In the mid-1990s, a book packager named Marty Greenberg, since deceased, asked if I would be interested in working on a book with Jamie Cromwell, star of the then recently released movie, Babe the Pig. Both Megan and I had loved the movie, so of course I said sure.
Jamie, I was told, had a cool story about UFOs and contact. Even better. Marty put us in touch and one day Cromwell landed in West Palm Beach and we picked him up and brought him back to our place. Megan, of course, was thrilled. Wow, the Babe the Pig guy was staying at her house. We shared that sentiment.
Jamie was a personable man, an Aquarian who didn’t think like other people. He’d spent time in the desert with UFO groups, had traveled worldwide, had unusual ideas and beliefs. And he had a solid idea for a novel about UFOs. We spent most of our time talking about the plot and characters he perceived for his novel.
One night, we went out to dinner – an Italian restaurant, I don’t recall exactly where. Several servers came up to him and asked for tips about how to break into movies. Others asked for autographs. Since Babe, his roles have been different and always terrific. I was and still am a fan.
When he left after those several days of brainstorming, I emailed Marty and told him the meet and greet had gone well. Marty started putting the contract together and actually found a publisher offering a $30,000 advance before anything had been written.
I made the mistake of starting the book before the contact had been signed and sent a couple of chapters to Cromwell. He called me and wasn’t happy. “I don’t like that sex scene,” he said. “It’s not how I make love to my wife.”
Well, what do you say to that? “Then write it yourself.”
“I’d like to return to Florida and sit next to you as you write my book,” he said.
I felt like laughing. Really? Sit next to me? Scrutinize my every word? Paragraph? Page? I used to work in the Florida prison system, as a librarian and Spanish teacher, and at the time his suggestion struck me as a kind of creative prison. “Forget that,” I replied.
“Then my wife and I will write the book,” he said.
During this phone call, I tossed an I Ching, an ancient Chinese divination system with which Jamie was familiar.
I got Hexagram 23, Splitting Apart. I told Jamie. We both knew what it meant.
Jamie and his wife never wrote the book. This is one of the real perils of ghostwriting. Someone has a great idea, a fantastic outline, compelling characters. They’re wedded to a sequence of events that work great in an outline, but not in the actual writing of the novel. An outline of characters and events is helpful, but there’s something that happens in the actual writing that dictates what works – and what doesn’t. It’s that creative element when the characters take over and become living beings.
Novels are about actions and reactions, actions and reactions, over and over again, seen and experienced through your point of view characters. So even though outlines are helpful, they must be malleable.
I haven’t seen Jamie in anything recently. I hope he has experienced his UFO idea.
