Scott Lax's Blog, page 2
February 26, 2014
Is There a Self-Help Author Better Than Dr. Seuss?
�You're off to Great Places!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting,
So... get on your way!�
― Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You'll Go!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting,
So... get on your way!�
― Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You'll Go!
January 28, 2014
Violence Against Women: A Major Theme in VENGEANCE FOLLOWS
When I wrote THE YEAR THAT TREMBLED, it was because of the War in Vietnam, which had ended nearly twenty years earlier, and how it affected so many millions of people, both in America and abroad; and how it affected me on an emotional level. I fictionalized a story, but the story contained what the novelist Tim O'Brien calls "story truth," as opposed to "happening truth."
For my new novel, another insidious societal factor inhabited my thoughts, and found its way into the pages of VENGEANCE FOLLOWS. That happening truth is the epidemic of violence against women.
One in three women in the world will experience beating or rape in her lifetime. In the USA, one in four, or five, depending on whose statistics you use. In any case, it's an epidemic, and a horror.
That terrible, pervasive happening truth became a major theme of my novel -- it became the story truth, which contained its own energy, and, as many authors from O'Brien to Hemingway and countless others knew or know, story truth can be truer than happening truth, because an author can go deeper, into motivation, and feeling, and pain.
Even the PBS drama, "Downton Abbey," is showcasing this age-old scourge on humanity. I doubt if the creator of DA, Julian Fellowes, began writing the show with the intention of showing the damage of rape; my guess is that his research and experience led him to realize that the probability of one of his beloved characters being abused in this way was likely. He created, then, story truth.
I, like many authors and other artists, can delve far deeper into story truth than happening truth, because of the very things we all face: the need to protect the innocent; the necessity to not expose others in any discernible way by creating composite characters; and in order to keep the demons of the past at bay, and allow life to move forward. So I created a story truth.
I know that my novel isn't an easy one to read for some. I know it doesn't seem plausible to some. Yet I feel, have always felt as a writer, as far back as sixteen years old, that my job is to shine a light in dark corners. To reveal. To illuminate. To try to gain meaning. To try to find love where there is hate, and healing where there are wounds.
The epidemic of abuse toward women is all too real. For all the characters' love, and friendship; for all their sensual joy of wine, and sex, and feeling the wind and sun on their faces, they nonetheless live in a word where the unspeakable is part of their lives.
Writers shine a light into dark spaces. That's the most we may expect to achieve. And the reader does the rest.
For my new novel, another insidious societal factor inhabited my thoughts, and found its way into the pages of VENGEANCE FOLLOWS. That happening truth is the epidemic of violence against women.
One in three women in the world will experience beating or rape in her lifetime. In the USA, one in four, or five, depending on whose statistics you use. In any case, it's an epidemic, and a horror.
That terrible, pervasive happening truth became a major theme of my novel -- it became the story truth, which contained its own energy, and, as many authors from O'Brien to Hemingway and countless others knew or know, story truth can be truer than happening truth, because an author can go deeper, into motivation, and feeling, and pain.
Even the PBS drama, "Downton Abbey," is showcasing this age-old scourge on humanity. I doubt if the creator of DA, Julian Fellowes, began writing the show with the intention of showing the damage of rape; my guess is that his research and experience led him to realize that the probability of one of his beloved characters being abused in this way was likely. He created, then, story truth.
I, like many authors and other artists, can delve far deeper into story truth than happening truth, because of the very things we all face: the need to protect the innocent; the necessity to not expose others in any discernible way by creating composite characters; and in order to keep the demons of the past at bay, and allow life to move forward. So I created a story truth.
I know that my novel isn't an easy one to read for some. I know it doesn't seem plausible to some. Yet I feel, have always felt as a writer, as far back as sixteen years old, that my job is to shine a light in dark corners. To reveal. To illuminate. To try to gain meaning. To try to find love where there is hate, and healing where there are wounds.
The epidemic of abuse toward women is all too real. For all the characters' love, and friendship; for all their sensual joy of wine, and sex, and feeling the wind and sun on their faces, they nonetheless live in a word where the unspeakable is part of their lives.
Writers shine a light into dark spaces. That's the most we may expect to achieve. And the reader does the rest.
January 17, 2014
Happy Birthday Little Guy
Our son Finn turned three years old on January 11. For those who have followed this blog or The Father Life blog from a couple of years ago, it's hard to believe -- for me -- but my little guy turned three.
Shakespeare wrote, "It is a wise father that knows his own child."
I hope to be wise for a long time. Knowing Finn has been and is the great joy of my life, one that I can't separate from the essence of my own life, of life itself. He personifies meaning and effort, attainment and flow.
Shakespeare wrote, "It is a wise father that knows his own child."
I hope to be wise for a long time. Knowing Finn has been and is the great joy of my life, one that I can't separate from the essence of my own life, of life itself. He personifies meaning and effort, attainment and flow.
