Lee Goldberg
Mr. Monk and Finished Manuscript
I just turned in my manuscript for the eighth Monk novel MR. MONK AND THE DIRTY COP, which will come out next summer. This is the first Monk
novel in several years that wasn’t written on several different computers in
various cities, countries, and modes of transport. I wrote it all at my desk at home.
I'm going to try not to think about the next Monk book for a few weeks. The outline isn't due until mid-November and I honestly have no idea what it will be about.
I will use the freed up Monk time to work on my next "standalone" novel, which I haven't started writing yet….though I have a file with a very rough, very broad outline, some relevant newspaper clippings, and some notes to get me started.
But not this week. I have some pitches to prepare for and I want to give myself a break to maybe read a book, catch up on the new fall TV shows, and go to sleep at a decent hour.
The Ex-List Ex-Producer
Showrunner Diane Ruggiero walked off the new CBS series THE EX-LIST, a one-hour adaptation of a half-hour Israeli series, and gave Alan Sepinwall of the Star-Ledger all the juicy details (the network and studio told the trades that they were caught by surprise by her exit). Basically, she got noted to death and didn't like it:
Ruggiero said CBS executives – the same ones she said had claimed to
want her unique take on the material – kept pushing her to stick as
closely as possible to the Israeli show, even though it only ran for 11
half-hour episodes, featured a heroine with no job and no life outside
of her romantic quest, and other issues that would get in the way of
doing a long-running one-hour series.
"They would keep coming to me talking about how they wanted the
Israeli version, they wanted the Israeli version, and I'm going, 'Test
audiences loved the psychic, who was only in one scene (in the
original). They loved her sister; she didn't have a sister in the
original. They loved the flower shop; she didn't have a job in the
original.'
[…]The breaking point came early last week, when CBS hired Segahl Avin,
creator of the original show, to consult on the series. Ruggiero
realized CBS wouldn't be satisfied with anything less than an exact
copy, and she quit.
"I'm not a f—ing transcriber," she said. "Why would you hire me if
you wanted a transcriber? I'm a pain in the a–. I have a specific
thing that I do. If you don't want that, go hire someone else."
Her experience is not unusual. Far from it. But what is a surprise is that she's gone whining to a reporter, which may have felt good at the time but definitely wasn't the smartest career move. Quitting wasn't either…it's better to stick it out until they fire you so you can get paid off. She's figured that part out already.
the money they were offering me, which was a lot. Now I'm thinking,
maybe I should have tried to get some of that money, seeing as I did
all that work."
And I bet it's not going to be easy at any other network for a while, either.
The First Episode
There's been a lot of talk about pilots lately — all of it sparked by TV Guide's list of the Ten Best Pilots of All-Time (which was written by someone who apparently thinks TV has only existed for the last decade or so). Now the Elburn Herald has listed some of the worst, many taken from my book UNSOLD TV PILOTS.
For me, some of the best pilots (which led to series) that are not on the TV Guide list are The Mary Tyler Moore Show, All In the Family, Hill Street Blues, The West Wing, The Rockford Files, Law & Order, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Hawaii Five-O, Monk, St. Elsewhere, Crime Story, Murphy Brown, Married With Children, Boomtown, Thirtysomething and Cheers.
Become the Next Norman Lear
This November, Emmy Award winning comedy writer Ken Levine is hosting another one of his phenomenal SITCOM ROOM writing classes:
With all the writing classes and books around, I realized there’s one thing none of them teach – what it’s actually like being in a sitcom writing ro>Practically all sitcoms are “room written” these days (even single camera shows like 30 ROCK). That’s
when a dysfunctional group of funny, creative people somehow manage,
collectively, to craft a brilliantly funny (or at least not
embarrassing) script while suffering from incredible time pressure and
personality clashes.
[…]I found myself imagining a weekend workshop that gives you the hands-on
experience you could only get in a professional writing room […]A cross between a seminar/workshop and comedy writing fantasy camp.
If you want to be a TV comedy writer, you've got to take this class. There are still a few spaces left, so sign up fast.
The Fine Print of Self-Publishing
Mark Levine has just published the third edition of THE FINE PRINT OF SELF-PUBLISHING. I was a fan of the first edition and this one is even better. Particularly useful are the updated and expanded examinations of the various self-publishing companies, their services and their contracts.
