Carol Bergman

My husband is a contemporary American screenwriter whose work hinges on plot, inciting incidents, act 1 and act 2 (sometimes an act 3 or 4), character arc, dialogue, setting and, most importantly, budget. I have written two screen treatments with him based on the real-life stories of women I interviewed for magazines. Not understanding whatsoever how to make a play, much less a screenplay, I took a one-day immersion course with Robert McKee, a Hollywood type, who has—in true Hollywood fashion—become a celebrity. The wannabe screenwriters—which included a handful of actor/celebrities—sat in the audience and listened to McKee pontificate about how a screen play is made. If someone dared to raise their hand with a question, he abused them verbally. How stupid can you/we be? I suppose this made him feel much better about his own wannabe screenwriting career though, by then, he’d made a sweet fortune on his workshops. I almost left mid-way through the day except that I had heard that the best part of the class was the parsing of “Casablanca”—the entire film—at the end of the day and I couldn’t miss that. Such a gem of a film.

Thus immersed in the art and craft of screenwriting, I set to work with Jim, my contemporary American screenwriter husband, whose visual screenwriter sense is so acute that he never forgets a face or what he has read, paragraph by paragraph, or what a room looked like before a renovation.

Our task was to adapt the articles for made-for-TV movies in the form of screen treatments written in the third person present tense. It’s an odd form and I didn’t like it. So I sent my ideas via email in whatever person and tense I chose leaving Jim to craft the treatment. We didn’t have to worry about plot or character because those were ready-made in the articles I had written. The treatments all made sense, we thought, and were submitted and optioned, but never produced. Such is the writing life of the contemporary American screenwriter.

Fast forward to my first murder mystery, “Say Nothing,” based on a real life story that came to me by chance one summer day. A young man had disappeared. I knew his mother and her suffering was indescribable, intensified when her son’s body washed up on the shores of the Hudson. I thought, at first, that I’d write an article about a parent whose child has disappeared, but the accidental death or the killing—it has never been determined—remains unsolved, even more difficult for the grieving parents, and though I didn’t want to intrude in any way, it had given me an idea for a fictional story based on these events. The writing seemed to be the only way I could process this woman’s suffering, which had touched me deeply. And so I wrote my first murder mystery.

Once again, I didn’t have to worry too much about plot because I had a beginning and a scaffold of sorts. The rest was pure imagination, a challenge to write, but pleasurable also. My agent didn’t think it was ready for submission, and it wasn’t, but I wanted to go to print so my extremely elderly mother could see it, and self-published it. My agent then suggested I make certain changes, re-work it, refine it, re-title it, change the protagonist/detective, and so on, which I duly did. (When an agent suggests, the writer complies.) She then submitted the brand new version which has received plaudits from a host of editors with one serious caveat: the book is plot challenged. That was surprising given the scaffold I had started with but, then again, it had become a work of the imagination.

Oh dear, what to do? How about starting a new book, my agent suggested. The editors love the way you write, the characters are well drawn, so is the setting, but you need to figure out the plot before you begin to write. They want to see something else, she continued. If they like this second one, they may publish the first one.

So I looked through my journals and came up with an idea for a second murder mystery. And, typically, I ignored my agent’s advice and my husband’s advice, and started writing before I had figured out what happens in the story. I had no outline, no anything, just a character and an inciting incident. Isn’t this the way I write literary fiction? Isn’t this the way I report when I am “doing” journalism? Well, yes. But it doesn’t work for a murder mystery which, it turns out, is more akin to writing a screen treatment. And so, before long, I was caught in a maze, dead-ended like the Minotaur in Crete, and so confused and distraught that I had to take a nap one day and walk for hours and hours in the park when I woke up.

My husband said, “Let me help you develop a plot.”

