.com site, there’s a long interview with novelist John Irving (“The World According to Garp,” “The Cider House Rules.” Here’s a clip about some early signs that he would be a writer—can you relate?

The strange habits of three successful writers

It’s always interesting to find out how successful authors do what they do. Here are a few examples:

 Dan Brown works seven days a week, starting at 4am. He uses an hourglass as a timer and every hour gets up and does some push-ups, sit-ups, and stretches. He wrote the outline for the DaVinci Code in a laundry room, sitting on a lawn chair and using an ironing board as a desk (I think it’s pretty safe to say he doesn’t see the inside of many laundry rooms anymore.)

 Val McDermid starts at 10am but works into the night. She wrote a draft of her latest book in only two months. She told The Writer magazine that working this way is “…not something any sensible person should do. But this is the way it’s happening now.” She also doesn’t like anybody to see works in progress. When she’s happy with a manuscript it goes directly to her agent and editor.

 Margaret Atwood writes longhand to create a tree of characters and notes their birthdays and then uses those to cast their horoscopes. “You wouldn’t want your character to have the wrong horoscope any more than you would want them to have the wrong name,” she told the New York Times, possibly with tongue in cheek.

(Someday people may be writing about your strange habits--if you get that book published. For friendly guidance, see my book, "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon and other online and offline retailers.)

Four strategies for writing success in the future

Keeping an eye on what is happening to newspapers and magazines is important even for writers who don’t write for those media. In strategy+business, Matthew Ego, Harry Hawkes and Greg Springs have written a long article called “Reinventing Print Media.” They discuss the decline of the print media and say “the situation seems dire and unsolvable.”

 However, they also suggest four promising strategies. I’ve summarized them below along with some of my thoughts about what this could mean to book authors as well.

 1: Develop deeper relationships with readers around targeted interest areas and use digital media to deepen and extend those relationships.

 For book authors this means that we need to be our own brand—beyond any one book title. If we build a relationship with readers in our niche, they are more likely to be loyal. We can use the internet to find these people and give them online content that keeps them connected to us.

 2: Tap into revenue streams beyond advertising and circulation.

 Authors will need to look beyond royalties. Other options include lectures, premium content via membership websites, and sponsorship.

 3: Lower costs and emphasize a ‘profitable core’ of unique and brand-defining material.

 Print on demand gives authors a low-cost (sometimes no-cost) way to get their books out, and of course we also have the downloadable e-book option, again with almost no cost.

 4: Innovate with new products and pricing models.

 If authors have control over their material, they have the option of repurposing it in a number of different ways. For instance, it would be possible to put each chapter of a non-fiction book online and give readers the choice of which ones they want to read (and pay for). Or you can offer a video companion for your book, downloadable for an extra fee.

 Suggestion: once a month or so, set aside an hour or two to think about where things are going in your field and how you can stay ahead of the curve.

(My book, "Your Writing Coach," includes a chapter on writing for the new media. You can get it from Amazon and other online and offline retailers.)

How it can help your writing to change your lens (Creative Eye series)

For one of my workshops I’m coming up with some approaches that I think can add rocket fuel to your creativity, and I will be sharing them here as well. This one is about seeing things in a fresh way.  

When taking a picture, a photographer has to consider which lens to use: wide-angle to get the maximum space or telephoto or macro for a close view, or something in between.  Each of these will yield a different image and therefore a different feeling.  

You can use this lens metaphor to refresh your writing. Let’s look at an example from a story in which a young female fan of Elvis Presley is waiting outside a concert hall hoping to catch a glimpse of him when he arrives. In writing this scene you have a choice of lenses.  

The WIDE ANGLE lens conveys the feeling of the entire setting—the crowd, the streets, the outside of the hall, the weather, the temperature, etc.  

The MEDIUM ANGLE LENS captures whatever is in her vicinity—the other fans behind her pressing against her, the lamp directly above her, etc.  

The TELEPHOTO lens achieves the feeling of being close yet from a distance. In this scene, when the limo carrying Elvis arrives, the girl desperately tries to see him through the darkened windows. For a moment that’s all that fills her field of vision but her sense of distance remains.  

The MACRO lens gets very close. In this scene the girl might suddenly notice that the nail polish she lovingly applied before coming out is already chipping off. She has a moment of panic: she wanted to look her best for her idol.   If you’ve fallen into the habit of using only one lens in your writing, or using a set pattern (like the director who shows every scene starting with a  long shot, then a medium shot, then a series of close-ups), try varying your lens or the order.  

