As an insecure adult in Houston, a writer struggling to make myself heard, I was nourished by those hours with the Houston Rockets in ways that I did not recognize.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Coming to Houston was an opportunity that I couldn't pass up.
I naively thought I would quit television writing, move up to Seattle, my novel would come out, and then I'd have a novel writing career, and so I found myself really stuck in this very poisonous self-pitying state and felt like I'd never write again. And I blamed Seattle for that.
A screenwriter heard me read from my novel 'The Wishbones' when it was still in progress and mentioned me to some producers in Hollywood. They called, and I told them I had a novel in my drawer about a high school election that goes haywire. They asked to take a look, and my life changed pretty dramatically as a result.
I think of myself as a realistic writer, not a creator of soap opera or melodrama.
So, we come out to Los Angeles. And we met with every network. We met with show runners, directors, writers, everything. And what we had an idea for, they didn't like. And what they had an idea for, we didn't like. So, we went home.
I had lost faith in biography.
The press made me something I really wasn't and I tried to live up to what they made me.
Much of my publishing life was consumed by the memoirs of movie stars - or by attempts to get them to write a memoir.
I can say without melodrama or malice that Hollywood ruined my life.
Before I became a writer, I was running a jazz bar in the center of Tokyo, which means that I worked in filthy air all the time late into the night. I was very excited when I started making a living out of my writing, and I decided, 'I will live in nothing but an absolutely healthy way.'