Through the end of the World Series, I will also continue to moderate a group website for baseball doggerel called. I need to start working soon on a Christmas story, something I've done every year for my wife, so I'd better get scribbling. I will say that right now I have a short play in the hands of a few theater companies, a half-completed longer play, and a book project suggested by my publisher in Britain. I don't like to describe works in progress that's a confidence a gentleman or lady shouldn't divulge til the proper time. There are about 7 within walking distance of my house, one of the benefits of living in a city like Chicago. I most often write in my cluttered basement office, but if I get too distracted by other obligations, half-finished projects, intrusive emails or tiny toys, I relocate to a coffee shop. I write in the morning after walking the dog, before being harangued by everyday life and the internet. I suppose I half-expected to end up in law school or grad school eventually, because that's where English majors landed. I had determined that I would have to go it alone, without the help of anyone **sniffle**. I wish I could say that I found mentors in college, but years of defending my choice of an English degree from sniggering comments about its usefulness built a thick shell around me. I suppose you can be a good writer without studying Latin, but why make it harder on yourself?
I will always be in my father's debt, however, for insisting I study Latin. My family never encouraged it, certainly. Without him and my little band of artistic wiseacres, I probably would never have thought of being a writer. He also showed us how to handle being a wise-ass in a conservative, sometimes limiting environment with style. I also obsessively read The National Lampoon in its glory years, as well as absorbed The Firesign Theatre, the Marx Brothers, and various comedians on record.Īt my all-boys Catholic high school, my English teacher Mike Witucki was greatly encouraging. That's when I began binging on Kurt Vonnegut and Charles Dickens. Most of my writing proclivities were formed around 12 or 13.
Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.). I was a thoughtful lad and didn't want to exhaust my readers, so I inserted a comma after every word.
It started out like every other episode, with the announcer intoning, "It was a beautiful day in Gotham City." My mother had told me that commas were meant to give a reader a pause, a break. The first writing I remember was a script for the original "Batman" TV series. We also love the little magic beans known as words. It's how we make sense of the world and our place in it. I think most writers are in some way born to be writers.
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