For a 5 minute interview, this is actually a good look into the mind and creativity of Sharleen Cooper Cohen. She's written several novels, like The Ladies of Beverly Hills, and many other projects for stage and screen. This 2011 interview is from the promotion for her stage adaptation of An Officer and a Gentleman, a hit movie from 1982.
In 1995, when American Gladiators ended, so did my work as stage crew guy. I burned out on TV production work as a crew guy, and wound up a furniture mover back down in Orange County. I'd been working as an office mover since 1992 for much of the year, and working on TV show crews in the summers. One of the moving companies I worked for was Beverly Hills Moving and Storage, although we were based out of Carson, right next to Compton, 25 miles south. But with that name, we got a lot of calls to move homes in Hollywood, Beverly Hills, and that area.
I was doing a ton of reading in those years, and trying to find my voice as a writer. I wrote a fair amount of stuff that no one ever saw, trying out different ideas for short stories, novels, or movie screenplays. Mostly I made a zine every now and then for my BMX friends, or a zine of poetry. I wasn't sure where I wanted to go next, and just kept reading tons of books, and listening to a lot of audio books, as well.
One moving job took two of us to a very expensive house in the West part of the San Fernando Valley. Although I didn't mind working hard, we were happy to hear that we were only moving the clothes and office supplies of the couple, and a few favorite pieces of furniture, to their beach house. I remember the house being loaded with a lot of contemporary art, of all types. That included at statue of a woman who looked so lifelike, I actually touched her to see if she was real, since she didn't move as I walked by carrying things.
The couple was friendly, and in the course of the move, I learned the woman was a novelist, with several popular novels out in print, a couple of which were bestsellers. The woman was Sharleen Cooper Cohen, and she had written seven novels, published between 1979 and 1994. When I asked her what she'd written, The Ladies of Beverly Hills was a novel I had heard of in the press. So as a furniture mover who was a wannabe writer, I got up the courage and asked what her best advice was to be a writer. We were in her writing room, when I asked.
Her answer was simple, "Just glue your butt to the chair and write."
Honestly, it wasn't the advice I wanted to hear. But it stuck in my mind, and here I am, 20-25 years later, knowing she was right, and sharing it with all of you reading this post.
As young people interested, maybe even obsessed with, writing "something great" some day, young writers, like me back then, always want to hear some trick, or some magic formula. We want to hear how to find the right subject matter, or how to know it's going to be a hit book before we start. We want to hear some little known method to writing a bestseller, or hit screenplay.
But there is no secret. It's a process, at some point a spark of inspiration, a cool idea, comes for a piece. Then comes the real trick to writing. Sitting down for as long as it takes, and actually writing the thing. Then usually re-writing it. Then either self-publishing it, or looking for someone else to publish it. There's a lot to being a creative person, particularly a working creative person, like an author. But when it comes right down to it, sitting down and writing, day after day, for a long project like a book or screenplay, is what it all comes down to. You can't publish or sell what you haven't written. Thank you to Sharleen Cooper Cohen for the simple, straightforward advice to a young writer moving your clothes and furniture 25 years ago.
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