“The world is a book,” wrote Saint Augustine, “and those who do not travel read only one page.”
If frequent flyer miles were awarded for every book she has read since childhood, Maureen Palacios would have enough to have circled the globe more times than she can count. The owner of Once Upon a Time Book Store – the oldest children’s bookstore in the nation – is happily surrounded by what she loves best: books, books and more books. With a laugh she divulges that the only thing she needs more of is the time to actually read all of them.
In the 21st century, we tend to take for granted we can strike up email conversations with strangers a world away, solicit advice from writer chat rooms, and get instant feedback on cyber- pitched proposals that previously used to take weeks – or sometimes months – for a reply. Advances in technology have brought us spiffy computer programs that free us from the tedium of creating specialized script templates, the annoyance of repagination to accommodate edits, and – thanks to voice recognition packages – not even having to touch a keyboard as we compose our thoughts.
When I was growing up, I lived for summer vacations and all the glorious free time it represented for me to bury my nose in a book. There was a library within walking distance of our house that could easily have become my home-away-from-home. I’d check out the maximum number of titles that I could (I think the limit was three), read them all by bedtime (and sometimes even under the covers with my Girl Scout flashlight), and then be back the next day as soon as the doors opened to check out three more.
My romantic suspense, Charade was only the third time I’d ventured into penning a sizzling scene but I was apparently getting rather good at it. So good, in fact, that my editor at HarperCollins – a naive and bespectacled young woman whom I suspected at the time had never set foot outside the comfort zone of her own borough – requested that I “turn down the heat”.
When I was 15, no one could see me. No one who really mattered, that is, which – in my sophomoric myopia – revolved around a hottie senior boy named Artie. Artie was tall, handsome, smart and, on occasion, borrowed his father’s tweed sport coat that had suede elbow patches and made him look like quite a promising young captain of industry. In retrospect, he reminded me of John Davidson (which just goes to show what conservative, white bread taste I had in an era that fostered The Beatles, free love, draft-dodging, and Mary Quant cosmetics).
For authors and publishers across the country, hackles have been raised regarding Amazon.com's disturbing ultimatum that POD entities and independent publishing companies must now use Amazon's own enterprise, BookSurge, for all of its printing orders or else incur higher costs to have books available for purchase online. This is clearly both a restraint of trade issue and conflict of interest that could severely impact the independent publishing industry. To that end, I'd like to share some suggestions offered by my husband and in-house counsel, Mark Webb.
There’s a funny scene in Shakespeare in Love in which a boatman – upon recognizing the young Bard as his passenger – eagerly tries to foist a new script on him. As anyone who has lived in Los Angeles for more than 10 minutes can attest, it’s an accurate send-up of the fact that almost every valet, waiter and clerk you encounter will just happen to have an extra copy of his or her latest project if they overhear you have any connection to Tinseltown. (“Here’s the Cobb salad you ordered, Ms.
Does Life imitate Art or does Art imitate Life?
BEHIND EVERY GREAT ROMANCE IS A STRUGGLING WRITER
Can Life really imitate Art? When sophomore Laurie Preston is chosen to be lead screenwriter for a movie her high school is producing, she sees the chance of a lifetime to scribble a romantic script that will finally make the boy of her dreams say the words she's been longing to hear. Unfortunately, the senior hottie who won her star-struck heart from the very first moment she saw him has yet to discover she even exists.
As goes a favorite Christmas week tradition at our house, I was in charge of picking the movies we’d traipse off to the mall to see while everyone else was doing frantic last-minute shopping. “Sweeney Todd is first on the list,” I told my husband. Who could blame him for raising an eyebrow? Tim Burton’s adaptation of the bloodiest musical in the history of American theater is unquestionably an odd choice in a season synonymous with sugarplums, mistletoe and joyous conviviality.
If my husband and I are ever on a quiz show and the topic is White Christmas, we will easily leave our fellow contestants in the dust. Throughout our marriage – and, for me, even longer than that – it has been a tradition that the holidays don’t officially commence until we’ve watched Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye croon their way to Pine Tree, Vermont and give their former commanding general the best darned Christmas of his life.
For new screenwriters, crafting credible conversation is a major challenge. Too often, someone who would probably be better suited to writing novels or short stories tries to put words in the mouths of live actors. It’s a dead giveaway when they don’t know what they’re doing. Why? Because (1) the characters all talk exactly the same way, (2) they talk more eloquently than normal people ever do, or (3) they talk way too much.
THE CRITICAL DO'S AND DON'TS OF DIALOGUE
Does the call of the open road beckon as you dispatch the final clutter of year-end parties and flip to the first page of your new calendar? If you have a passion for living out of a suitcase, keeping a detailed journal, and relating your adventures to others, you can put it all to good use by honing your skills as a travel writer.
Made you look, didn’t I? The power of a strong hook has been fueling marketing schemes for years, not the least of which involve the glamour and glitz of writing scripts for the movies.
Writers have often expressed the view that Life is a continuous melting pot of free material; it’s just a matter of soaking it all up and discerning which parts are the most likely to yield commercial success when you put them to paper. To someone like myself who is as much an enthusiast of good writing as I am of good food, the journey to success doesn’t even have to start with taking a step outside one’s front door. If you want your plots to really get cooking, there's no better place for your education to begin than in your own kitchen.
"You've written musicals before, haven't you?" an associate of mine inquired.
It seems that two women she knew - and whom I’ll call Gwen and Sybil - were looking for someone to develop both the stage and film script for a score they’d written about a tortured Italian artiste.
Thinking it could be fun, I asked them to send a synopsis. I also invited them to a fave Pasadena bistro to chat over a glass of wine. If I'd had my wits about me, I would have further instructed my fave waiter, Andrew, to rescue me after the first 10 minutes.
Wally found me - as so many clients do - by reading screenwriting magazines and trolling the Internet for advice. He liked what I had to say and wanted to engage my consulting services to mentor him through his Epic.
Yes, you read that right. Epic. Wally was fixated for some inexplicable reason on Lewis and Clark. In fact, he had spent a good deal of his adult life reading everything he could about the intrepid explorers and decided the time was right to tell The True Story.
