Lee Goldberg

The Writing Fool

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Over the last few weeks, I’ve been working on a few writing projects.

I finished up a script based on my book MY GUN HAS BULLETS and sent it to some friends.

I wrote my outline for MR. MONK AND THE BLUE FLU and sent it off to the powers-that-be…now I am waiting for approval so I can start writing the book.

I wrote an article for an MWA chapter newsletter in the mid-west on writing the MONK books.

I wrote two more entries for my "Natalie" blog, which will be going live on the USA Network website in a couple of weeks.

Last night, I finished the first draft of a script based on my book THE WALK…now I am going to set it aside for a week or two and read it fresh before attempting the rewrite.

What’s ahead?

Today I’m trying to come up with an idea for my short story for Robert Randisi’s latest crime anthology, which is due in March, and once I’ve done that, maybe I’ll have an inspiration and figure out what my eighth DIAGNOSIS MURDER book is going to be about. And I’ve got a couple of more "Natalie" blogs to write…

Later next month, Bill and I start work on our spec pilot and will probably be tackling another MONK episode, this one based on my book MR. MONK GOES TO THE FIRE HOUSE.

The Single Greatest Idea for a TV Series EVER!

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I got this email from Dan yesterday:

Lee, I just came across your blog.  I know you are a busy person so I will keep
this short and sweet…

IDEA: GOOGLE GAMESHOW (I own this
domain)

1. Perhpas it wouldn’t be with google, but google is so hot, you
would think they would be interested in this
2. Essentially, this idea would
be an interactive tv gameshow/reality gameshow
3. People can play along
online for prizes
4. We would add a reality portion to this game show with
contests extending weeks at a time

(I would hope to create a little
craze like Millionaire/Reality TV Shows…even though they are on the down
slide)

These points don’t explain much…but from what you heard, does
this sound intriguing?

That is a brilliant idea for a show, Dan.  So innovative, fresh and unique. It’s got incredible potential.  It’s even better than my great TV show idea:

IDEA: MURDER COPS  (I registered the idea with the WGA).

1) It’s about two homicide detectives who are very different from each other.  (This could be in any city…though NY and Las Vegas are getting kind of overdone).
2) They solve really puzzling murders ala CSI and BLUE’S CLUES.
3) The stories are very twisty and clever.
4) It’s shot in a cool and innovative way with lots of style.
4) I see a big TV star like David Duchovny in one of the parts, maybe Beyonce, too.

(I would hope to turn it into a successful franchise like CSI or LAW & ORDER…even though there are, like, three each of those shows already).

Dan goes on to ask:

Any quick ideas on how a treatment should be written for a show like this?

Yes, Dan, I have a few. In general, it’s nice to actually have a series concept in mind before writing a treatment. Unfortunately, you don’t have a concept. You barely even have an idea.  You’d like to do a game show that people at home can play along with and that is tied in some way to Google. Come to think of it, that’s not even substantial enough to qualify as a notion.

Secondly, you may own the domain "Google Gameshow," but I suspect you don’t own Google. It’s not wise to try and sell an idea that’s based on an underlying property or trademark you don’t actually own.

Third, you obviously have no experience as a TV writer or producer,  so I doubt anyone would be interested in seriously considering your idea.

Fourth, why are you asking me about a gameshow treatment? I have never written or produced a gameshow. How would I know the answer to your question?

Fifth, if  you have an idea for a TV show, it’s probably not wise to email other writers about it, especially those with blogs who regularly ridicule complete strangers who email them their ideas for TV shows.

How Dense Can a Person Be?

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Anybody who reads this blog knows I’m not a supporter of "fanfic," that I think it violates the legal and artistic rights of authors, and that I take every opportunity to point out how inane and offensive most of it is.  So you can imagine my amusement when I got this  email today:

Hey Mr. Goldberg–
I know this is going to seem really random but there is no
way around it. You made a post a while ago about a fanfic writer
named ‘cousinjean’. I don’t really care about the whole situation
surrounding her asking for money, more I was wondering if you knew any way to
get in contact with her. I don’t want to harass her, I just wanted to know
if she still had a site up with her work on it because some of it I
never got to finish reading and the link doesn’t seem to work any longer.

This request is really bizarre. It’s sort of like asking a Jew to direct you to some really rocking anti-Semitic screeds. Yeah, sure, Trish, I’ll be glad to.

