Everyone seems to want to do two things in his life; direct movies and write a novel.
In 1987, I had been a successful film and television director and writer for fifteen
years. I wrote and directed several feature films and TV pilots, including Mcgyver
and multiple episodes of The X-Files, and Kojak, to name a few, and I
had even received Emmy nominations and Writer's Guild of America television
awards—but I wasn't artistically satisfied, because of the compromises inherent in
that business; only a handful of artists in film and television have creative autonomy. I'd
covered the director part of the fantasy. The idea of trying to write a novel while
daunting, was very appealing. All writers secretly harbor a dream of writing one. Film
writing is restrictive—there's no inner monologue, no description, no
characterization, no flights of imagination.
One afternoon over coffee I was browsing through the extension catalog for the
University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) the city in which I live. A particular
course being offered in the writing department caught my eye. It was called Novel
Beginnings. The class would meet ten consecutive Saturday mornings. The object was to try
to write the first one hundred pages of a novel. I signed up.
There were a dozen wannabe novelists in the class. After a couple of weeks of talking
about structure, characterization, etc, Shelley Lowenkopf, our instructor, sent us off to
start writing, and to come back in two weeks with some pages.
Of course, one had to have something to write about, and I hadn't given that much
thought. Now I had to. I recalled conversations my brother and I had fifteen years earlier
about some cases he'd participated in as a young lawyer in Albuquerque, New Mexico. These
cases involved outlaw motorcyclists, prison riots, perjured evidence, police corruption.
Rich material. I took these basic elements, invented others, and wove them around series
of fictitious characters I created, spearheaded by a down-on-his-luck semi alcoholic
lawyer who gets hired by the bikers. I wrote thirty pages , turned them in, and a week
later heard them read aloud, by Shelley to the class. The pages were well-received, and I
was off and running.
It took me almost four years to write that first novel, AGAINST THE WIND. I'd
go off and direct a movie or a TV pilot, then, in-between assignments, come back to the
book. When I finished, I presented it to my film agent, who, after recovering from his
shock at being handed a six-hundred-page manuscript he had no idea was being
written—I'd told no one I was doing it except my wife, in case no one was interested
— sent it along to his literary counterpart in New York. A month later I had six
offers for the book and a year after that it was published and became a bestseller.
Now I was a writer, with film directing taking a secondary role, which has been the
case to this day, almost ten years later.
During the writing of AGAINST THE WIND I developed characteristics as a novelist which
have been consistent throughout all my books. I write from character and let events unfold
as experienced by the people in my books. The expression "the book writes
itself" is absolute for me. My characters drive the story along, and I hang in for
dear life, do my best to guide them on their voyage, through perilous and often uncharted
waters, to an ultimate safe harbor. This does not mean that all my books have happy
endings. Some do and some don't; but the endings are the inevitable consequences of the
characters I've developed and the story which comes from that development.
Like most writers, I have certain themes and tendencies I return to. I write flawed
characters who are going through crises in their own lives, personal, professional,
emotional. Working out their problems, learning who they are, their core values, is the
driving force behind my own motivation to write.
Since the completion of AGAINST THE WIND, I have published five more
internationally-acclaimed novels, thanks to my reading audience. In order they are THE
OBSTACLE COURSE, HOUSE OF SMOKE (which is set in Santa Barbara), KEY WITNESS, THE
DISAPPEARANCE (also set in Santa Barbara, a 1999 New York Times best seller, and
ABOVE THE LAW, which was recently published in February, 2000.
As far as research goes, I prefer to go into the field. For BIRD'S-EYE VIEW, I went to
Texas and southern Maryland, where the story is located. For the book I'm currently
writing, A SACRIFICE TO THE GODS, I recently traveled to Belize and Guatemala, in central
America, to visit Mayan ruins, in which parts of the story are located. The rest of the
book will take place in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, two cities with which I'm very
familiar, having lived in them for the past 35 years.
My favorite website for research is
It can link you to practically anything you need. (I found out about it when I was
reading an article on Colin Powell, who said that it was his favorite web site.)
I have so many authors I like it's hard to pick a few. I just read the latest by James
Ellroy and Michael Chabon, and I'm presently reading Philip Roth. I also like the current
Japanese writers, and south American writers. Plus Kundera. For thrillers, I read a book
recently called HOLLOWPOINT by a new writer, a DA in Brooklyn. Good tough stuff. I also
like the Bosch books that Michael Connelly writes, he's one of the few ongoing characters
I consistently find refreshing. I read a lot— Steinbeck has always been one of my
favorites, I'm rereading most of Conrad now, because I love his style and also some of his
themes relate, in an oblique way, to ideas I'm trying to develop. Also rereading ANNA
KARENINA in a new translation. You can't beat the old masters for great storytelling and
character development.
J. F. FREEDMAN is the New York Times bestselling author of ABOVE THE LAW, THE
DISAPPEARANCE, KEY WITNESS, HOUSE OF SMOKE, OBSTACLE COURSE, and AGAINST THE WIND. He
lives in Santa Barbara, California.
