Writing on Writing — College Daze

In February 2004 I wrote a blog series about how I became a writer. Here it is again in case you missed it the first time.

Part Three - March 10, 2004

I wanted to be an actor.  It was fun, I could be someone else, and there wasn’t a lot of math involved.  So when I started looking for colleges, I wanted to find once with a good drama department.  I knew I didn’t have the grades to make it into some place like Yale, so I looked at a couple of large places – Northwestern and the University of Miami – and small – Lake Forest and Fort Lewis.  (Fort Lewis is a small college in Durango, Colorado, and a couple of my friends were also applying.)  Northwestern and Lake Forest took one look at my GPA and said No, and Fort Lewis didn’t have a separate drama program; they said I could major in English with an emphasis in drama.  They also suggested I go to summer school before enrolling.

That left the University of Miami.  I had been to Florida once before but never to Miami, even though my grandmother lived there.  I came down during the spring break of my junior year to look at the school and was immediately impressed by two things – they had a real drama department, and it was 80 degrees.  I had spent the first week of spring break skiing with my family, and the bright tropical sun and warm breezes sold me on it.  Remember, I had grown up in the cold grey twilight of northern Ohio winters, where cars rusted out in months and spring had to claw its way north, arriving barely breathing by May.  But strolling across a campus where students were walking around in shorts and the university’s sales pitch - “Every Semester is Spring Semester” - got to me.  I didn’t even look inside the university’s theatre, The Ring.  I know right then was going to go to UM.  And a year later, I was accepted.

When I arrived in September 1971, four days before my nineteenth birthday, I moved into Mahoney Hall, a large six-story structure on the northeast edge of the campus that looked like an overgrown Howard Johnson’s.  It had no air conditioning, the aluminum jalousie windows providing the only ventilation, and it was teeming with freshmen from all over the world – but mostly, it seemed, from New York City.  (My roommate, also a drama major, was from Great Neck.)  It was quite a change from a small town and private school in Ohio, but it was also exhilarating – I was on my own, I was off on a career in the theatre, and it was going to be fun.

I immediately declared my major in drama, got signed up for my classes, and auditioned for every play that was available.  To my enormous surprise, I was cast in the very first show I tried out for – a small character part, but still, it was a part.  (As the late Avery Schreiber once noted, “There are no small parts…just short pay.”)  The play, The Beaux’ Stratagem by George Farquhar, was my first foray into a period comedy and the director took great pains to teach us exactly how to play the parts.  He was also the designer of the set and lighting and had spent the summer reworking Farquhar’s cumbersome Restoration script into something that could work with a modern audience and college actors.  At the time I didn’t realize what a tremendous effort it was to mount such a production, but I soon learned.  I was soon immersed in every aspect of theatre and production, from building scenery, studying acting, theatre history, even taking voice and dance classes.  I loved every moment of it.  I had found a home.

But the writer in me started to grow impatient.  One night I sat down at my typewriter to crank out a report on Stanislavski when my roommate complained that he couldn’t find a suitable monologue for acting class.  In about fifteen minutes I batted out something – no more than a page – and handed it to him.  He read it, liked it, and in an hour he had it memorized.  He did it in the next class and got an A.  The teacher didn’t ask him where it had come from, but word soon got around that I could write, and several other students asked me to provide them with material.  I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t like it was something I thought could be as fun as being an actor – I was cast in three more shows that year, spending more time on stage than many of my classmates.  Writing was something that could wait.

Later that year I wrote a letter to the editor of the college paper about some issue now long forgotten.  He printed it and the next day called me up and offered me a job as a columnist with the paper.  They would pay me ten dollars a column.  Wow!  Getting paid to write!  I accepted immediately and began writing about anything that struck my fancy – kind of like blogging.  It went over pretty well, I guess, because the next year they brought me back and gave me an op-ed position.  It was easy to do – I could crank out a column in an hour and rarely had to re-write – and people liked what I wrote.  But I was still a drama major, and when I graduated in May 1974, my degree was in acting.

But there were two little things bugging me.  First, what exactly do you do with a degree in acting?  Go to New York?  Hollywood?  Star Search?  I had no idea.  And second, the day after graduation, I had lunch with my parents and the man who had first directed me in The Beaux’ Stratagem and who has remained a very close friend and mentor to this day.  I remember him looking at me and shaking his head sadly; “You wasted your time getting a degree in acting.  You’re a writer.  Do that.”  I have never forgotten those words, and I’m very glad he said them.