Anybody who is thinking about self-publishing must read this book first. Even authors who aren't interested in self-publishing will come away, as I did, with a deeper understanding of publishing contracts and what the various clauses actually mean for you.
I strongly recommend this book.
Fletch Dies
Sarah Weinman reports the sad news that Gregory McDonald has passed away. His novels FLETCH, CONFESS, FLETCH and FLYNN, and his breezy way with dialogue, had a huge impact on me as a writer. Back in the early 1980s, when I was a student at UCLA, I was lucky to be able to interview him twice for the UCLA Daily Bruin. You can read the interviews here.
Court Rules in Rowling’s Favor
Deadline Hollywood reports that a New York court has ruled in favor of Warner Brothers and J.K. Rowling in their lawsuit against RDR books, a publisher attempting to cash in with an unlicensed, unauthorized Harry Potter "lexicon" that drew heavily from Rowling's work. The Judge determined that the book, which he barred from publication, did not qualify as "fair use" and violated her copyright.
at all in bringing legal action and am delighted that this issue has
been resolved favourably. I went to court to uphold the right of
authors everywhere to protect their own original work. The court has
upheld that right. "
The New York Times reports that Steven Jan Vander Ark , the creepy fan (pictured on the left) who wrote the book, still lives in a dream world. He told the Times that he'd like to have a chat with Rowling some time:
“I have been a huge fan of
the Harry Potter series and Ms. Rowling for 10 years; that’s not going
to change,” Mr. Vander Ark said by telephone on Monday from his home in
Brighton, England. “We had a disagreement about the definition of a
particular book. It was a legal disagreement. I would rather that it
wasn’t personal.”
[…]For now, however, Mr. Vander Ark has his sights on his next Harry
Potter project: his book “In Search of Harry Potter” is scheduled to be
released next month. It is a memoir of his travels to locations similar
to the ones described in the Rowling books.
You might wonder why I think he's creepy…beyond the fact that he tries to look like Harry Potter and actually believes Rowling would want to chat with him. Here's an example from the trial, as reported by the Times.
Like a true fan, Mr. Vander Ark treated even Ms. Rowling’s
assertions that he had made mistakes as wonderful revelations rather
than embarrassments.
When [David Hammer, the lawyer for RDR Books] told him that Ms. Rowling
had testified on Monday about the etymology of “Alohomora,” an
unlocking spell, Mr. Vander Ark — who had been sequestered during her
testimony — blurted, “Oh, really?”
In her testimony, Ms. Rowling
said Mr. Vander Ark’s link between the spell and the Hawaiian “aloha”
was “errant nonsense,” explaining that it actually had come from West
African dialect.
“That’s exciting stuff for someone like me,” Mr.
Vander Ark said from the witness stand. “Did she happen to mention
which dialect?”
Any day now this goof is going to tattoo a lightning bolt to his forehead…if he hasn't already.
UPDATE: A reader reminded me of these examples of Vander Ark's creepiness and cluelessness from the New Yorker:
Steve Vander Ark made a similar mistake when he dared to compare
himself to Joanne (J. K.) Rowling. “It is amazing where we have taken
‘Harry Potter,’ ” he said to a crowd of dedicated “Potter” fans. Many
readers dislike the epilogue in the final book; Vander Ark urged them
to disregard it entirely, and even invented his own spell to do so
(“expelliepilogus”). “Jo’s quit, she’s done,” he told the audience.
“We’re taking over now.”
[…]From the witness stand, Vander Ark directed beseeching glances
toward Rowling, who was sitting a few yards away, but she slowly shook
her head. After several hours of intense questioning in front of his
idol, Vander Ark broke down and cried.
“I really wish we had had a different kind of meeting,” he said
later. “There were a couple times I kind of gave her a half-smile. She
didn’t smile back.”
Attracting the attention, and the wrath, of his hero is a surprise for
Vander Ark, who at the age of fifty maintains the air of a serious
child, with a mushroom-cut head of hair parted in the middle. A
self-described “massive ‘Star Trek’ fan,” he wrote a book, in the
nineteen-eighties, called “The Complete Encyclopedia of Star Trek the
Next Generation Season One,” and sold forty copies.
That's 40 more than he's going to sell of his Harry Potter Lexicon.