Karl Iglesias asked me to write on the importance of habits for screenwriters. I barely waited for him to finish the sentence before I said "YES!!!"

"Wonderful screenwriting is 90 percent perspiration, 10 percent inspiration." The originator of this edict has yet to be authenticated, but the only truer words in screenwriting advice come from Jack Sowards (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan): "FINISH!!" he cries.

Stephen King suggests that many people consider the muse to be shaped like a woodland fairy who wafts from the forest and whispers in the writer's ear sweet inspiration to encourage him or her to the next line of prose, poetry or screenwriting. King, however, envisions his muse to have a flattop crewcut a la Jack Webb in "The D.I." yelling, "GET YOUR ASS BEHIND THAT KEYBOARD, KING!" I'm with Stephen King. I'm a "seat writer."—"Seat of the pants to seat of the chair."

I'm also with Noel Coward who quipped "I adore professionalism. I loathe writers who can only write when it's raining."

When I began professing at UCLA in 1979, the crown jewel screenwriting class, 434, had the requirement of an outline for a feature-length motion picture and a minimum of seventy pages of script. I implored my colleagues to require the script be finished in each quarter's ten-week time frame.

You see, from holding a screenwriter's feet to the fire via a deadline, comes habit. From habit comes discipline, a career, money, angst, joy and countless cups of coffee.

Before habits (good, of course) comes mentors. I'm also on the faculty at the Sorbonne in Paris. When I first spoke at a gathering in the Richelieu Room, the oldest lecture hall in the world, I reported that as soon as I hit the tarmac at Charles de Gaulle International, someone said, "You can't teach screenwriting." In front of this August gathering, my reply was swift, considerate, short and loud. "Bullshit!! To say that screenwriting cannot be taught is to say that Aristotle did not need Plato. That Monet did not need Manet," and I ticked off the mentors of Maria Callas, Rudolph Nureyev, and the teachers of those whose huge portraits who surrounded us in that assembly of learning—Racine, du Maupassant, Hugo, Moliere. "Why would screenwriting be the only writing received by divine inspiration?"

You need mentoring even after you become a professional writer. In this book in your hands are 14 mentors who violate that George Bernard Shaw quip, "Those who can't do teach. Those who can, do." You have fourteen mentors here who can do and teach.

I must also say Mr. Iglesias has put together a unique "interview" book that defies traditional structure for screenwriting or any other writing book I have studied. As he says, "everything you've always wanted to know about screenwriting but were afraid to ask the masters of the craft." Fear no longer. Karl has asked the questions and evoked the richest variety of responses about desire, commitment, the creative process, creating a writing environment, writing habits, time management, writer's block, rewriting, storytelling basics, the audience, the Hollywood System, networking, getting an agent, pitching and the four P's: Patience, Perseverance, Passion, and Practice. Put this special book on the "Have to read and reread" shelf of your screenwriting library.

You can't be Ron Bass, or Leslie Dixon, or Nicholas Kazan, or my ex-student Scott Rosenberg, or UCLA-trained Eric Roth, Ed Solomon, or any of these marvelous screenwriters on these pages. However, you can reach the heights that come with perseverance, "seat writing" and mentoring. So here you are, on the threshold of greater knowledge.

And now you're going to learn. And from this knowledge will come habits. Habits that can help you be a "highly successful screenwriter." Read, then write. It's not so difficult. It's "seat writing," remember? "Seat writing" four hours a day, the rest of the life. You can do it!

Write on,

Lew Hunter - Superior, Nebraska - June, 2001