Author Sidney Sheldon, novelist and television producer, died Tuesday at 89.

Though pop culture will likely remember him for putting The Patty Duke Show and I Dream of Jeannie on the air, he also published eighteen novels. He decided to try his hand at novel writing as ‘Jeannie’ was coming to a close.

According to his obituary, he’d shut himself in his office from 9:00am until noon, and dictate pages. Over the years, he developed his writing pace of dictating about fifty pages per day to either a secretary or into a tape recorder. He’d keep working on a novel until he reached 1,200-1,500 pages:

“Then I do a complete rewrite…12 to 15 times. I spend a whole year rewriting.”

Sheldon prided himself on the authenticity he felt he put into each novel. In a 1987 interview, he said, “If I write about a place, I have been there. If I write about a meal in Indonesia, I have eaten there in that restaurant. I don’t think you can fool the reader.”

Known for writing about women who were talented, capable and feminine, he reached a large female readership. In 1982, when asked about the secrets to his plotting, he said this:

“I try to write my books so the reader can’t put them down. I try to construct them so when the reader gets to the end of a chapter, he or she has to read just one more chapter. It’s the technique of the old Saturday afternoon serial: leave the guy hanging on the edge of the cliff at the end of the chapter.”

I’ve never read one of his books, but I’ll admit to trying to leave each chapter of my own manuscript with some kind of mini-cliffhanger. Sometimes, it’s unconscious; the place that just “feels” right for a chapter break ends up being just before something big is obviously going to happen. Sometimes, as I’m writing a scene, I plan on ending on a cliffhanger.

I don’t think that I could come up with fifty pages a day, even if I didn’t have any other job to face every day. (I’m still waiting on the big lotto win!) And I don’t think I’d do that well with dictation, either. For me, I like seeing the words either on paper or on the screen as I’m writing them, so I can go back immediately a paragraph or two and make sure I wasn’t leaving something out. I revise as I’m writing, then revise again when I put those chapters into the “master document” of the manuscript itself.

But twelve to fifteen rewrites? I don’t know that I could take that many. There comes a point, at least for me, when I think it’s as good as it’s going to get, and any further tinkering becomes “tinkering for tinkering’s sake.”

Then again, this is why it interests me to see how other writers — particularly of the successfully published variety — do things. It’s a nice reminder that what works for one writer doesn’t automatically work for me, and it gives me a reason to think about why — for me — my way seems better.

Hillary Clinton, now stumping as a candidate for president in 2008, has now joined Democratic lawmakers like John Kerry and John Edwards in acknowledging that the vote to authorize George W. Bush to invade Iraq was a mistake:

“If we had known then what we know now, there never would have been a vote and I would have never voted to give this president that authority.”

The audience cheered. I don’t know why they cheered. That’s like a car crash victim saying that if he’d known the morning of the accident that someone was going to barrel into him, he’d have taken a different route. Or a robbery suspect admitting that if he’d known the surveillance camera would have taken such a clear picture, he wouldn’t have robbed that store.

It’s so obvious that it doesn’t need to be said, and certainly is not be deserving of cheers when it is: Of course they wouldn’t have voted the way they did if they knew then what they know now!

That’s why hindsight is always 20/20.

The real question here in my mind is, as former First Lady, who would have been in a position to get some information from her husband through his position as president, why didn’t Hillary know then?

If you believe all of the political bloggers — and I don’t — they knew long before the vote. If our lawmakers were as smart as the bloggers claim to have been, they’d have all been watching the events of 9/11 unfolding on live television, immediately certain that Bush would use the terror attacks as an excuse to go to war with Saddam Hussein. So why didn’t they know then?

I wonder why those bloggers aren’t our elected officials; we seem to be sending the uninformed to Washington these days and leaving those in the know stuck on Blogger and Wordpress. How did that happen?

John Edwards said this in a November, 2005 op-ed article for The Washington Post:

“But in fact we now know that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction when our forces invaded Iraq in 2003. The intelligence was deeply flawed.”

“It was a mistake to vote for this war in 2002.”

Bill Clinton, in a July, 2003, Larry King interview, said:

“People can quarrel with whether we should have more troops in Afghanistan or internationalize Iraq or whatever, but it is incontestable that on the day I left office, there were unaccounted for stocks of biological and chemical weapons.”

