Well, dear readers, how do you decide to write a book? In my case, I can trace it back to when I was in junior high school, when I actually started to write a book about my then best friend (who would ultimately play a huge part in Kritzerland) and me. I actually hadn’t thought about that until I decided to write today’s notes – I’d begun to say that I first had the idea to write a novel back in the mid-1980s and then remembered about that junior high school effort. I don’t, in fact, have a clew as to what possessed me to want to write a book or, more to the point, even think I could. As it turned out, I didn’t. I wrote a title, and yes, I remember what it was – The Cute Little Devils (hey, I was, what, twelve). I remember vividly that I wrote three or four short chapters – I wish I had those, but they disappeared long ago, back when we moved houses. Then, somewhere in the mid-1980s I began to want to write a novel – but I had no idea how to or what the novel would be. Then my friend Dick Lochte wrote a mystery called Sleeping Dog. I had no idea he’d written a book, but one fine day, whilst I was in New York, I wandered into the Mysterious Bookshop and there it was. I bought it and read it on the plane ride home and just loved it. And I began to think, well, if Dick can do it, why can’t I? Were it only that simple. I started to think about it a lot. I still had no idea what I would write about, though, which is not a good way to start thinking about writing a book. In the early 1990s I was still thinking about it – in fact, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. But I was scared – I had no idea how to even begin such a thing. I began to make notes for a mystery – something I’d know about, like a murder that took place during the production of a musical. That was in 1996, directly after I’d recorded Hello, Dolly! I had a plot and characters, but I just couldn’t get myself to dive in – I was too unsure of myself. I wrote about two pages in longhand, which I still have. They were okay, but it just didn’t feel like I was really writing a book. Each month from that point on I would think about writing a book and each month I wouldn’t do it. Finally, in early 2001 I said to myself, “Myself, you’ve never been scared to do anything your whole life, so why are you scared to do this?” And it was true, at least in the creative sense. What did I know about producing albums when I began – but I just dove in and did it. And it worked out fine. So, this time I said, “You are going to write a book and that’s all there is to it.”
The first thing I did was to decide that the easiest thing to do was to write what I know. Through the years, I’d thought about writing about my family because they were so odd, but early in the 1970s I’d written a musical which was fairly autobiographical about where I was at that point in my life – and I really didn’t like it. So, I realized that if I was going to write about my family I had to avoid all the pitfalls that I’d encountered in my musical. I knew it had to have a lot of humor and warmth and I needed a way in to whatever story I was going to tell. I know it will surprise some of you that I didn’t know that the way into that first book would be my young self – I originally thought I would be peripheral to the story. But I realized that it had to be about my childhood and growing up in a very weird family in a city that I loved that was no longer that city. I began to make notes about events that shaped my childhood – I decided the book would only take the lead character through ten years of age. I just wrote down a whole slew of anecdotes that I remembered as if they’d happened yesterday. No plot, no through-lines, just events.
And one fine day in March, I think, I just sat down at my laptop and opened a Word document. I typed Chapter One – Benjamin And The Bad Men. I’d decided that every character in the book who was based on a real person (basically everyone in the book) would get their real initials. I’d decided on the name Benjamin right away but couldn’t think of a K name that I liked. I began writing. Again, I had no plan, it just came to me as I wrote that I’d start in a movie theater and that I’d roll down the stairs as I used to do all the time and that I’d run out of the theater during The Fly (the first movie I used was Horrors Of The Black Museum, but I liked The Fly better for my purposes). It took me about five hours, but I finished that chapter. I had no idea what I’d written or if it was good, but I printed it out and put it aside to read the next day. When I read it, I kind of liked it. I spent that entire day smoothing out what I’d written, for I knew I couldn’t go on until it was right. The smoothed out version (I still have that original chapter with all my pen scribbled corrections) was much better. I then began Chapter Two, only I couldn’t go on because I needed to know the last name of the character. So, I just put it away. That night, I was on the Internet looking at a theater chat board. A few months earlier I’d recorded a revival of Godspell, and on the chat board someone asked what one of the cast members was up to. The cast member’s name was Leslie Kritzer. As soon as I saw Kritzer I knew I’d found Benjamin’s last name – it couldn’t have been more perfect. I opened my Word Document and began writing Chapter Two, which went back to when Benjamin was born. That seemed a little peculiar to me – to start with him being ten and then going backwards like that. It suddenly hit me that what I was calling Chapter One should be the Prologue and then I could have an Epilogue that would bring us back to the beginning of the book. I began to think I was really writing a book! But I was still very insecure and had no real idea if it was good or terrible. So, I made the best decision I probably had ever made in my life. I called one of my dearest friends, Margaret, and told her what I was doing. I asked her if she would read what I’d written so far (basically the Prologue and a little of what was now the first chapter), just to tell me if she liked the idea and if she thought it was any good. I asked her to please be brutally honest, because if it was bad or yucky I didn’t want to continue.