Speculating

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I’ve been a television writer for about 20 years now.  In that time, I haven’t written many scripts on spec.  Bill Rabkin and I wrote a spec episode of  "Spenser: For Hire" as a writing sample to get our first TV job (on "Spenser For Hire," oddly enough).  Since then, we’ve written a spec pilot and a couple of spec features, all of which went nowhere… so we never had much incentive to do more non-paying work.

But a few years back, I wrote a spec script on my own based on my then-unpublished novel THE MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE. I did it more out of frustration with the book biz than anything else. The script didn’t sell (at least not yet) but it led to a very lucrative gig writing the so-far-unproduced Dame Edna movie, so it paid off for me. Even so, the big payday didn’t motivate me to spec something else. I’ve stayed away from writing spec scripts, using whatever free time I have to write my books…maybe because it’s paying contract work as opposed to speculation.

But lately I’ve begun to rethink that strategy, especially since scripts are potentially a lot more lucrative than books (so is working at Burger King, but that’s another topic). Bill and I have a spec pilot we’re going to start writing after the holidays and I’ve begun re-reading some of my novels  with an eye towards reworking them as spec features.

I recently adapted my book  MY GUN HAS BULLETS into a script. I had a lot of fun doing it and was surprised how easily it lent itself to the screenplay format.  Of course I had to change a lot of things and streamline the plot, but I think it worked. Well, at least I hope it did. I’ve e-mailed the script to a couple of trusted friends in the biz who haven’t read the book to get their opinions.  Meanwhile,  I’ve started adapting THE WALK into a screenplay.  This one isn’t going as smoothly as MY GUN HAS BULLETS did, but I figure the exercise can’t hurt.

I don’t know why I’ve always been more comfortable writing books on spec than scripts. I guess I feel like scripts are something somebody should be paying me to write (as opposed to books, which you hardly get paid for even when you sell them). That makes no sense, of course.  I blame that twisted thinking on all my years working in episodic television, where you get paid for every script you write and there’s very little spec work that ever sells. But the attitude towards specs in TV is changing now in the wake of the success Marc Cherry had with his spec DESEPERATE HOUSEWIVES pilot.  NBC recently went public asking for spec pilots, though I don’t know if they actually picked up any of them.

I guess I just need to get into the spec frame of mind. I’m not quite there yet, because I’m sort of  cheating by adapting my books instead of coming up with original film ideas.  But I suppose baby steps still count as steps…

When Did You Know?

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When did you know you wanted to be a writer? Joe Konrath poses that question on his blog today. I’ve known almost all my life what I wanted to be.  Not too long ago, my Mom found a paper I wrote in fourth grade where I said I loved writing stories and that I wanted to be a writer.  I posted one of those early stories here on my blog…along with one of my daughter’s  written at the same age.

When I was ten or eleven, I was already pecking novels out on my Mom’s old typewriters. The first one was a futuristic tale about a cop born in an underwater sperm bank. I don’t know why the bank was underwater, or how deposits were made, but I thought it was very cool. I followed that up with a series of books about  gentleman thief Brian Lockwood,  aka "The Perfect Sinner,’ a thinly disguised rip-off of Simon Templar, aka "The Saint." I sold these stories for a dime to my friends and even managed to make a dollar or two. In fact, I think my royalties per book were better then than they are now.

I continued writing novels all through my teenage years.  Some of my other unpublished masterpieces featured hapless detective named Kevin Dangler. I remember my Uncle Burl being quite amused by that one. He even wrote a story about Kevin Dangler one summer when we were fishing at Loon Lake. Only Dangler wasn’t a detective in his tale. He was the lead singer of a rock group called Kevin Dangler & The Scrotums. Being a packrat, I still have most of those novels today in boxes in my garage (some were destroyed in flooding a few years back).

By the time I was 17, I was writing articles for The Contra Costa Times and other Bay Area newspapers and applying to colleges.  I didn’t get a book published, but my detective stories got me into UCLA’s School of Communications. My grades weren’t wonderful, so I knew I had to kick ass on my application essay. I wrote it first person as a hard-boiled detective story in Kevin Dangler’s voice. The committee, at first, had doubts that I actually wrote it myself — until they reviewed articles I’d written for the Times, including one that used the same device as my essay.