If he believed that to be true in 2003, there should be no question about whether to second-guess the votes in 2002. The intelligence information that would have been available as he was leaving office — the materials that would have led him to that unquestionable conclusion — wouldn’t have been the “flawed, misleading” intelligence information that Bush produced; it would have been based on the information obtained during the Clinton administration.

So the debate still rages on over those elusive weapons of mass destruction. If they were there, they’re either not there now, or they’re hidden in the same tear in the space-time continuum where Osama bin Laden is kicking back.

President Bush has flat-out accepted responsibility for the errors made during the war. As well he should have. There have been many. But Bush didn’t get to the point of liability without asssitance.

The people who voted to give the president the authority to go to war made it too easy.

Even if Bush and Cheny personally fabricated every word of intelligence they presented, they still were given the authority to go to war. Conditions? Obviously they weren’t strict enough, were they? If the lawmakers had known then what they knew now, and the rest of the country was in the dark, they wouldn’t have voted no because it would have made them look too passive to an angry public still reeling from 9/11. But we all know that at the very least, they’d have made it a hell of a lot harder for Bush to make the case that would allow him to go to war. Those conditions they put on that authorization would have been a lot more specific, and would have required a lot more proof. He’d have had to be a lot more convincing to talk them out of what they already knew.

In this country, when a bartender continues serves someone who’s obviously too drunk to drive who then gets into a deadly accident, some jurisdictions allow the bartender to be punished. When a parent owns a gun and doesn’t take sufficient precautions to keep their child from getting that gun and fatally shooting someone, it’s the parent who faces jail time, not the child.

There are Democrats who think that Bush has to be blitzed out of his mind or possess the mentality of a small child, if not both. So why did they, and their Republican counterparts, serve him up more drinks and leave the gun cabinet unlocked so he could take us into Iraq on flawed intelligence without a clear plan for getting out?

My question takes no blame away from Bush about what has happened since we went in; it simply seeks to question why those who helped Bush get there are able to get off the hook by playing word games with history to draw attention from their own complicity.

Is that too unreasonable a question to ask? I don’t think so. Do you?

With Valentine’s Day just over two weeks away, I thought I’d make the next Willoughby Poll about balancing your personal relationships with writing.

Do your family and friends (or significant others, if you have one) end up taking a back seat to your writing, or does your writing take a back seat to the people close to you?

Or, are you one of those people who have magically achieved the perfect balance? (And if you are, how did you do it?)

Vote now on the sidebar.

Not everyone does, nor does everyone need to. But if you’re looking to improve your outlining skills, or just see how others do it, Paperback Writer has a list of ten links you should consider visiting.

The White House is probably delighted by this news reported on BoingBoing: George W. Bush is no longer a “miserable failure,” at least where searches on Google are concerned.

For some time, when users entered the keywords “miserable failure,” President Bush appeared at the top of the search results. The trick was made possible because of a “Google Bomb,” an effective collection of mass links designed to push a particular page or site to the top of a search list.

A change in the algorhythms used to compute the search results, according to Google, has put an end to the prank. That is, of course, until some wise hackers out there with too much time on their hands find a new way to accomplish the same trick.

You have until Friday, if you’re so inclined, to participate in the final voting for the 7th Annual Weblog Awards, also known as the Bloggies.

Stop by the headquarters website and select what you consider to be the best blog in a variety of categories. And you might find some new blogs to add to your webjog routine to boot!

(Via Mrs. Linklater’s Guide to the Universe)

When votes first started coming in for the most recent edition of the Willoughby Poll, which asked whether you make new year’s resolutions about writing, it was beginning to look like a clean sweep. Every vote that came in was a negative.

But after a few days, that changed quickly.

Eighty-two percent of participants say they do make some sort of writing-related resolution. Now that January is over, it might be interesting to ask them whether or not they’ve broken any of them, yet.

The remaining 14%, and I fall into this category, don’t make any formal resolution for the year when it comes to writing. I gave up on goals and firm personal deadlines — I know that if I’m published, I’ll have real deadlines I can’t put off, and that’ll be fine because a paycheck will be involved. I find that I am a more productive writer when I write when I want to and because I have something to say. I also find that I enjoy writing a lot more when it’s on my schedule.