Next time:  The Writer in the Wilderness.

Writing On Writing — Learning to Write

In February 2004 I wrote a blog series about how I became a writer. Here it is again in case you missed it the first time.

Part Two — March 3, 2004

Eighth grade sucks.

At least it did for me, and from what I can gather from my friends and my few years of teaching, we're all agreed that it's the toughest year in school. It's the last year before high school, puberty is in full rage, and you really are between childhood and maturity. I was never a great student for all sorts of reasons, and that school year of 1966-1967 just brought it all to a head.

My parents were at a loss to get me motivated, so they decided that perhaps if I went off to a boarding school, just as my siblings had done, that kind of structured environment would somehow help. After touring several schools in New England, I was accepted at St. George's in Newport, Rhode Island for the fall of 1967.

To make a long story short, it was a disaster mostly of my own making. I was homesick, I found the academic load crushing, and I was a kid from small-town Ohio in the rarified air of New England preppiedom and an easy target for the inevitable bullying that happens at an all-boys school. Within a month I was miserable, and since I had nowhere else to turn - television was not allowed and my parents, in an attempt to coerce me into studying, had not allowed me to take my stereo with me - I spent hours in the library reading nothing that had anything to do with schoolwork. I also became more stoic - learning not to react to the torment - and I turned that anger into writing. I filled notebooks with short stories, rarely finished, and most of them describing revenge against my tormentors. English was the only class where I consistently got good marks.

But that wasn't enough, and after one year I gave up and returned home to my old school where I was welcomed back as if I had never left. And what a difference that year made. While my grades didn't show it, I was enjoying school more and I made more friends. I found Jenny Hankins, an English teacher who actually cared about my writing and encouraged it, poring over my scribblings with a fine hand, always cajoling me to do better even as she told me that what I was doing was very good. And she turned my anger into something more useful, making me examine the characters for their motivations; if I wrote about a bully, she made me explore what made him that way. She focused on looking at the objective - what made people the way they are and how others reacted to them. She also ignited an interest in reading plays - she gave me my first look at the works of writers like Samuel Becket and Ionesco - and when the school decided to put on a production of John Patrick's The Curious Savage she prompted me to try out.

Whether it was in class or on the stage, I couldn't get enough of theatre. Shakespeare daunted me (and he still does), but modern works such as Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Robert Anderson and the avant-garde stuff emerging on the off-off-Broadway scene fascinated me. I even began to try my hand at writing a play or two - mercifully never produced except for a skit or two - and I found a group of friends who also liked doing it. As it happens in all high schools, I found my clique. When it came time to think about college, I knew what I wanted to major in, and thanks to the drive and determination forged at St. George's and the encouragement of Jenny Hankins (now Barthold), I entered the University of Miami bound and determined to become the Next Great Thing in American Drama. As they say, the best laid plans...

I'll get into college drama in the next part.

37 Origami Bees

Written for the Playwrights Thriving Shared Title Challenge, titles were thrown into a hat and one was picked at random. It was “37 Origami Bees” submitted by Aly Kantor. The rest of us were to write a play with that title. Here’s mine with John Busser as Fred and Tim Takechi as Johnny. It was presented at the Valdez Theatre Conference Fringe on June 12, 2025.

A Long Way to Go

Since 2019 I’ve made the trek to Valdez, Alaska, to the Valdez Theatre Conference. It’s eight days of staged readings and other events such as a monologue workshop, a ten-minute play slam, evening productions on the main stage, and the Fringe, which takes place in a small park outdoors under the evening sun. Here’s a note that I wrote on Facebook as to why I go so far.

Valdez, Alaska, June 9, 2025

One of the more frequent questions I get asked by friends and fellow theatre people who have not been to Valdez is why spend all that money and go so far just to have a reading of a ten-minute play?

It's a good question. Valdez, Alaska, is literally at the end of a very long road into the wilderness. When you add traveling about 4,000 miles just to get to Anchorage where you need to catch a bus or a plane or rent a car to go another 300 miles to a small town on the edge of Prince William Sound and often through inclement weather -- my friends and I drove through rain and snow on Saturday -- you do kinda wonder if it's worth it.