I sold my first non-fiction book, UNSOLD TELEVISION PILOTS, while I was a freshman in college and my first novel, .357 VIGILANTE, shortly thereafter (thanks to Lew Perdue).  And so here I am, at 43, doing exactly what I was doing when I was seven or eight. I haven’t really changed. It’s cool…and kind of weird, too.

How to Order a Signed Copy of MR. MONK GOES TO THE FIRE HOUSE

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Here’s how you can order your own, signed copy of MR. MONK GOES TO THE FIRE HOUSE.

  1. Email Mysteries to Die For with the following information:

Name

Address

Phone number

Method of payment (check, money order or credit card)

Info about how you want the book inscribed (signed only, inscribed to ‘name’, etc.)


  1. Mail your check or money order made payable to Mysteries to Die For ($10.50 if you live in California; $10.00 for all other states except Alaska and Hawaii – if you live outside the contiguous 48 states, we’ll email you with pricing information) to this address: Mysteries to Die For, 2940 Thousand Oaks Blvd, Thousand Oaks CA, 91362.
  2. If
    you want to use a credit card, we will call you to get the necessary
    information so please be sure to include your phone number.
  3. If you want more than one copy of the book, we’ll email you specifics as to cost.

There is a possibility I will be signing with MONK co-star Traylor Howard. Please indicate on your order how you would like her to sign the book as well…assuming she is able to attend.

The Best of the Goldbergs

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My brother Tod continues his "best of…" theme today, picking his favorite posts from some of our family’s many blogs. But he doesn’t really answer the big questions…why do so many members of our family feel the need to share their opinions with the world? What makes us think anybody really cares? Are we doing it merely to advertise a product or service (our books, art work, businesses, etc)? Or is it raging ego? Or is it a very public way of keeping in touch with one another?

Or is it a logical outgrowth of who we are? The fact is, I come from a media-oriented family. My father was an TV news anchorman. My Mom is a journalist and author. My Uncle was a popular FM disc jockey for many years and now writes true-crime books. My brother is a novelist and an English professor (yeah, he’s a prof now). My sisters are artists and published authors. I’ve been a journalist, author and TV writer/producer.  Is it really any surprise that we all have blogs?

For Those Who Think Being a Novelist is Glamorous

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My brother Tod’s Fucktards of the Year" list includes this:

5. The Various Fucktards Who Scheduled Book Signings For Me In Their
Stores And Then, You Know, Forgot To Order My Books, Put Up Signs Or Advertise
My Event.

This should not be confused with the stores who simply had
distribution issues when my book went into a second printing and copies simply
were not available. That sort of thing happens when you’re wildly successful,
so, you know, how the cookie crumbles and all that. No, I mean the people who
actually booked events for me, confirmed them, confirmed that they had plenty of
books and promoted the event and that signs were "already up" and "the writing
group can’t wait for you to get to the store" and "I really loved your book,"
and who, actually, "Oh, gosh, I didn’t know you were coming. Did we speak?"

"Yes. Three times. Including yesterday."

"Well, I looked and all your books are out of print. Are you self
published or something?"

"No, all of my books are in print — in several printings, in fact —
and I just had a signing in your store across town and they had all of my books.
All of them."

"I don’t know what happened then."

I know what happened. You’re a fucktard.

Sadly, he isn’t making this stuff up. I was at one those signings. Okay, two of them.

Living on the Border Between Mundane and Surreal

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No, we’re not talking about TJ HOOKER masturbation fanfic, but the Chicago Tribune’s rave review of my brother Tod’s new short story collection SIMPLIFY.

Tod Goldberg’s collection, "Simplify," contradicts its title: Goldberg
complicates things, in brilliant and moving ways, in stories that live along
the border between the mundane and the surreal.

A young married couple
meet Jesus and the devil every holiday season (Jesus is a coffee drinker, the
devil likes German beer), and their lives are both blessed and cursed. A
dys lexic creates an all-encompassing alphabet, a distinct symbol for every
person and event in his world, evoking the language of a book in
a Borgesian infinite library. A picture of Elvis Presley bleeds, making
its owner a reluctant celebrity.

Goldberg’s prose is deceptively smooth,
like a vanilla milkshake spiked with grain alcohol, and his ideas
are always made more complex and engaging by the offbeat angles his
stories take.