I’ve never read any of her work, but from the outpouring of tributes that have appeared since her untimely passing last week from end-stage liver disease, Barbara Seranella may well be worth a trip to the bookstore.

She wrote crime novels whose sleuth was Munch Mancini, a female auto mechanic. Well, that’s different! In the great spirit of writing what you know, Seranella entered the field of writing after working a career as, you guessed it, an auto mechanic. Since she became a fulltime writer more than a decade ago, she has published ten novels.

Her next book, Deadman’s Switch, is being released in April.

For more about her and the impact she has had on fellow writers, visit tributes by Tod Goldberg, James Winter, Sarah Weinman, and M.J. Rose.

“Sometimes you feel like a nut…sometimes you don’t.” Yes, even a classic advertising jingle can provide the topic for a Sunday Seven question! (If you have trouble coming up with answers, here is a source of inspiration.

But first, Otowi, of “Otowi,” was first to play last week . Congratulations!

On to this week’s question!

THIS WEEK’S QUESTION:
Name your seven favorite varieties of nuts.

Either answer the question in a comment or answer it in your journal and include the link in a comment. (To be considered “first to play,” you must either answer the questions in full here, or you must include a link to the specific entry in which you answered the question.)

My answers:
1. Cashews
2. Pistachio
3. Almond
4. Peanut
5. Pecan
6. Macadamia
7. Coconut

Many fans of the Star Trek franchise have been waiting to see what would be the next new project; since Star Trek: Enterprise was cancelled, there hasn’t been a ‘Trek’ television series in production for the first time in nearly two decades.

There’s a new film in the works, but it’s apparently still in the very early stages and may or may not serve as a prequel to the original series. I don’t like prequels. I’d rather know what’s going to happen next.

But television viewers who spot episodes of Star Trek on local stations these days may notice that the 1960s sci-fi hit has undergone a makeover! The original matte shots of outer space, which were costly and as advanced as television could afford when they first aired, may seem somewhat primitive to today’s younger viewers. So while the series was being restored for high-definition, someone came up with the idea to redo all of the ship exteriors and outer space shots.

The image shows a computer-generated version of science fiction’s most famous starship, the Enterprise. On the newly-restored episodes, any time we see a shot of the ship itself, or a planet, or an alien spacecraft, what we’re seeing is something new that has been inserted into the original films.

I must admit that I have mixed feelings about this.

Computers, unquestionably, can do it better when it comes to creating new and different angles of the ship. The crew of computer animators responsible for ‘Trek’s’ new look took measurements of the original ship model now on display at the Smithsonian.

In the most recent “restored” episode I saw, there was an interesting shot of the ship “shot” from below looking up at the ship’s underside as it passes by…an angle we never saw before. The tips of the engine nacelles are animated, glowing with spinning colors that look better than the old version. The ship — and more importantly the “camera” — moves in ways that technology couldn’t produce back then. So there’s definitely something cool about seeing the classic ship as we’ve never seen it before.

At the same time, the nostalgia buff in me sort of enjoys the “primitive” look of 60s special effects. Yes, sometimes the keys break up as the ship moves across the screen. Yes, sometimes you can see a matte as a smaller ship enters the frame. Once in a while, it looks like a cheesy special effect instead of “reality.” And I think there’s something charming about that.

The animators have already stated that they’re not redoing the interiors of the ship, or even the computer displays (with one or two minor exceptions). So I wonder, once the project is complete, how well the 2007 footage will mix with the 1967 footage.

Even more sad, I think, is the possibility that one day the new, restored version of ‘Trek’ will be the only one available on DVD or on the air. The old version will be gone, unless you’ve managed to record them or buy them on the current DVD releases. (I have.) The purist in me, the same purist who hates to see classic black and white films colorized, wishes they’d just leave well enough alone.

Some things don’t need to be improved upon.

If you could make out from that title the question, “Can you read this?” there’s a new novel just released in Finland that you might be interested in.

The Last Messages tells the story of a fictitious information-technology executive who leaves his job in favor of a trek across Europe and India. The text is the series of text messages between him, his family and his friends, and, as you can imagine, is saturated with the intentional misspellings, grammatical errors and shortcuts text message users regularly employ.

Finnish author Hannu Lantiala says she believes that a text message might reveal more about the sender than one might think.