January 5, 2014
Goodbye, Dennis Johnson... one of the true good guys of Hollywood
I'm very sad to hear that my former colleague and friend Dennis Johnson, who joined us as an executive producer on the film, "The Year That Trembled," has passed away. You can click his photo for the story of his amazing life, and untimely death at 68. If I know Dennis, though, he'd want us to focus on his life.
Dennis was one of the nicest, most helpful, gentle and best people I've ever known in Hollywood. When we produced our film, Dennis would stop by my office and make me take ten minutes walks every hour to walk off some steam. He was kind to everyone, from interns to movie actors. He always had a smile, an encouraging word, a piece of wisdom. He was a pioneer in his field, a man of distinction, talent and decency.
My wife and I extend our deepest sympathies to Dennis's partner, Russ Patrick, and his family. Dennis was living proof that you can be in show business and still be a prince of a guy. He will be sorely missed.
Dennis was one of the nicest, most helpful, gentle and best people I've ever known in Hollywood. When we produced our film, Dennis would stop by my office and make me take ten minutes walks every hour to walk off some steam. He was kind to everyone, from interns to movie actors. He always had a smile, an encouraging word, a piece of wisdom. He was a pioneer in his field, a man of distinction, talent and decency.
My wife and I extend our deepest sympathies to Dennis's partner, Russ Patrick, and his family. Dennis was living proof that you can be in show business and still be a prince of a guy. He will be sorely missed.
Goodbye, Dennis Johnson� one of the true good guys of Hollywood
I'm very sad to hear that my former colleague and friend Dennis Johnson, who joined us as an executive producer on the film, "The Year That Trembled," has passed away. You can click his photo for the story of his amazing life, and untimely death at 68. If I know Dennis, though, he'd want us to focus on his life.
Dennis was one of the nicest, most helpful, gentle and best people I've ever known in Hollywood. When we produced our film, Dennis would stop by my office and make me take ten minutes walks every hour to walk off some steam. He was kind to everyone, from interns to movie actors. He always had a smile, an encouraging word, a piece of wisdom. He was a pioneer in his field, a man of distinction, talent and decency.
My wife and I extend our deepest sympathies to Dennis's partner, Russ Patrick, and his family. Dennis was living proof that you can be in show business and still be a prince of a guy. He will be sorely missed.
Dennis was one of the nicest, most helpful, gentle and best people I've ever known in Hollywood. When we produced our film, Dennis would stop by my office and make me take ten minutes walks every hour to walk off some steam. He was kind to everyone, from interns to movie actors. He always had a smile, an encouraging word, a piece of wisdom. He was a pioneer in his field, a man of distinction, talent and decency.
My wife and I extend our deepest sympathies to Dennis's partner, Russ Patrick, and his family. Dennis was living proof that you can be in show business and still be a prince of a guy. He will be sorely missed.
December 16, 2013
Why Cleveland is Ideal for a Novelist
I�m a Cleveland guy. Born in the City of Cleveland itself, raised first in Parma Heights then the Chagrin Valley. As an adult I've lived in the city, as well as a various villages and suburbs of Cleveland.
I've had offers and opportunities to work and live in L.A., New York City and Atlanta, but I always decided against moving permanently, always came back. I�ve set both my novels in the Cleveland area, produced a feature film about the area, in the area, wrote a produced play that takes place in the Cleveland area; co-created, co-wrote and co-executive produced a TV pilot starring Clevelanders Fred Willard and Martin Mull that we filmed nearly two years ago in downtown Cleveland. I played music full-time here, started businesses here.
Aside from my fiction, I work at a full-time job I really like, and I work with people from all over the world. That's the Cleveland my dad grew up in: filled with immigrants, people who provide fresh ideas and vibrancy. It's still like that. You just have to be open to it.
My wife -- who's from southern California -- and I like it here, want to raise our sons here. I like Manhattan, Chicago, California, New England, the Carolinas...so many places, really, including Paris, Oslo and Bergen, Norway and London and Cambridge, England.
But Cleveland and northeast Ohio are in my blood. The area is diverse in people and topography, filled with history and rich with culture. It�s kind of an odd, conflicted place, but the people are unpretentious and that means a lot. As for the weather, it's dramatic and always changing. And I can't stop rooting for the teams, which is a common theme for lifelong Clevelanders.
Fo me, the Cleveland area is a fantastic place in which to set stories, as well as to live.
I've had offers and opportunities to work and live in L.A., New York City and Atlanta, but I always decided against moving permanently, always came back. I�ve set both my novels in the Cleveland area, produced a feature film about the area, in the area, wrote a produced play that takes place in the Cleveland area; co-created, co-wrote and co-executive produced a TV pilot starring Clevelanders Fred Willard and Martin Mull that we filmed nearly two years ago in downtown Cleveland. I played music full-time here, started businesses here.
