Dramatic Publishing

How I Learned to Write

When Paula Fox and I were teenagers, working on copy desks of newspapers in San Francisco, we decided that the only way we could become real writers was to collaborate on something and send it off to New York publishers.

We lived a short distance from each other on Telegraph Hill—I, in a one-room apartment and she, a block up the hill near Coit Tower. Since her apartment was larger than mine, we decided to work there as often as possible. I lugged my L.C. Smith up the hill and she took out her Olivetti and we sat down facing each other across a table, ready to launch our new careers, full of hope...and innocence.

But where to begin? We talked and we talked but no miracle of plot or pace presented itself...until one night, the MUSE arrived with a copy of True Confessions and a sack slung over her shoulder. "Five cents a word, kiddoes" she cried, reaching in her sack and flipping us each a nickel. "Here's your down payment. Now get to work and stop farting around!" And she was gone, lost in a cloud of San Francisco fog.

A nickel a word, not bad. A thousand words: $50. Ten thousand words: $500!

We named our heroine Nora. She was driving down the West Side Highway in New York in her blue convertible—her long gold hair streaming behind her. She was on her way to a secret rendezvous with Mick, a gorgeous-looking, be-muscled longshoreman she had met at a friend's party the week before. He promised to show her several secret hideouts in the hold of the ship they were unloading, where they might spend the afternoon...or evening...or the whole night, if things worked out.

The more we wrote, the more ribald our plot became, until finally we had to give up working face to face and turn our backs to each other to keep from laughing.

I don't know what happened to Nora in the end—that was more than 50 years ago—but I know that the second time we wrote together, it was for TV's Matinee Theater in New York (live) and this time around we began with our characters—listening to them as they told us their story. All we did was type it up.

And that is How I Learned to Write.

Marjorie Kellogg was born in Santa Barbara, Calif., but at an early age left for San Francisco and New York to pursue a career as a writer. In San Francisco she worked on the copy desk of the Chronicle. In New York, she was sent by Salute magazine to observe the aftermath of World War II in France and Spain. When she returned to the States, she earned a master’s degree in social work at Smith College. She returned to New York where she worked in various social agencies and began writing fiction, plays and films. Among other things, she wrote the screenplay for her novel Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon, and Sylvia Plath’s novel The Bell Jar. Her second novel was Like the Lion’s Tooth. The Oldest Trick in the World, her first play, was directed by Carl Williams at the Henry Street Playhouse. There followed The Smile of the Cardboard Man and After You’ve Gone, both of which starred Sylvia Short. Kellogg wrote the book for a musical Skybound (lyrics by Thayer Burch and music by George Quincy) which was produced by the ASCAP workshop. In 1989 she returned to Santa Barbara to live. Robert Grande-Weiss, the artistic director of the Ensemble Theatre Company of Santa Barbara, chose Castaway for its world premiere in May 1997.