If all you plan to do is hear a play reading, then perhaps not. But the readings are just a part of the experience. Being with like-minded people who all have different ways of telling stories and seeing how to they do it is intensely informative to me as both a writer and a person. Sitting at a table, either in one of the local restaurants or in the convention center and listening to these friends, hearing of their journey to the place where they get to share their ideas and insights -- or just hearing about their life, their job, their family, their favorite baseball team, or doing a tarot reading over lunch -- is the reason I come here. Making art, be it painting or sculpture or music or the written word, is often a solo effort even when you're collaborating. But sharing and hearing is the the sustenance that keeps us going. Art is meant to be shared not just at an exhibit or a reading or performance, but with those who also create it in their own way.

So, yes, it's not cheap to come here, and it takes a lot of effort to get here (including adventures in finding a hotel room when there's a software glitch and you end up at another hotel at 1:00 a.m. Alaska time). But I've never regretted it, and to quote the old song, if the weather outside is frightful, the fire of creativity is delightful and nourishing. I have met the cast of my reading on Wednesday, and my friend Danny is working on his monologue from "Ask Me Anything." I've got lots to do to get ready, and a lot of listening to do in between. So let it snow or rain or whatever the clouds bring us. I've already booked my room for Valdez 2026.

Writing On Writing — Where All It Began

In February 2004 I wrote a blog series about how I became a writer. Here it is again in case you missed it the first time.

Part One – February 25, 2004

I cannot remember a time when I could not read.  I’m sure that there was such a time when I would look at signs, books, or words on a page and they meant nothing, but I don’t remember it.  I’m not sure when I first became aware of letters forming words that formed sentences that expressed thoughts.  All I know is that when it happened, it was like it was always there.

So words and language have always been a part of my life.  Our house was filled with books of all sorts, from fiction to biographies to art and even pictures.  Sometimes I would pull a book down just to read the dust jacket.  I remember lying in bed as a child sometimes reading the same book over and over until I knew the characters and plot by heart.  I would write stories in my head to fill the time – usually in school, daydreaming and staring out the window, which caused my parents no end of anxiety when the report cards came home.  Like all children, I needed an escape; a place where life was more to my shaping.  And the characters that populated those stories were my friends – not the real ones that I went to school with, but the ones from the books.

When I was twelve, I received two gifts that changed my life.  The first was a small blue Sears portable typewriter.  I never took a typing class, but within a few weeks I taught myself how to get by, and thanks to the remarkable invention of erasable typing paper, I became a fairly neat and proficient typist.  The second came in the form of a series of books that belong to my father; the Swallows & Amazons stories by Arthur Ransome.  Written in the 1920’s and 30’s, they are twelve tales of six children (and more friends added in as the series progressed) sailing small boats in the Lake District in England and having all sorts of fun adventures that only children in children’s stories can have.  I loved the books – I too learned to sail at a young age on a lake – and Ransome wrote in such a way that he was never condescending to his characters or his readers.  Oh, how I wanted to be one of those kids.  One of the first things I remember writing was my own attempt at a Swallows & Amazons adventure of my own.  I also loved the fact that I was able to share something that had entertained my father as a child; I remember him reading the first of the stories aloud to me, and how he would often stop in the middle of a sentence to tell me something about his own childhood memories of sailing on Lake Minnetonka.  It brought me closer to him, and it was something I could do that did not require the athletic prowess that my other brothers came by naturally.  I didn’t play football or hockey very well, but in the summers Dad and I could sail.  (By the way, my father still has the books, all first editions.  In 1975 I found the entire collection published in paperback in a small bookstore in Stratford, Ontario.  I splurged and bought the whole lot.)

Reading and writing became a refuge for me.  This is no small thing when you’re not a great student or athlete and you’re beginning to figure out that you’re not straight, either.  Talk about your triple threat.  So the typewriter and English class became the escape route; often at the detriment of other studies (for which I spent a number of years in summer school to make up for mathematics grades).  I was content to read, to write, to just get by.  And then two things came along that awakened in me the true realization of what language and its forms really meant.  They were theatre and boarding school.  To this day those two elements have combined to shape my life and how I see it and deal with it.

I’ll get into that in the next part