Yesterday’s C-SPAN’s 1st Sunday Treat

Ben Mezrich was the featured guest on C-SPAN’s in-depth interview with an author yesterday. He probably could have talked another three hours about his work, as he is indeed full of it. Mezrich calls himself a cinematic writer, rather than a literary one. He doesn’t start a book unless he can envision it as a movie, not with specific actors in mind.

This program covers only nonfiction writing and while Mezrich’s books [that have sold] sound like fiction, he says every bit of them is true. This proved to be a controversial point from a caller or two, but what he writes is generally called Creative Nonfiction. The creative aspect makes the writing sound like fiction and, of course, could be exactly as it really was, and delights many readers.

Mezrich enjoys casino gambling and it seems each book may have some of that in it. Bringing down the House was the first one that sold big. His research proves to be prodigious on such topics. You can find the first page of this one on the Net, where you can get a taste of how he sends the reader to page 2 quickly. I won’t list all his books and movies here, but I want to point out three other worthwhile notes for writers.

His father insisted that the children in the family read two books a week, beginning when they were little. It didn’t take Ben long to graduate to reading many more books than the required number, a great many more. From the age of twelve he knew he wanted to be a writer. His parents were not too happy with this, but supported him his first year of trying to write.

He writes quickly, after about three months of research, and after revising a bit as he goes along, he does not edit his work. Once he wrote one paragraph of a story and sent it somewhere and received an offer of $400,000 for the story. Almost unbelievable, right? I think all that reading in childhood paid off.

Let me tell you about his sports life. He said he had never hit or caught any ball thrown to him! He is hardly ever outside, is a nut about writing. He is married and has a son, 19 months old.

I’d like to tell you more about this interview, but this is too much now. Perhaps you can locate it on Book-TV and watch the entire three hours of it. ♥