I brought those first ten or twelve pages to her. A few hours later she called me to tell me that she loved it. She thought it was really funny, and she loved Benjamin and the whole movie theater opening and learning about the beginning of his life. She said I had to keep going. And so I did. And so began a journey that continues to this day. Margaret became my Muse. As I wrote, I’d give her thirty pages at a time and she’d read them, be supportive, and give me the courage to continue. She loved that there was no plot in those beginning chapters, just characters and situations and things that happened. She’d occasionally say to me, “What was that person wearing? How did they smell?” Things like that, the details. That was so helpful. When I wrote the long chapter where Benjamin is allowed to go into a projection booth at the Lido Theater I was petrified that the six or seven pages of descriptive prose I’d written would just be too boring, but she loved every word of it. When I got to about page fifty of the manuscript, I wrote the story of my meeting a girl in grammar school that I was crazy about, who looked like an actress I’d seen and had a crush on in a film called Foreign Intrigue. I wrote it as a self-contained chapter, and the chapter ended with her moving away, just as the girl had in real life – I’d only known her for about six weeks in reality. It was very emotional for me to write. As I always did, I closed the document and then read it again the next morning. And I knew instantly that I’d just found the story of the book. So, I simply kept writing, saving that chapter for when I’d need it. When I got to the end of one of the chapters I thought, the book should be in two parts and this is a perfect end to part one and I’ll start part two with the meeting of the girl. I suddenly had a structure, and once I cut and pasted in the meeting from that original chapter I’d written, I knew I’d struck gold, story-wise and I knew that the entire second half of the book would be the story of Benjamin and Susan Pomeroy. Margaret loved the story of Susan and just kept encouraging me to continue. By that time I’d been writing for about seven months. Also, in September of 2001 the world shattered – the real world with 9/11 and my own world with the bad business with my record label. I was in bad shape, very, very bad shape. Two things kept me going – my darling daughter got married, and I knew I had to finish the book – it was going to be my gift to my daughter, to tell her about my past. I didn’t care if anyone would ever read it; it was for her. So, despite the horrendous things that were happening to me, I kept on. I only got stymied once – I knew I wanted to have a second beating with the hanger and I knew Benjamin would finally take it away from his mother and hit her back (just as I had in real life). But I needed a huge event to make that happen and I just couldn’t think of it. So, I went jogging to see if that would jog my brain. Two blocks into the jog, the entire plot point came to me and with it the entire ending of the book. I basically wrote it in my head as I ran, and when I got home I ran to my legal pad and wrote down every beat and every line of dialogue I’d thought of. I wrote that scene that night and while I was writing it tears began pouring down my face and didn’t stop until I finished the chapter. I have never been so emotionally drained in all my life. I FELT like young Benjamin, with all his rage and fury at his mother and all the heartbreak of losing his young love. When I finished that chapter it was the first time I really felt confident that what I’d written was really good. Margaret had the same reaction. I finished the book two weeks later, writing the final words “To be continued.” I hadn’t really meant to continue, but some months later I realized I had to.
And here we are, having just finished book number nine. And through it all, Margaret has remained my Muse and I could not have written one of these books without her. She has kept me on the right road always, and believe me on a couple of these books I veered badly to the wrong road. She always knows what to say, and if she questions something or doesn’t respond to something, it’s really simple: I change it. I don’t argue, I don’t fight, I just know she’s right. Sometimes it takes a while to figure out just what is bothering her, but we always do. For example, in Rewind, she loved that book every step of the way – until the last chapter. She called and said she just didn’t like it – she found it smarmy and thought it really hurt the rest of the book and she thought I should just cut it. I knew I couldn’t do that, it was the END of the book and the point of the book. So, I asked her to read it again in the morning, and I told her I’d do the same, because I really didn’t agree with her. That night I was having dinner with my friend Nick Redman. I asked him if I could ruin the ending for him, just to get his opinion. So, I told him the ending and he really liked it. I said, let’s write down all the reasons you like it and think it works, and I’ll read them to Margaret in the morning.
The next morning I called Margaret, who’d read the ending again and still didn’t like it. I told her I’d been with Nick and told him the ending and that he’d loved it, and I read her the reasons why. She asked me to tell her the ending as I’d told it to Nick. She listened and then said, “He’s absolutely right, it’s great. Only that’s not what you wrote.” I just sat there in shock and knew immediately she was right – I’d explained it completely differently than I’d actually written it. I went back and read it and it WAS smarmy and yucky. I changed five paragraphs and those five paragraphs informed the entire book and made everything work. I read them to her and she was really happy with them. And that’s happened on other books – her ability to hone in on truth and what works is unerring. And she knows and is protective of my writing voice in an incredible way. I could tell a bunch more similar stories – she saved the title story of How To Write A Dirty Book And Other Stories, and it went from being an okay and amusing story to a story that was about something told in a much better way. She’s an amazing woman and every writer should have someone like her – a Muse who knows what makes them tick and how to get the best out of them.
Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because these here notes are as long as a novel.
Yesterday, I laid down all the vocals for the Nudie Musical demo, plus did Alet’s vocals, plus recorded the new version of Let ‘Em Eat Cake. It was an exhausting five hours, and I got a sandwich, came home, and sat on my couch like so much fish and watched a motion picture on DVD entitled W. I found W to be nothing more than okay. It’s one thing to do a film about Kennedy or Nixon years after they’re presidency, but to do a film about George W. Bush while he’s still in office, without any time passing by, seems weird to me and it just ambled along with no drama, little pace, but some excellent performances. Josh Brolin really had W down to a T. I was a little surprised by how much weight both Richard Dreyfuss and Stacy Keach have put on, but both were very good. The film was directed in Oliver Stone’s usual hit them over the head with a baseball bat style. Not terrible, but nothing I’d ever want to watch again.
Today, I’ll just be starting to address packages, doing some writing and organizing, and then I’ll be attending a meeting for the charity organization for whom I’m helping with the entertainment for their upcoming yearly event. Tomorrow morning I have to be up bright and early to do a Q&A with a beginning theater class at LACC.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, do the long jog, I must do errands and whatnot, I must address packages and even ship a couple of packages, and I must attend a meeting. Today’s topic of discussion: If you could take our haineshisway.com Time Machine and go back and meet and dine with any President of the United States, who would it be and why? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I do the Lambada (The Forbidden Dance).