Story telling began at age 10, delightfully terrifying siblings and friends with ghost stories, late at night, after the grownups had gone to bed.
My first inspiration to write was from Edgar Allen Poe. His literature was the only part of my high school education that pierced through the fog. So, I wrote a Poe style short story, nothing memorable, but it primed the pump.
But then the art seed was planted by my paternal grandmother who was a painter. Just her presence and example fertilized a young mind. And so I proceeded on that path.
After high school I joined the Marine Corps and did a two year stint in Japan. There I was exposed to Sumi-e, the traditional painting technique with the oriental brush. Studying this included learning oriental calligraphy where I discovered that their 46-character phonetic alphabet when recited was a philosophic poem about life. This and other details of this aesthetic culture left a life-long impression on me and shaped my career as an artist. And it showed me by comparison that the culture that I grew up in was a modern barbarism.
Years later I revisited Japan through the pages of the novel, Shogun by James Clavell. This exquisite piece of literature rocked my boat, more like capsized it. It was a profound experience to which I was indebted. The only obvious payback was to become a writer.
As a starving artist in New York City my humble abode at the time was a bedroll on the floor of the closet of an off-Broadway playwright. One day he asked me to proof read a screenplay he was working on. Screenplay? . . . lights began to flicker , . . story ideas began to stack up in my pending bin.
Then an aspiring film producer read one of my treatments gave me a respectable advance to write the script. Computers were still in DOS mode, no script software, but I was off and running.
Then forty pages into the script something happened that shook the world and shredded my script. The Iron Curtain fell, it was 1989. The Iron Curtain had long become a stable part of our world and was likewise a very key element in the script’s story. So when it was suddenly yanked from the stage, the story was no longer relevant.
Fortunately the producer was still smiling and kindly forgave his advance. But my response, which seemed appropriate at the time was “To hell with writing - next lifetime!”. And I jumped back into my art career.
This route flourished, gallery shows, exhibit awards, good press and reviews, a dozen collectors with my work.
But I wanted to up my game, so I did a Scientology program that cleared out the cobwebs and fanned my creative embers. But the ember that burst into flames was the screenplay urge that I had "nicely" retired 30 years earlier.
But now we had modern computers and script writing programs. I studied the essential books: McKee, Fields, McCullough, Aristotle’s Poetics and did the Aaron Sorkin Master Class.
My first script, Romeo and the Beanos, has taken several competition awards.
And there’s a dozen more original high concept stories rumbling at the gate.