Aside from my fiction, I work at a full-time job I really like, and I work with people from all over the world. That's the Cleveland my dad grew up in: filled with immigrants, people who provide fresh ideas and vibrancy. It's still like that. You just have to be open to it.
My wife -- who's from southern California -- and I like it here, want to raise our sons here. I like Manhattan, Chicago, California, New England, the Carolinas...so many places, really, including Paris, Oslo and Bergen, Norway and London and Cambridge, England.
But Cleveland and northeast Ohio are in my blood. The area is diverse in people and topography, filled with history and rich with culture. It�s kind of an odd, conflicted place, but the people are unpretentious and that means a lot. As for the weather, it's dramatic and always changing. And I can't stop rooting for the teams, which is a common theme for lifelong Clevelanders.
Fo me, the Cleveland area is a fantastic place in which to set stories, as well as to live.
December 7, 2013
Christmas Trees Through the Eyes of a Child
Finn possesses everything you could imagine in his excitement for Christmas: wonder, belief, excitement, joy.
November 29, 2013
Fictionalizing a Small Town: An Act of Liberation
My first novel, The Year That Trembled, which was recently released by Gray & Co. Publishers in its second edition, and my new novel, Vengeance Follows, which is also being published by Gray in early December, are both set all or partly in a fictional small town in Ohio called Chestnut Falls.
I suspect I�ll be getting a similar question about Vengeance Follows as I�ve gotten about The Year That Trembled, which is some variation on this: You�re from Chagrin Falls. Chestnut Falls bears a lot of resemblance to Chagrin Falls. Why in the world don�t just call Chestnut Falls Chagrin Falls?
There are a few reasons, really, but here�s the main one: my novels aren�t set in Chagrin Falls�they�re set in Chestnut Falls.
There's a tradition of novelists fictionalizing small towns, with the most prominent examples being Mark Twain, who fictionalized his hometown of Hannibal, MO, calling it �St. Petersburg.� Next in line might be F. Scott Fitzgerald, who fictionalized Great Neck and Manhasset Neck, Long Island, and turned them into East Egg and West Egg on Long Island.
In the case of my novels the closer parallel might be to Fitzgerald�s, only because he uses fictional small towns set against the real city of New York City, specifically, the borough of Manhattan. I created Chestnut Falls and set it close to the real city of Cleveland, Ohio.
Cleveland, like New York, is a big place � not as big as NYC, of course, but Greater Cleveland has more than two million people. That�s a good place for a novelist to get lost in. Chagrin Falls, on the other hand, has just over four thousand people.
Like any novelist, I need to have complete freedom in creating characters. And I think it would be too distracting for readers to try to figure out who�s who in a real small town, especially if �who� is made up. The wonder of the novels is that the moment you read �a novel� on the cover of a book that means it�s made up. That's a profound thing: it allows the author freedom.
I also need that freedom to change the landscape, the direction of the streets, the names of things, whatever the case may be. I changed street names, locations of landmarks, and lots of other elements of Chagrin Falls, and in so doing, it became not Chagrin Falls, the real place, but Chestnut Falls, the novel�s place.
On the other hand, I kept a few interesting elements of Chagrin Falls. But I also added and changed things. In Vengeance Follows, for example, there�s an old telephone booth at one of the corners of the village park called Triangle Park. In the real Chagrin Falls, there�s no telephone booth in a park called Triangle Park. But I wanted one in my novel, so I put one in.
Another example. In Vengeance Follows, my protagonist, Sam Koppang, rents a small office on Main Street in Chestnut Falls, over a hardware store, in a former Masonic Lodge, overlooking the Town Hall. From there he can see the goings on that are important to the plot.
In real life, I rented a small office on Main Street in Chagrin Falls, over a hardware store, in a former Masonic Lodge, overlooking the Town Hall.
But I�m not Sam Koppang. He�s a person (or character) I wrote in the novel. So the real answer, if there is one, is that a novel is a parallel universe. If you�re an aspiring novelist, please know this: It�s your story. It�s your town. They are your characters. Do what you want with your place, with the time, with your characters.
In an increasingly intrusive world, writing a novel is an act of liberation.
I suspect I�ll be getting a similar question about Vengeance Follows as I�ve gotten about The Year That Trembled, which is some variation on this: You�re from Chagrin Falls. Chestnut Falls bears a lot of resemblance to Chagrin Falls. Why in the world don�t just call Chestnut Falls Chagrin Falls?
There are a few reasons, really, but here�s the main one: my novels aren�t set in Chagrin Falls�they�re set in Chestnut Falls.
There's a tradition of novelists fictionalizing small towns, with the most prominent examples being Mark Twain, who fictionalized his hometown of Hannibal, MO, calling it �St. Petersburg.� Next in line might be F. Scott Fitzgerald, who fictionalized Great Neck and Manhasset Neck, Long Island, and turned them into East Egg and West Egg on Long Island.