So, the other night, we went out to dinner with pad and pen and sat for three hours talking plot. I have to say he was brilliant. I felt the gates open and the story loosen. I was on my way again.  Read More 

Few writing teachers/instructors/professors/facilitators—whatever the institutions we work for decide to call us—will admit to a strange resentment that descends as the term moves into its final weeks. By then—by now—our students are all doing well, they are productive, they are writing, and we are not necessarily keeping pace with them much less our own projects. What’s most challenging about adjunct work, in fact, is not the students—who I have already confessed here I come to adore—but the fact that we are so devoted that our own work suffers. There is a lot to read, there is a lot to prepare before each class. I also have tutorial students and private clients.

Much as I try to balance my days and weeks between the demands of writing and teaching, I often find it difficult. The frustrations set in, the strange resentment. My students are writing so much and I am not. So I begin to lurch with great anticipation to the end of term when I’ll be able to write full time again for a while. And not wanting to give my students any kind of short shrift, I don’t feel particularly comfortable with this resentment, though I know it’s very common among working writers who teach. I’ll probably talk to my students about it on Wednesday. If I am not doing my best, they’ll let me know.

We’ve been having an ongoing discussion about the writing life and how to find a way of earning a living while writing. If we have a demanding job that depletes our energy, it’s difficult to carve out time to write. And though teaching may be demanding it does not deplete my intellectual or emotional energy. In fact, writing and teaching are a good fit. During the teaching term, if I am not already working on a longer project, I keep my notebooks going and write in them every day, just short notations, observations, and ideas. And I find my students inspiring, too. The class is dynamic and keeps my mind clicking.

So, dear students, forgive me if I am a bit distracted now and again. It means I’ve done all the preparation for our workshop by Monday afternoon and have been able to immerse in my own writing for a day or so.  Read More 

I’ve just had an email from a student to say that she is wrestling with her revision, the clock is ticking, no pen to paper yet (an anachronistic image?) and her submission is due on Wednesday. I’ve forgotten where she works—advertising I think—and know that she is not able, right now, to write full-time; she has a job, she is supporting herself which, in itself, is an achievement these days. Though the economy seems to be improving, many of my students in the past two years, have either been out of work, headed for grad school as an alternative to looking for employment, or been laid off in the middle of the term. How to keep writing under so much pressure? Clearly, it’s not easy.

The workshop is a peaceful oasis where ideas can surface unimpeded by the challenges of daily life. But despite the calm ambiance, many students arrive amped-up, eager to get as much out of the class as possible, or unable to shake off the demands of their strenuous day. One is a doctor, another a lawyer, another in IT, one is a widow, another about to get married. They all come to my class for the same reason: They have something to say and are burning to say it. My job is to help them get there.

I do my best with the tools and experience I’ve accumulated after many years of teaching and writing. Most of the time, my students leave the workshop gratified that they can envision a writing life, but I can’t do much about what happens outside the classroom except to say: Take it easy. Go for a walk. Bring your notebook with you. Sit under a tree and write, or don’t write. Just daydream, meditate, leave your smart phone at home, don’t cram your days with appointments. Most things can wait. Even a submission to the workshop can wait. Watch the birds and the sunset. Feel the wind. Get away from your obligations. Get inside yourself. Writing is a solitary, quiet place.  Read More 

Mid-day and it was so warm outside it felt like summer. I broke from the computer and went for a walk into Central Park with my walking sticks. I passed the community garden on my street, still fallow from the non-winter we have had, much less a non-spring, then into the upper reaches of the park where I have worked in years past on Saturday mornings with the Central Park Conservancy. The terrain was familiar: I had cleared out debris, hacked and chopped bushes, made piles for mulching, raked and planted. Down by the pond a few geese and ducks were enjoying the free flowing water. The air was clear, a cloudless sky. Where do the clouds go, I thought to myself. And then kept on walking. A group of small children were standing on the eastern edge of the pond with three adults and I could hear their chattering as I approached. I stopped to listen to them and to talk to them. Their guardians stood watching over them warily but did not ask me to mind my own business. And so the questions and stories began: Why did I need sticks to walk? Couldn’t I walk on my own? Where are the swans? Are those geese birds the swans? Are the geese afraid of the dark? After all, they have to stay in the park at night, and so on.

