On my being a Writer
6 June 1944, D-Day, Omaha Beach. The setting of my first attempt at a screenplay, or maybe it was a short story, I can’t remember as I was only nine years old, and that was, let’s just say, more than a few years/decades ago. D-Day captured my imagination for multiple reasons. One of these was a gift I received from a school book fair about famous battles from history which featured this important clash between the good guy Allies and the bad guy Nazis. Then there was that infamous beach named after my birthplace. I suspect I would have been much less interested if the landings had taken place at Croissant Point, Baguette Bay, or even just plain ole Normandy Beach. There were also the family stories told of a great-Uncle who had parachuted in with the 82nd Airborne, or maybe it was the 101st Airborne Division (he and his sister, my maternal grandmother are sadly no longer around to ask for clarification). This all was fueled by an early and eager interest in history which provided sufficient fodder for my young imagination. Honestly, I was really into the uniforms that the soldiers wore. I joined Cub Scouts not because I wanted to learn how to tie a square knot but because I thought the blue and yellow uniforms looked super cool. On a side note, I joined little league baseball because I had a huge crush on Christine Vecchi. Also, I thought the baseball uniforms looked really cool.
I do remember the opening scene of that screenplay (or short story) - That of the steel ramp of a Higgins Boat crashing into the cold, murky English Channel seawater and rounds from German MG-42s ripping into the bodies of disembarking GIs. I think Steven Spielberg channeled this same imagery into that iconic opening battle scene from Saving Private Ryan. If only I had been a member, no doubt the youngest at the time, of the WGA, and also happened to have had a hook-up with Spielberg. Timing and luck, eh?
I wrote this little “opus” while sitting at a small table in the children’s room of an after-school daycare center in Venice. It was really just a home in which a semi-retired middle aged woman was paid to babysit the children of single, hard working mothers like mine. The house stunk of stale graham crackers and mothballs. The woman who watched us mainly sat in her living room and smoked long, skinny brown-paper wrapped More cigarettes while we kids lazed about in the playroom or chased about in the small fenced in backyard. My future jr. high school was across the street on Walgrove Ave., and my sister and I had to walk the three blocks down the street from the elementary school to the daycare each day after school for several years. I was relieved when I was deemed old enough to be given keys to our own house and graduated to official “latch-key kid” by my mother.
It was my mother who always encouraged me to write. She is an avid reader, and always had a bookcase filled with titillating titles. I remember the howls of laughter coming from her room as she read something, anything by Tom Robbins. She still glows when she tells of the time she met him at a book signing and he flirtatiously complimented her on her, to this day, incredible head of hair. She took to dying it a lively auburn, and he is, in addition to being an amazing writer, an unabashed enthusiast of, shall we say, red feathered birds. I marveled at the way in which she could lose herself in the pages of a book. What magical spell did they cast on her? Whatever it was, it was contagious, because I have always enjoyed reading, and cannot remember a time when I didn’t read something, usually more than one of something. I still feel pangs of regret for my lost teen years in which I devoted my precious reading time to baseball, bodybuilding and stock car magazines. We all go astray once in a while.
After that, I began what can justly be referred to as my own refusal of the call. This went on, and off, and on again for the next four decades. I even went as far as taking writing classes at Santa Monica College with Jim Krusoe - an incredibly sensitive, generous, and inspiring professor, as well as being a poet and writer of considerable talent. I dreaded completing and turning in the weekly writing assignments. I dreaded reading my material aloud. I dreaded the critiques and judgement of, I was convinced, my infinitely more talented and worthy classmates. And yet, I persevered. I attended each class session. I read all the assigned material, falling in love with the imaginative words and stories of Mark Twain, Italo Calvino and Jose Luis Borges, among others. I completed the course. I even completed and read aloud a short story (The Emporer, the Eagle and Mostaciolli *) which was very well received by my teacher and peers. I was encouraged to continue writing. I continued to do so sporadically and always with self-doubt. I applied my stubborn disposition to tenaciously refuse the call to be a writer.
After seven years, yes, seven years, of taking classes at SMC I transferred to Loyola Marymount to finally complete a degree, in something. I declared English as my major and after one semester - an enjoyable semester at that, I dropped the major and switched to history. The change enabled me to complete my bachelor’s degree in less time, thus saving me tens of thousands of dollars. True fact. At least that was, and remains part of the narrative I share with people who ask. The reality is that I was as afraid of writing as I was of poverty. I was afraid of the time and pain that being a writer would demand on me. I was afraid to sit still for long periods of time. Terrified of being confronted with myself, as all writers must experience at some time or another, or all the time depending on the writer. The words reveal our thinking, our hearts and our souls. What we find isn’t always what we hope to see in ourselves. Nor does it always match with the image we think we present to the outside world. As we well know, illusions are easily disintegrated by deep thinking and deeper self-reflection. Our solid positions and postures become unstable, untenable in the face of stillness and solitude. And as we all know, stillness and solitude are part and parcel of being a writer.
Even to this day, writing has always been a thing I’ve done irregularly…on paper. In my mind, however, I have always written. Countless bits and pieces, sentences and paragraphs, ideas and dreams of novels, songs, scripts and pithy quotes about the meaning of life float into and out of my imagination, waiting for me to grasp them and put them onto paper. Most often they float right on by into that vast, infinite reservoir of creativity and inspiration that all artists dip into. Is it possible that Robert Rodat dipped into it and and snatched my nine-year old D-Day storyline 20 years after it moved through me? It’s a public facility, that reservoir, and anyone is free to throw in a line and try their luck. It’s those of us who take action that reel in the keepers. I wish I was more of a regular action-taker. Man, there have been some big ones that I’ve let get away! Once in a while, I’d get a hold of something and even go so far as to put words onto a piece of scrap paper, or in a notebook for future reference. Occasionally, I would complete something. A poem. A short story. A script, sketch, or one of my “little skits” as my relatives insisted on calling them. “Johnny! You should write one of your little skits about this lady I know who has a dog that farts all the time. That would be so funny!” Perhaps, but for now I’ll let farting dogs lie.
And now, a blog. A blog about being a writer.
In addition to the aforementioned short story, I’ve written some poems, some scripts (for stage and screen) and am now attempting, in the midst of a pandemic and finding myself unemployed, to write more of all of the above. Wisdom has never been my strong-point. It’s as elusive as ever in the face of my ever widening awareness of the massive chasm representing my ignorance of all things ranging from how to be a good father, husband, son and friend, to how to be honest, keep calm amidst chaos, sleep throughout the night, forgive myself and others, be cheerful, be generous, do basic math or put on and successfully tie my shoelaces in less than four minutes. True. My wife laughs at me whenever I say, “I’ll put my shoes on and be ready to go!” She has taken to giving me a ten minute warning anytime we need to leave the house so that I’ll have enough time to deal with my shoelaces. I’d wear slip-ons except my feet are so long and narrow that they don’t fit me well. All said, I go on. I write. It’s not enough, but perhaps it’s just the right amount. For now. After all, now is all we really have. See? There I go again, trying to act like I have some profound or newly important wisdom to share.
As always, thank you for reading. Please feel free to message with questions or comments. I promise to reply.
Wishing you peace and love.
~ Jon
*The Eagle, The Emperor and Mostaciolli is posted as a blog in case you’re so inclined to venture a read.
*For more about those brave men who landed at Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944 check out this article.