In the case of my novels the closer parallel might be to Fitzgerald�s, only because he uses fictional small towns set against the real city of New York City, specifically, the borough of Manhattan. I created Chestnut Falls and set it close to the real city of Cleveland, Ohio.
Cleveland, like New York, is a big place � not as big as NYC, of course, but Greater Cleveland has more than two million people. That�s a good place for a novelist to get lost in. Chagrin Falls, on the other hand, has just over four thousand people.
Like any novelist, I need to have complete freedom in creating characters. And I think it would be too distracting for readers to try to figure out who�s who in a real small town, especially if �who� is made up. The wonder of the novels is that the moment you read �a novel� on the cover of a book that means it�s made up. That's a profound thing: it allows the author freedom.
I also need that freedom to change the landscape, the direction of the streets, the names of things, whatever the case may be. I changed street names, locations of landmarks, and lots of other elements of Chagrin Falls, and in so doing, it became not Chagrin Falls, the real place, but Chestnut Falls, the novel�s place.
On the other hand, I kept a few interesting elements of Chagrin Falls. But I also added and changed things. In Vengeance Follows, for example, there�s an old telephone booth at one of the corners of the village park called Triangle Park. In the real Chagrin Falls, there�s no telephone booth in a park called Triangle Park. But I wanted one in my novel, so I put one in.
Another example. In Vengeance Follows, my protagonist, Sam Koppang, rents a small office on Main Street in Chestnut Falls, over a hardware store, in a former Masonic Lodge, overlooking the Town Hall. From there he can see the goings on that are important to the plot.
In real life, I rented a small office on Main Street in Chagrin Falls, over a hardware store, in a former Masonic Lodge, overlooking the Town Hall.
But I�m not Sam Koppang. He�s a person (or character) I wrote in the novel. So the real answer, if there is one, is that a novel is a parallel universe. If you�re an aspiring novelist, please know this: It�s your story. It�s your town. They are your characters. Do what you want with your place, with the time, with your characters.
In an increasingly intrusive world, writing a novel is an act of liberation.
October 21, 2013
Autumn in the Falls
A beautiful Sunday afternoon. I took Finn down to the village. Ice cream overlooking the cold clear water at the base of the falls, at the Popcorn Shop, then I bought him a little pumpkin at the Farmer's Market, then he ran on the paving stones in the park, and we covered the waterfront and the town and overall we had what my late father would have called, "a blast."
October 5, 2013
Sunday in the Park With Finn
While Lydia and Angus went to the gym to work out, Finn and I went to meet a friend from work and his wife. We had some time beforehand, so we did the full autumn Sunday circuit: the park, where Finn ran through the leaves with the absolute, pure, new-to-his senses wonderment of a two 1/2 year old; then walked to the Farmer's Market, where he got the apple that he wanted so much (and a few other fresh items); a tour around the bandstand in town, as he and a new little friend ran "round and round and round" until they were dizzy; then we met my friends; then Finn and I ended up at the library, another of his favorite places. Finally home. Then I went to the gym to work out, in my determined effort to get back in shape after a brutal few years with a bad injury, one that had worsened as I aged, and finally peaked, so to speak, with major surgery in February 2013. I don't expect to be running marathons, but am moving a lot faster and next comes the getting in shape part, and I do expect to be running like a madman after Finn, because he is fast. Very fast.
Then, after the gym, home to Lydia's dinner with fresh food from the market.
I do love autumn. It's my season. I wonder if it's Finn's. He loved the snow last winter; and enjoyed his spring and summer. But I wonder if he perks up as I do as the leaves fall. Seeing Finn really experience it for the first time, at least the first time he can give language to it, makes it that much better. The other day we were driving and he said, "Oh, no, Daddy! The leaves are falling off the trees!" He was momentarily sad and concerned for the leaves. (He's sensitive, that's for sure.) I explained the seasons in terms of nature, the cycles and the symbols (Frosty the Snowman is up next), and he took it in, and was happy again. Thus, today, and this treasure he holds up.
Then, after the gym, home to Lydia's dinner with fresh food from the market.
I do love autumn. It's my season. I wonder if it's Finn's. He loved the snow last winter; and enjoyed his spring and summer. But I wonder if he perks up as I do as the leaves fall. Seeing Finn really experience it for the first time, at least the first time he can give language to it, makes it that much better. The other day we were driving and he said, "Oh, no, Daddy! The leaves are falling off the trees!" He was momentarily sad and concerned for the leaves. (He's sensitive, that's for sure.) I explained the seasons in terms of nature, the cycles and the symbols (Frosty the Snowman is up next), and he took it in, and was happy again. Thus, today, and this treasure he holds up.