As most children, this bunch of 4 and 5-year-olds from a local Montessori school were bursting with language, inventive, ebullient, curious, and adorable without affectation. I could have stayed talking with them all day but they had to go back to school and I had to get back to work in my atelier. Fortunately, it is high up and flooded with light. I can see the cloudless sky, feel the wind off the river, descend to earth to teach or run errands or buy food or socialize. But how to be as free and fresh in my observations as these children? Is it possible?

I think every artist and writer who does not work solely with an eye and ear to the marketplace attempts to remain child-like in their enthusiasms and point of view. Although some may be naturally blessed with a freedom from constraint, most of us are not, or perhaps we are some of the time. Much has to be unlearned before this can happen. And it takes courage.

Once a student admitted to me that he went to the bar before writing or kept a glass of scotch on his desk. And though it is true that alcohol and drugs have, historically, been lubricants for writers, they have also caused many problems—illness and early death, truncated careers. Fitzgerald wrote one masterpiece—“The Great Gatsby”—and he eventually got sober, but it was too late. And his wife, Zelda, authored one formidable book, “Save Me The Waltz,” before she was institutionalized with, more than likely, an alcohol-induced insanity.

Better to find ways to tolerate the vulnerability and pain that surfaces as we work without pharmaceutical or other enhancements. Or, simply, to allow ourselves to be children again.  Read More 

Though I have planned a full writing day—no teaching, no evening plans, all my students’ manuscripts read for the workshop on Wednesday—I could not get down to work this morning. Instead, I answered emails and, even worse, a voice mail message from a talkative friend. There was a time and a time of day when such a phone conversation would have pleased me greatly, but this morning it did not. And it was all my own fault. I could have called my kind and generous friend at the end of the day and not in the midst of my struggle to get going. And then, once on the phone, I could hardly concentrate on the stories she was spinning—stories I would normally enjoy—because I was so distracted and annoyed with myself for having made the call and not paying attention, which every good friend deserves. I had the phone on speaker so I could continue answering emails—multitasking!!—paying even less attention to her stories or the emails I was writing. And the phone was resting on my cuneiform stone, a real cuneiform stone, a reminder that there have been writers for millennia. When it was given to me by an expert in antiquities, I was told to use it, not to display it. I looked at the cuneiform stone and lost the thread of my friend’s story and the email I was writing.

So there it is, a full morning’s work.

Now I am writing this blog but also watching the time. I’ll have to catch a swim in the pool during the window designated for serious lap swimmers. I’ve got a few minutes before I have to leave the house. And I am hungry and must eat before I swim. Then chores on the way home and, hopefully, some energy to return to the computer and continue with the research and journal notes about my new murder mystery before I do the laundry.  Read More 

This blog post is dedicated to the memory of Anthony Shadid who died from an asthma attack while he was reporting from Syria with NY Times photographer Taylor Hicks. Most reporters who enter a war zone clandestinely travel with security personnel one of whom is usually a medic. Shadid and Hicks, probably for logistical reasons, decided to travel solo, relying only on one another. Hicks did the best he could to revive Shadid who collapsed on their way out.

Lebanese-born, fluent in Arabic, and experienced in the field, Anthony Shadid had recently been in Libya where he had been taken hostage. After his release, he had returned to his new wife and baby in Lebanon before setting out again to cover the uprising in Syria.

I did not know Anthony Shadid personally though I have known other war reporters and photographers. I first began to meet them at press events in London and then at parties. The word bloviating comes to mind; most were cowboys. So dehumanized by their work, I rarely heard a kind word spoken about the refugees they were interviewing or the horrors of war. If they’d been shot, so much the better for the tale, always a great adventure, adrenalin pumping. But when women entered the news rooms in the 1980’s, the culture of reporting changed, and although women war reporters can be as macho as any of their male colleagues, some seemed interested in more human stories and bravely humanized their reporting. Of course, this shift cannot only be attributed to women, but I think in large measure their presence began a larger cultural shift in the news rooms. Strange that Shadid’s writing is described as lyrical and personal— stereotypical female qualities—when it is simply human.

