Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, July 3, 1995 TAG: 9507030129
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SCOTT WILLIAMS ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Add ``The Plan,'' a $19.95 William Morrow & Co. hardcover in bookstores everywhere, to ``The Rockford Files,'' ``Wiseguy'' ``The Commish'' and the more than 30 other TV series he has created or co-created over the years.
``The Plan'' is Cannell's treatment of a Mob plot to put its own man in the White House. And, since every first novel is to some extent autobiographical, Cannell's hero, Ryan Bolt, is a writer-producer for television.
``There are parts of him that are me. Just as there are parts of Rockford that are me,'' Cannell said, his baritone uncannily resembling Tom Selleck's.
``The other thing I share with him is the loss of a son,'' said Cannell, whose son Derek died at age 15 more than a decade ago. ``I wanted to write about that because I wanted to meet that character when he's flat on his back emotionally. ... I wanted him to be somebody who's being forced to re-evaluate his existence.''
Cannell went through that fire and that self-evaluation. ``We get so caught up in Hollywood in climbing the ladder,'' he said. `I wanted him to look at that and start to realize that all those goals that were so important to him were now really worthless.''
Writing a novel, Cannell found, freed him from some of the literary constraints that attach to screenwriters.
``I was able to use an omniscient narrator - which you don't use in scripts - to go into characters' heads and think in their minds,'' he said. ``I also was able to use metaphors and similes, which you don't use very frequently in scripts because they just don't sound like dialogue.''
Cannell didn't devote himself exclusively to the book: ``I'd write 150 pages, then I'd go write TV for a month. Then I'd come back and spend a couple of days rewriting the 150 pages, then I'd write another 100 or 150.
``When I finally had my first draft, I went back and started throwing whole sections out,'' he said. ``I probably have read this book 30 to 40 times. I've never read a TV script I've written that much. Although I do go over them until I have to let go of them.''
Apart from that, Cannell found the two creative processes weren't that much different.
``For me, writing is a release. It's a cathartic event,'' he said. ``I know I should say I struggle with my words, but I don't find it painful and I don't think that agonizing over the words is going to make the words any better.
``I give myself permission, on my first drafts, to be bad. If you're constantly trying to be brilliant, you're putting so much pressure on the work that it ends up sometimes becoming very pretentious.
``I give myself that freedom to be bad, and, as always, Steve Cannell the editor is standing back there with a knife - and I'm a pretty good editor.
``My whole process is very similar to the way I write television,'' he said. ``I try to enjoy the work ... because when I'm enjoying it, it's almost always my best stuff, and when I'm fighting with it, it needs another look.''
This is sound advice for anyone who wants to write for a living, and it comes from a man who is dyslexic, who endured his school years with the learning disorder undiagnosed.
``My dyslexia proved to me by the time I was out of high school that I was no genius,'' he said. ``The school system had taken that thought out of my head pretty thoroughly by flunking me constantly. I repeated three grades, so it never occurs to me to be brilliant.''
It was as a college student that Cannell connected with one of his life's great teachers, who taught creative writing.
``He said, `Spelling has nothing to do with writing - spelling has to do with spelling,' '' Cannell said.
Asked whether he'll write a second novel, Cannell produces a manuscript he says is about one-third finished. Does he want to discuss it? Not yet.
Then there's one last question to Stephen J. Cannell, novelist: Just who does he have in mind to write the screenplay for ``The Plan''?
He laughed. ``Until somebody buys the book,'' he said, ``I'm not going to face that problem.''
by CNB