(for more tips on writing well, get my book, “Your Writing Coach,” published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon and other online and offline retailers.)

Problems as opportunities

Yesterday I put up a video of a talk I encouraged you to view, about creativity and entrepreneurship. In case you don't have time (or an instant review if you did), here are some key points:

Tina Seelig of the Stanford Technology Venture Program gave a fascinating one hour lecture on “The Art of Teaching Entrepreneurship and Innovation” in which she talked about an experiment with her students. She gave them an envelope containing five dollars of seed funding and told them to plan a way to make the most money in four hours. Here are some of the findings:

• ·      The teams that experimented along the way did better.
• ·      The teams that made more money didn’t focus on the five dollars but on the value of their time and ideas.
• ·      Often we frame the problem too tightly. The opportunities are bigger than we think at the beginning. The winners sold three minutes of their class time presenting their results, to a company that wanted to recruit those students.

 The next time she gave students only a handful of paper clips. One of the teams traded the paperclips for some poster board on which they wrote, “Stanford students for sale. Buy two, get one free.” First they were asked to carry groceries, but eventually they were asked for higher-level tasks, including leading a brainstorming session at a company that rewarded them with three computer monitors.

 To see the winners of subsequent contests, put in “tournament” in the search box at Ecorner.stanford.edu and follow Twitter@ecorner.

(for great ideas on how to be more creative--and how to turn your ideas into action--see my new book, "Creativity Now!" available from Amazon and other booksellers.)

A brilliant talk on creativity and entrepreneurship

This is a brilliant one hour talk on creativity and entrepreneurship, by Tina Seelig, Executive Director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. Entertaining, encouraging, informative--worth your time!

The story that Twitter built

Science fiction writer Neil Gaiman started a new fairy tale using Twitter and BBC Audio books invited the public to complete it. Submissions were reviewed and each new sentence selected, for a period of eight days. There were about 10,000 tweets submitted, of which 874 were used, from 124 contributors (the story is about 14,000 words long).  

Gaiman’s opening line was, “Sam was brushing her hair when the girl in the mirror put down the hairbrush, smiled, and said, “We don’t love you anymore.”  

The resulting story is called “Hearts, Keys and Puppetry” and you can get it as a free audio book from the BBC or from iTunes. It’s narrated by Katherine Kellgren. I’ve listened to only part of the first chapter and there are a couple of clunky sentences, but overall it flows pretty well.  

They plan to repeat the experiment, possibly in February, with a new story.

(If you're not planning to write your story with 124 others, you'll benefit from my book, "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon and other online and offline retailers. It takes you all the way from original idea through to publication.)

Great substitute for a white board (& what to put on it)

On her “Why Not Blog?” blog, Donna (I didn’t spot a last name) showed a picture of her solution to not having a white board: using large sticky notes (like Post-It notes) on the door of a closet.

 I do the same thing with a drafting table on which I’ve folded the top down to be vertical. Works great. (However, as of last week I’m also the proud owner of a new white board, so now I feel like I can officially plan Important Things.)

What should you put on your white board? How about:

• Your most important goal
• The three things you will do today that will move you toward those goals
• A quote that inspires you (change regularly)
• An action map (of the steps you will take to reach your goal)
• And anything else that you want to keep in mind, because the old saying "out of sight, out of mind" really is true!
• (If you want help reaching your goals, join my Breakthrough Strategy 60-day program. It's a combination of emailed lessons, live teleconferences, and great support materials. If you want more information, send an email now to BstormUK@aol.com)

Who understands where new media are going? It's Ashton...

And the next media mogul is…Ashton Kutcher??!

 Yes, according to a Fast Company article by Ellen McGirt, Ashton Kutcher is one of the few people who have figured out where the media are all heading.

 “…what Kutcher's production company wants to become: not just a home for his television and movie projects but also a go-to source for brands looking to deploy what's called "influencer marketing," a squishy hybrid of entertainment content, advertising, and online conversation that finds its audience via video, animation, Twitter, blogs, texts, and mobile. "Entertainment, really, is a dying industry," says Kutcher. "We're a balanced social-media studio, with revenue streams from multiple sources" -- film, TV, and now digital. "For the brand stuff, we're not replacing ad agencies but working with everyone to provide content and the monetization strategies to succeed on the Web."