And there have been so many wars, so much to write about, so many stories since my years in London as a young reporter. When I began my book, “Another Day in Paradise; International Humanitarian Workers Tell Their Stories,” in 2000 one of my greatest champions was Scott Anderson who covers wars for the New York Times Magazine. When he is not in harm’s way, he returns to the city and to his home upstate where he spends his days or weeks between assignments writing fiction and chopping wood. Like Anthony Shadid, his writing is driven by his feelings for the people he encounters, how they survive, or don’t. How they endure, or don’t. And like most good reporters, he does his homework. How does the history and politics of the region become a labyrinth of fate, impossible to escape? Scott’s brother, Jon Lee Anderson, reports for The New Yorker out of the UK. He had met Patrick Dillon, one of the contributors to “Another Day in Paradise,” in Baghdad just before the American invasion and, when Patrick went missing, he contacted me immediately and then kept track of him and tried to protect him. Recovered from a recent heart attack, Jon Lee Anderson is back at work.

And then there is James Nachtwey who calls his photography “witness photography.” In harms way most of his working life, he was shot in Iraq, but has not boasted about it. The home page of his website reads: “I have been witness, and these picture are my testimony. The events I have recorded should not be forgotten and must not be repeated." One phone call, and he agreed to give us a picture for the cover of “Another Day in Paradise.” The picture was taken in Afghanistan. The money he asked was nominal.

I thought of the war reporters I know when Anthony Shadid died. And I am honored to know them.
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I'm been re-reading the Marilyn French introduction to my frayed edition of Edith Wharton’s "The Custom of the Country," and that has set me straight on Jonathan Franzen’s odd review in The New Yorker of her work on the occasion of her 150th birthday:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/02/13/120213fa_fact_franzen

Franzen begins by complaining that because she was born into privilege it is difficult to feel any sympathy for Edith Wharton or her writing. That’s odd as I have found Franzen’s writing cold and unsympathetic. And this brings me back to Marilyn French's observation that it is very interesting what men writers make of the women in their lives. I suppose one could also say the opposite: It’s very interesting what women writers make of the men in their lives. But Franzen's decision to attack Wharton for her "privilege" on her 150th birthday seems chauvinistic and cruel—chauvinism is cruel—small-minded, perhaps even envious of her great gifts.

For years, Edith Wharton’s work was relegated to the dusty shelves of libraries and she was mentioned only in passing as a contemporary of Henry James. We now know better. She was better, richer and truer in many ways than James as a writer. And Franzen is far from her class as a writer; I use class differently here, of course, though the word has some relevance.

Shame on The New Yorker for not honoring Edith Wharton and publishing one of her stories in celebration. Instead, they published Franzen's odd review. What an introduction for a new generation of readers who have never read Wharton. How are they to know that Franzen is utterly wrong about her? She wrote with empathy about many other people less fortunate than herself. She was an aid worker during World War I. Her generosity, both material and emotional, were legend. Three of her novels are masterpieces: “The Custom of the Country,” “The House of Mirth,” and “The Age of Innocence.” She wrote in bed, and that was a luxury, but she also had a serious nervous breakdown and much sadness and struggle in her life. She never had children yet she adored children and wrote tenderly about them. One could go on and on. Franzen has no such empathy or vision. He is a cold writer caught in the web of his own narcissistic middle-American origins, and blinkered by them.  Read More 

I am so unhappy with Amazon today. After three years as a Kindle aficionado, enjoying the etchings of authors—Joyce, Austen, others—on the screen saver, my new Kindle Touch has an advertisement for some sort of health spa. And not only when it’s shut down; advertising banners appear at the bottom of the Home screen which I have to look at when I am selecting a book to read from my library.