The question is, would you attempt to read such a text, even if it was in the specific genre you like best?

Via By The Way…

Still sluggish even after a couple of cups of coffee in the morning? Miffed about the loss of trans-fats from your diet because of health-conscious restaurants?

No problem! Enter turbo-charged, caffeinated doughuts!

A molecular biologist has created a way to inject the caffeine equivalent of two cups of coffee into doughnuts and bagels. The biggest challenge seemed to be overcoming the bitterness of the coffee grounds that were inserted into the pastries. With that task accomplished, the remaining challenge involves consumers, who’ll have to make sure they can stay healthy despite the increased trans-fats.

But don’t break your neck trying to get to the doughnut shop or deli on Monday morning. The scientist who created — and patented — them is now shopping for a buyer who’ll carry them.

Would you give them a try?

Here’s another edition that relates to a theme: this time, it’s the year you were born. I know, I know, you don’t remember much from that year, right? No problem. At the Saturday Six, we’re here to help.

We had lots of players last week, but it was Antonette of “Jottings From Jersey” was first to play last week. Congratulations, Antonette!

Here are this week’s “Saturday Six” questions. Either answer the questions in a comment here, or put the answers in an entry on your journal…but either way, leave a link to your journal so that everyone else can visit! To be counted as “first to play,” you must be the first player to either answer the questions in a comment or to provide a complete link to the specific entry in your journal in which you answer the questions. A link to your journal in general cannot count. Enjoy!

1. Take the quiz: (LINK FIXED!) What happened the year that you were born?

2. Of the events mentioned, which would you most liked to have witnessed in person?

3. Of the people mentioned, who would you most like to meet in person?

4. Of the people mentioned, who would you least like to meet in person?

5. Which of the events do you think had the most profound effect on history?

6. Which of the events do you think contributed the most to our culture?

If you have a Reader’s Choice question you’d like to see asked (and answered), click the e-mail link in the Blogger profile and send it to me.

MY ANSWERS:
1. From 1969:

In 1969 (the year you were born)

Richard Nixon becomes president of the US Mary Jo Kopechne is killed when Senator Edward Kennedy veers off a narrow bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, crashing into a pond US astronaut Neil Armstrong becomes the first person to set foot on the moon while commanding the Apollo 11 mission Breathtaking pictures of Mars are transmitted to earth from NASA’s Mariner 7 as it passes within 2,200 miles of the Red Planet Woodstock music festival begins in upstate NY, featuring performances by Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, and many more artists 250,000 Vietnam War protestors gather in Washington for the largest anti-war rally in US history The first draft lottery since WWII is held in New York City The Beatles’ performance in public for the last time, on the roof of Apple Records The Stonewall riots mark the start of the modern gay rights movement in the US Marilyn Manson, Jennifer Aniston, Renee Zellweger, Edward Norton, Christian Slater, and Linus Torvalds are born New York Mets win the World Series New York Jets win Superbowl III Montreal Canadiens win the Stanley Cup Sesame Street premieres Midnight Cowboy wins the Oscar for best picture David Bowie’s debut single, “Space Oddity”, becomes a huge hit - in part due to the US landing on the moon Sharon Tate & the LaBiancas are found murdered by Charles Manson & “family”

2. The moon landing.

3. Probably Richard Nixon. I have questions.

4. Hmm. Marilyn Manson. I doubt we’d get along all that well. We don’t seem to have much in common.

5. The moon landing.

6. Woodstock. That was my second choice for events I’d have liked to witness in person.

If you’re a television buff like me, you probably noted a milestone in daytime television this week. The soap opera Guiding Light, the longest-running program in broadcasting history, celebrated its 70th anniversary on Thursday.

The program, originally known as The Guiding Light, premiered as a fifteen minute radio show on January 25, 1937. Originially, it was set in the fictional town of Five Points, and its main character was Rev. Rutledge, who burned a lamp known as the “Friendship Lamp” in his study window and represented a guiding light for his parishoners.

The show’s credo came from one of Rutledge’s earliest “sermons:”

There is a destiny that makes us brothers.
None goes his way alone.
And all that we send into the lives of others,
Comes back into our own.