 Yep, sounds like a mogul all right. An embodiment of this strategy is his show, Katalyst HQ, an internet-based video serial based on his real company. Kind of  an adolescent version of “The Office” meets “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” The current season is sponsored by Hot Pockets, turnovers that you put in the microwave and eat with your hands.

Of course it doesn’t hurt that Kutcher has the biggest Twitter following in the world. Yes, bigger than Oprah’s (gasp)!

(For information on how to write for the new--and old--media, see my book, "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey.)

Where does your money go when you buy a book?

Have you ever wondered where the money goes when you buy a book? On the Fast Company website Adam Pennberg breaks it down:

 “If a book lists for $30, the publisher gets between $15 and $18, but it has to pay a wholesaler 15% ($4.50) and a distributor another 15%. Take the higher number and Hyperion, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, and the rest end up with $9. Pre-publication (cover design, text design, copyediting, etc.) run about a buck. Printing: $3.25. Author royalties, maybe $3 a book. Don't forget salaries, rent and the like, which may cost a buck or two on each title. Then there are returns, with booksellers returning unsold merchandise to the publishers, who either remainder it for pennies on the dollar, or simply pulp it. In the end a publisher is fortunate to wring a few cents on a book. No wonder it's a hits business, with John Grisham, Dan Brown, Stephenie Meyer, and J.K. Rowling carrying the rest of us. If a publisher gets one or two big books a year, it might report margins of 10%--if it's lucky.”

 The article also looks at what it calls “bookstore baksheesh”—the money publishers pay to get books featured on the ends of aisle or tables up front. A sobering look at a challenging business!

 (for help writing your books, see “Your Writing Coach,” published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon and other online and offline retailers.)

How to see the world differently (Creative Eye series)

For one of my workshops I’m coming up with some approaches that I think can add rocket fuel to your creativity, and I will be sharing them here as well. The first one is about seeing the world anew.

 One of the challenges all creative people have is to stay fresh. Habits and routines get us through our days with minimal friction but they also are the enemy of new experiences and insights.

 Our usual routine is to sort for the familiar: the way we know to get to work, the shirt or skirt we know makes us look good, the greeting that always gets an automatic response from the receptionist.

 For a fresh experience, focus on breaking your routine in some small way every day.  Three examples:

 Take a full minute to examine some object you use every day. What do you notice now about its color, texture, the sound it makes when you use it, how cool or warm it feels to the touch, and so on? It’s best to do this in private, to avoid having people think you’re on drugs.

 Kick up your small talk one notch. Store clerks and receptionists don’t want to get into a deep conversation with you, but see what happens when you go from “How are you?” to “How’s your day going so far?” The first gets an automatic “fine” most of the time; the second may require a bit of thought. It’s not intrusive but it might wake them out of the auto-response state. They may like that or not, but it could be interesting either way.

 Set yourself a question of the day. In the morning write down some question you’re going to ponder and keep it where you’ll encounter it a few times, for instance in your wallet or purse. Make it something that will bring you back to the here and now, such as, “What’s the best thing about what’s happening right now?”

 (For more ideas on how to be more creative, get my book, “Creativity Now!” published by Prentice Hall Business)

How to cope with rejection

How do you feel about being rejected--you, personally, or your writing or other project?  Sarah Kliff wrote about this for Newsweek a while back, with a review of some of the research on how we react to rejection. It turns out that it doesn’t take much rejection to bring about quite a few negative consequences:

 “…research has found that rejected individuals also become less social, are more likely to interpret neutral words and behaviors as signs of rejection and score lower on intelligence tests—all from a simple 15-minute activity [in which participants were told they’d been rejected by a group]. And this pain was felt whether the rejection came from someone we want to like us, or someone we couldn't care less about. "There really aren't any limits," says [psychologist Jean] Twenge. "Of course it hurts more when someone we care about rejects us, but it even hurts when people that we hate reject us."

 Another side-effect: the more we get hurt by rejection, the more we push away connections. "It's possible that in some cases it’s self-protective," says Twenge. "Even though we know it's illogical, that it makes more sense to be nicer, that's not what happens. The immediate reaction is to withdraw."

 Yes, that sounds about right. When I was working in Hollywood and some script project of mine got twisted around or rejected, my first response was to indulge in fantasies of moving to a Greek island and turning into a hermit. I have a friend who has basically the same reaction, but his choice is Thailand.

