MONDAY, APRIL 26, 1999

Author shares life experiences in writings

By Erwin Mejia

On-Line Forty-Niner

All writers cheat, said Theodore Taylor, author of 51 books, as he described his method of writing during a presentation Wednesday at Cal State Long Beach.

In front of an audience in University Library, Taylor described the step-by-step process he uses to write his books.

"I never had a good imagination," he said. "Both my non-fiction and fiction books come from real life. My characters come from real life".

Taylor said he hates to write about things or people based on fiction. He finds characters for his books from his past. When he needs to invent characters, Taylor uses his friends or tries to meet new people.

His most prized book, "The Cay," which took only three weeks to write, has sold more than 4 million copies in 12 different countries. It has also the winner of 11 literary awards, including the Lewis Carroll Self Award.

The author said the characters in the book were childhood friends and a man he met while doing research in the Bahamas.

He came up with the idea for the book while he was doing research on World War II. Taylor read about a little boy who became lost at sea when a German U-boat sank his ship. The real life story of the boy troubled him so much that he was inspired to write about it.

Taylor told the audience that he considers himself lucky. He never finished high school and said he has surpassed any expectations he had of himself.

In fact, Tayor was a man of several trades before he became a novelist.

Although he had no journalistc experience, Taylor said was offered a job to cover sports for the Portsmouth Evening Star in Virginia during the Great Depression.

He said he believed he could learn how to write by mimicing other sports reporters. He used a $5 dollar typewriter his father had given him to produce his first story.

Taylor then moved on to the Washington Daily News, and two years later, he was writing sports reports for NBC in New York.

In 1954, Taylor published his first book, "The Magnificent Mitscher," but he decided against becoming a full time novelist. Instead, he joined the movie industry.

He began working at Paramount Pictures, where he started as a press agent and then became an associate producer. Taylor told the audience how he worked with famous Hollywood stars such as Marilyn Monroe, Raquel Welch, Steve McQueen and many others on a daily basis.

After working on the movie "Tora! Tora! Tora!" he decided to become a full-time novelist.