In 1948, the Bauers, who would become the show’s core family, made their first appearance, led by actor Theo Goetz in the role of “Papa” Bauer. The character would become so popular that by March of 1957, when viewers were invited to send “Papa” cards for his 65th birthday, Goetz received more than 50,000 pieces of mail.

In 1950, actress Charita Bauer took over the role of Bertha “Bert” Bauer, and would stay in the role until her death nearly 35 years later. Bauer would later ask the writers to name her fictional children the same names she’d given to her own kids out of fear of getting a name wrong on live television. The writers obliged.

On June 30, 1952, a television version premiered on CBS. The actors would perform on live television, then report to the radio studio and perform the radio version later in the day. The radio version would eventually go away four years later.

In 1953, the show became the first soap opera to be broadcast in color. Color television was very experimental in the early fifties, and the show’s creator, Irna Phillips, widely regarded as the mother of the genre, was so against the idea of broadcasting in color that she wrote an episode set entirely in a white and gray hospital room!

Phillips, according to actors, ruled with an iron fist; to her, the characters were real people to be respected as such. Unlike some other dramas of the day, which focused on action, Phillips set out to create a show that was character-driven. She once said, “None of us is different, except in degree. None of us is a stranger to success and failure, life and death, the need to be loved, the struggle to communicate.”

In the late fifties, when a fan outcry resulted from the death of a popular character, Phillips responded to the complaints:

“These are all part of the great pattern woven and interwoven until we see the colorful tapestry of life itself. We are not weavers of fairy tales.”

Over the years, Phillips would steer her show through socially-conscious storylines. In 1962, character Bert Bauer was diagnosed with uterine cancer. Her treatment was a success, but through that story, the program educated women about the importance of pap smears.

By 1968, the show expanded from fifteen minutes to a half hour. Also that year, shows began being recorded on tape rather than being broadcast live. Nine years later, it would lose the “the” and expand again to one hour.

In 1984, beloved Charita Bauer, suffering the effects of Diabetes, was forced to have a leg amputated. The operation was written into the show, as well as her efforts to learn to walk with an artificial leg. By the end of that year, her failing health would force her to leave the show; she died early in 1985. One year after the actress’s death, her character was written off as well.

By the late 1990s, one of the strangest storylines in daytime history began unfolding, when it was explained that character Reva Shayne had been cloned. The clone, named “Dolly,” (after the sheep?) would eventually die from “rapid aging syndrome.”

Last year, the show celebrated the taping of its 15,000th episode. On Thursday, the show aired a special episode, in which current actors portrayed Phillips and the show’s early cast, telling the story of the show’s early days while weaving the theme of Phillips’s vision into a current storyline. It was the show’s 17,554th episode.

This year, the show has created a website, Findyourlight.net, inviting viewers to send short videos describing the their “lights:” the things that inspire them or make their lives worth living. The show’s New York studio has been dark this week, as cast members flew to the Katrina-ravaged Gulf coast to help rebuild houses. A special episode on Valentine’s Day will depart from the storylines and show the actors — as themselves — volunteering in the effort.

With the announcement this week that NBC’s Passions will disappear by the end of the summer, Guiding Light will become the lowest-rated soap opera on network television. I’ve never been a regular viewer of the show, but as I said from the start, I’m a television buff, so I respect the history and longevity it has built. It’s also worth noting that the show helped gain early exposure for such heavy hitters as James Earl Jones, Billy Dee Williams, Kavin Bacon, JoBeth Williams, and Christopher Walken.

I hope the show stays on the air and continues setting records. Whether you love soap operas or hate them, you’ll surely agree that there are far worse programs to be found on the dial.

One of the more popular journal writers in AOL’s J-land is Penny, also known as blondepennierae, of “A Pennies Worth.”

According to John, Penny suffered a brain aneurysm this morning and has been rushed to an area hospital. She is scheduled to undergo brain surgery tomorrow in an attempt to repair the damage.

Penny is a 2005 Vivi Award winner for “Most Inspirational Journal” and is much loved by her regular readers for her determination and the “can-do” philosophy by which she lives her life. She beat polio when she was just two years old and post-polio syndrome more than three decades later. I certainly hope she can beat this, too.

Please visit her journal and leave your well-wishes. Every prayer helps, folks.

UPDATE: Penny has come through the surgery and doctors are “guardedly optimistic.” The full update is here.