There are questions you are asked when people find out you write for a living (the one they should ask, "Why would anyone want to do that?", is never one of them). They want to know how you got your first book published (through sheer chance and luck). Some want to know where you get your ideas (K Mart). Others will ask who you'd like to play your character "in the movie." (WHAT movie? What have you heard?)
Then there are those who ask, "Who are your writing heroes?"
I am really bad at this one. I tend to stammer, look embarrassed and mumble something that doesn't really answer the question. I claim to be reluctant to leave out someone and offend that person, so I say nothing.
It's all crap, of course. I actually don't have any writing heroes, at least not of mystery novels, and maybe not of any novels. You're just not supposed to say that, and it's a problem.
My writing heroes were always screenwriters. Ernest Lehman (North By Northwest, perhaps one of the six greatest films ever made). Carl Reiner (The Dick Van Dyke Show, and what else do you need to know?). Mel Brooks (everything up to and including High Anxiety).
Larry Gelbart (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Tootsie, M*A*S*H).
I learned from television and film, and once I realized that someone actually wrote down those things for the actors to say and do, that was what I wanted to do. So I started writing what I thought were screenplays. As early as 10th grade I was writing screenplays.
I wrote 24 (or 25, even I can't keep track) feature-length screenplays after I got out of college. And I have documented their various degrees of no success. Comedies. Dramas. Thrillers. Science Fiction movies. Baseball movies. A trilogy of intrepid-reporter stories. Two superhero movies.
Don't bother looking on IMDb. I'm not there. None of those scripts was produced.
That's okay, now. I fell into writing mystery novels by accident, and I have been happily doing so now for 15 years and--depending on how one keeps score--13.5 books, two novellas and one "short" story of about 10,000 words. I'm very satisfied in my "new" profession, and don't have the overwhelming obsession with being represented on the big, small, or these days, iPhone screen.
But I never really gained any novelist heroes. I admire a good many people who write books, and when I read for pleasure (something I do almost exclusively when I'm not writing), I have favorites whose works leave me awestruck. There are some great talents out there doing what I do.
Do I want to be any of them? No, I don't. I'm trying to be the best novelist version of me that I can.
When I was four, my hero was Superman (the George Reeves version). When I was seven, it was Mickey Mantle (because, um, he was Mickey Mantle). At 17, Woodward and Bernstein. At 18, the aforementioned Mr. Brooks.
Now? I don't really have heroes. I really look forward to the works some people produce, and I will follow them pretty much anywhere because I know the ride will be emotionally fulfilling and fun. I read some authors because I've met them. I read others because I just need a fix of that kind of writing.
But ask me to name one currently active writer whose work I will drop anything to experience and I will name Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing, The Newsroom, SportsNight). Is he my hero? No. He's someone whose work I admire.
My hero is the writer I'm hoping to become. Haven't quite gotten there yet.
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