Especially if you read this article about his retreats called Little Nicky Camp. Oh, to be a fly on the wall… I mean, if those camps really exist.

But what we do. Changes lives.  There is nothing more important than giving a creative soul, a writing mother, a working woman who’s been sneaking away to the basement at night to write her novel… nothing would say I LOVE YOU more than  giving them space and time and an ocean view.

Just sayin’

Write by the Water , an amazing Christmas gift for the writer in your family.

The first e-book offering from little old me.

Yep. I did it. It wasn’t traditional. It wasn’t even my favorite book. I know, you shouldn’t say that. But I have become filterless in the last short while… beware the “f” bomb, people.

I blame it on the world. I am, like most writers filled with doubt about the publishing world- the book as we once knew it is probably changing forever. And along with that, is the way we acquire, market and buy both the author and the book.

So what’s a girl to do? Give up her dream? Stand there and just take it? Nope. Not my style. I have been patient. I have been understanding, forgiving and kind. Ask my agent.*

I believe there is “the right time” for everything, but seriously… does it take 4 months for an editor to reply? I know I always think I can do something better than the guy in charge, but imagine this… an email comes in. You read the query.  You say, nope. not for me. you reply. You delete, and repeat. A pitch comes from an agent, you like it, you request manu.  She sends it, you skim, trust your gut. Offer or decline. Done. Next?

Don’t even get me started on the army of marketers and accountants it takes to push a manuscript into book form. Or the way most people only read what they find listed on a BOGUS best-seller list. ANd please, we do not want to talk about the way some writers are more magic web masters and salespeople than wordsmiths.

ARGH.

Let’s just say, I want to keep writing novels, even if no one ever reads them. Even if I have to buy the whole stock myself and fly around the world reading chapters to blind people . I want to believe in the power of words, be sucked into the imagery of a place I will never go nor have never been. I want to be responsible for taking one person out of their reality and dropping them smack into a place from my dream. I want to mess with your head and I want you to love me for it.

Well, there. that’s why we write. For love. Or… to annoy the shit out of you.

I do both.

*note to agent   forgive my candor…now go pitch We’re Not Waving, We’re Drowning, and 3 Women Walk into a Bar

Of course Hollywood has cashed in on this. Besides, when you’re a writer, one of the first things you’ll find yourself doing when you sit down to the keyboard…is writing about what you’re doing.

( I can’t tell you how many bad stories I read every week that open with a conflicted author who becomes his character, or loses his mind. Then there are the stories that open with someone reading or writing the story you’re about to read, or keeping a journal, or finding a diary, or writing a script or … you get the picture.)

A few of the better movies about writers:

Hannah and Her Sisters
Dianne Wiest plays a failed-actress-turned-writer who draws a little too closely on her own sister’s marriage for inspiration in creating a script.

Permanent Midnight
Even as he was making a name as a hugely successful TV writer (thirtysomething, Moonlighting, Alf), Jerry Stahl was on a downward slide of heroin use and crazy, self-destructive behavior. As long as he produced, nobody he wrote for really cared.

Adaptation
LOVE LOVE LOVE Charlie Kaufman. What a talented guy.

Charlie has been hired to write an adaptation of Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief which, ironically, happens to be an almost inadaptable non-fiction book about a plant dealer. While Charlie struggles, his twin brother, Donald, becomes a well-paid action hack — a transformation that makes Charlie even more neurotic than he was before.

In a Lonely Place ( Title says it all, doesn’t it?)

Lots of Hollywood scribes have a streak of self-loathing about what they do — and so it goes for Humphrey Bogart’s down-on-his-luck Dixon Steele in this masterwork of moody noirish angst from director Nicholas Ray. (The script is by Andrew Solt, whose extremely downbeat original ending was reworked by Ray and the cast — a case-in-point illustration of how little control writers typically have over the finished product.)

Here’s a list of TEN TOP GREAT MOVIES ABOUT WRITERS, some of which I’ve seen, and
of course I would have to add a recent movie: STRANGER THAN FICTION which gets into the wacky minds of female writers and the conundrums of caring too much for your characters.
This movie made me so sad, because it was probably true.

But this weekend, I found another movie about writers that I love. PURPLE VIOLETS
You can see the trailer, even download the movie for your IPOD. A really wonderful Ed Burns film.

A few days ago, I read that the Goldmans won the publication rights to the book, If I Did It by OJ Simpson, and- get this– a video game as well.
Of course my first thought is of those computer simulated scenes of how the murder happened as presented in court all those years ago, but it can’t be that. I mean, I have a weird imagination, but not even I can see a parent letting their kid play a twisted game like that.

I read on, “A Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled that Goldman is entitled to all money the Hall of Famer (OJ) was paid by publisher Take-Two Interactive Software to use his name and likeness in the new All-Pro Football 2K8 videogame. The game publisher, whose hit titles include Grand Theft Auto and Manhunt 2, included a digital version of Simpson on a fictional squad called the Assassins, which features a hooded mascot who makes stabbing gestures in the air with a knife every time the team scores….”
OMGWTFBBQ

*pic is from OJ pay per view show called “Juiced” where he attempted in this scene to sell his white Ford bronco , claiming, “It was a good truck, it helped me get away…”