A Writer's Life

I've wanted to be a writer since I was about 10 years old. I remember my first effort was after seeing a James Bond movie (Diamonds Are Forever). Inspired, I went home and started writing my own spy novel on my dad's typewriter. I think my spy's name was Martin Thompson. I wrote about a page, but I did have a list of all the chapters.

Through my teens I wanted to be a sportswriter. I would watch games on TV and write up news stories about them. I think if I had kept that up I could have been good at it (I now write game recaps for Princeton women's hockey on USCHO.com, though that is a non-paying gig) but I'm glad I didn't. I like sports, but if it had become a profession, I think I would become burned out quickly. I mean, it seems that most sportswriters are writing articles about salary caps and steroids, and not what happens on the field of play.

When I got to college I found my love of theater, and wrote plays, lots of plays, a handful that found life on stage. Playwright was my new vocation, and after graduating I applied to the Yale Drama School. I was not accepted, and as is my wont, that kind of deflated things for me.

In my twenties I began a magnum opus, a novel about disaffected liberal kids in the Reagan era and how they react to the new conservativism. It was pretty good but had way too many characters and plot strands. I sent some of it to an agent and she called it "clever and fresh" but said the fiction market was "soft."
I did finish a mystery novel in the early 90s. Again, I think it's as good as some of the stuff out there, certainly no masterpiece. I've got it around somewhere. I should revisit it, but it's dated.

Then I turned to screenwriting. I wrote one about Area 51, a black comedy, that I seriously pushed about six or seven years ago. I bought books on how to accomplish this, and actually got some agents to read it. I paid for professional coverage, and it got recommended. I even got to the top 250 in the first Project: Greenlight contest. Sadly, it remains unmade. Ever sadder, to make it as a screenwriter involves more than just sitting in a room and typing. Two things are against me--my age, and that I don't live in California.

I have had lots of work published, though, but it has all been of the erotic nature. When I was at Penthouse I wrote hundreds of first-person narratives. They were all the kind of stuff I could never use as clips, though, as almost everyone of them contained the word "clit." I still pick up a paycheck every now and again for that sort of writing, especially reviews of pornographic films.

I heard from my friend Paula the other day, who has been toiling on a biography of Evelyn Nesbit for years. She may finally have hit the paydirt, as a serious agent is now shopping the book around. I'm glad for her success, but am also trying to use it to get me going. I think I should return to writing prose, because age and address don't matter nearly as much. I may return to the characters I used in my first screenplay, only shifting the focus to a romantic comedy about people who live in Las Vegas (a long obsession of mine).

When people ask me what I do, I have to give this long, convoluted answer, because my job is difficult to describe. The quick easy answer is, "I'm a writer."