I knew nothing about this before I made my purchase. And I have just looked at the Kindle site again and see no mention of advertising in the description of the Kindle Touch. Why did they omit this tidbit of information, or is it in such small print that I missed it?

Amazon has been in the news of late because of lending library practices for their “prime” customers, bypassing authors and publishers consent, and what else? I can hardly keep up with all the issues in discussion and litigation in the emails I get from The Authors Guild regarding Amazon and Google these days. Have these two innovative, sometimes socially conscious companies succumbed to corporate greed?

These were my thoughts when I called customer support this morning, initially to get a helping hand on managing the tablet, but I also hoped that the advertising could be eliminated. Not a chance. I was told, politely, that if I had decided to spend $49 more, I’d have the benefit of no advertising. In other words, Kindle Touch customers who economize are also penalized: we have to endure advertising. Yet the price we pay for Amazon books is the same for everyone. So, frankly, I don’t get this.

Is it the same situation as Pandora? For $36 a year you can subscribe and bypass advertising for their music genome project. It doesn’t seem comparable. And the terms of the contract with Pandora are clear.

I’ve written a letter to Amazon corporate headquarters and I’ll send this blog posting to Kindle Feedback which has always been helpful in the past. A cc will go to the staff at The Authors Guild.
I’ll keep my readers posted on what everyone has to say.  Read More 

Two days before the start of the NYU teaching term and I have finished an essay that has been in my head for weeks. It’s 2,000 words, written in the third person, all on the page but still inside me. I wrote it for myself, no audience in mind, a respite from what must be written. It was fun, relaxing, absorbing, just the tonic for the hiatus between one long project and another.

The essay is still in my mind, I cannot let it go. I must get up from this desk and go for a swim to break this post-partum mood and begin some other work this afternoon or tomorrow morning, the beginnings of a second murder mystery, the third if I count the rewritten first murder mystery, “Say Nothing,” which is now called “Collateral Damage.” My agent is getting some good feedback on the revision—a new, younger protagonist, an Iraq war veteran—is gaining interest, even excitement, so we are hopeful. Some editors are finding the writing too literary, others not literary enough. It’s impossible to write to please this particular audience, always with their eyes on the marketplace. My mind drifts back to the essay. I will let it sit for a while, then show it to a reader or two, revise, and send it out. My agent won’t have time or inclination to read it. There’s no money for her in one essay. Perhaps, one day, a collection might interest her. It’s important just to keep writing every day even if it’s only in my journals, I tell myself when my optimism flags. Every viable idea begins in the journals and after a while, if I persevere, the projects line up like airplanes on a crowded runway.  Read More 

My husband bought me an iPhone for my birthday nearly a year ago. I fell in love immediately. As Hemingway once famously said, “writing is a moveable feast,” and to be able to send texts, answer emails, check the weather, listen to music, upload pictures to Facebook, all while I lead my nomadic writer’s existence has made my personal life and my working life much, much easier. Anyone who owns a smart phone knows what I mean. It’s a magnificent invention.

So I was heart struck Sunday and then again today after reading two investigative articles in the New York Times by Charles Duhigg and David Barboza:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-and-a-squeezed-middle-class.html?scp=1&sq=How%20US%20Lost%20Out%20on%20iPhone%20work&st=cse

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/business/ieconomy-apples-ipad-and-the-human-costs-for-workers-in-china.html?ref=todayspaper

Upon finishing these articles, my immediate thought was this: Had I known about Apple’s egregious behavior, its callous disregard, I probably would not have accepted the gift of an iPhone. Although most electronics are manufactured and assembled overseas these days, other companies are better than Apple at complying with International Labor Law.

I am sure that as a consequence of these articles, there will be more changes. At least I hope so because my second thought is this: Apple is one of China’s best customers. Certainly, they can exert some pressure.

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