 Over time, I realized that probably a career as a hermit is not really in my future, but allowing myself to indulge in it for a while softened the blow. Based on personal experience, here are four strategies that help (at least somewhat) to soften the blow of rejections:

• Go ahead and indulge your fantasies of escape, but try putting a time limit on it (e.g., for 48 hours or 72 hours I’m going to think about how great it would be to become a hermit in Greece or Thailand—or your choice.)
  
• Have at least one personal project that you work on just for the joy of working on it, and that you may never subject for the approval (or disapproval) of others.
• Check whether the rejection has anything useful in it—any constructive criticism you can apply to improve the project. If so, note it even if you don’t feel like working on it right now.  (I’ve left this as step number three, since it’s difficult to be objective when the sting of rejection is still burning.)
• Remember how many great books, works of art, and scientific theories have been rejected before they finally were accepted and lauded.

 I won’t pretend I’ve found a way to make rejection fun; it’s still a pain in the neck or other parts of the anatomy, but these steps should help.

(for tips on how to be more creative and productive, sign up now for my free monthly Brainstorm e-bulletin by sending an email request to BstormUK@aol.com)

Do you need to suffer for your art or writing?

In the Times of India, Osho answers a question about whether creative people really have to agonize (experience agony).

  “All the creators in the West have passed through long years of suffering. Many of them have been forced to live in madhouses, and many of them have committed suicide. But still the western creator, either of meditation or of music, of painting or of dance, has not become aware of why he has to suffer.

“In the East, the situation is totally different - not a single creator has suffered. In fact only the creators have enjoyed life to its fullest. Not a single creator has been put into a madhouse, not a single creator has committed suicide; but creators have moved deeper into meditation, and many of them have become mystics. From painting, from music, from dance, they have moved deeper into their own being.

“So learn to be more meditative, and let your creativity be secondary to your meditativeness. Then you will have a totally different state of being -- that of ecstasy; and out of ecstasy, whatever is created has also some flavour of it.”

I think he may be overstating the case, but there's at least a germ of truth in his view. Perhaps one reason we agonize more in the West is that we tend to be very results-oriented. Sometimes we are so worried about whether our work will be published or produced that we lose the joy of the process of creating (I speak as a sometimes guilty party). A more meditative approach couldn't hurt!

(If you have writing or artistic goals and need some support in achieving them, sign up for my Breakthrough Strategy online coaching program. See the details at www.jurgenwolff.com)

Do you have the five traits of a great innovator?

CNN reported on a six-year study on the five secrets of being an effective innovator, conducted by professors from Harvard Business School, Insead, and Brigham Young University. The results are published in the Harvard Business Review. In brief, the great innovators are good at:

 Associating ideas and information in unique combinations;

 Questioning—being curious and not accepting assumptions automatically;

 Observing and being open-minded;

 Experimenting with new ways of thinking and doing things;

 Discovering—turning curiosity into action.

One of the professors told CNN, “Studies have shown that creativity is close to 80 percent learned and acquired. We found that it’s like exercising your muscles—if you engage in the actions you build the skills.”

One of their recommendations for developing your ability to innovate is to spend half an hour a week talking to somebody you normally wouldn’t interact with. By asking them questions, observing them, discovering their world view and being open-minded, you may find yourself coming up with new ideas.

(Another way to be more creative is to read my free monthly creativity and productivity Brainstorm e-bulletin. Just send an email request to BstormUK@aol.com and we’ll add you to the list.)

 

Why other people's bad writing shouldn't cheer you up

A young writer named Nicholas Maronese writes in “Excaliber” (York University’s community newspaper) that he likes the “Twilight” books because they’re so bad. He writes:

 "Meyer has shown me that you don’t have to be a great writer – scratch that, good writer, er, uh, decent writer to – Meyer has shown me that you don’t have to have half a brain to make millions of dollars as a writer. She has inspired me with her work. I now know that, if I am somehow unable to meet any of my career goals, I can always just get rich churning out unreadable drivel and marketing it to tweens."

 I have no opinion on the Twilight books, not having read them, but Maronese is making the common mistake of thinking that bad writing is easy.  Sorry, Nicholas, but you can’t fake it. The people who are writing stuff you consider drivel are fully committed to it, and if you try cranking it out in a cynical manner you are likely to find out that what you’ve written isn’t bad, it’s bad in a way that shows you’re doing it as a cynical exercise.

(You might as well write well...and if you need help, see my book, "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon and other online and offline retailers.)