So
you want to be a writer?
Writing has been my passion since, oh, 1954. I knew then that I wanted to write books. So you’d think I’d have learned something by now. Well, I have.
It seemed like a strange profession for a farm boy of German-Russian immigrant parents, but maybe not. In fact, many famous and successful people have come from backgrounds that gave little hint of their future. So the reason I didn’t become a published writer of books was nobody’s fault but my own.
To help me to make a living while I tried to achieve my goal I found a profession where writing was an integral part of my job – a journalist. I started as a reporter at age 20 for the Sterling Journal Advocate in Colorado. My first job was collecting interesting facts for a 50th anniversary edition in the 100-degree attic of our newspaper office in the summer of 1960. I advanced to the top (only) reporter on the staff when the regular guy was fired. I covered everything during my three summers I was in college before I went into the army. I wrote congressional correspondence (more writing) in the army and even worked for the Korean Times in Seoul.
When I was 25, I was hired by Copley Los Angeles Newspapers. My first assignment was at the Alhambra Post-Advocate where I delighted (exasperated) conservative editor Bob Studer with my liberal views. Then I went to work at the Culver City Star News where my reigning memories are accompanying the veteran police reporter on his early morning rounds which included a stop at a bar for his shot of vodka at 6 a.m.
Then I went to the Daily Breeze in Torrance, the standard bearer of the L.A. papers. Managing editor John Moon loved me. “Goddamn it ,” he would growl in the morning in the newsroom. “Why can’t you goddamn guys be like Lechman. He puts on those dark glasses and goes out the door, and I don’t see him until 4 o’clock.” He was trying to say I was out beating the bushes for news. Well, I was. One of my jobs was the police beat, and then I returned to help put out the Streak before producing enough stories to fill the second front with news of the Carson-Wilmington area. In the evening, I spent my time coming up with proposals for TV series and writing short stories, screenplays, novels and children books. None published, of course.
Soon, my boss Jim Box assigned me to special sections. My compatriot, the late Cary Koegle and I, put out the entertainment, TV and business pages daily, all the special pages of the newspaper, 11 weekly throwaways and Sunday Scene magazine. In our “spare” time, we wrote stories, features and reviews in 40 hours a week. Yeah, right. We never worked s little as 40 hours a week. We were paid for 40 hours a week. I eventually became entertainment editor, critic, columnist, features editor, copyeditor and magazine editor for the next 38 years. I “retired” in 2005. And guess what?
I did become a published writer of books. My first one, Los Angeles Dodgers Pitchers: Seven Decades of Diamond Dominance, was published this month by The History Press with another, : Notre Dame Vs. USC: The Rivalry, soon to follow. I am now writer of books or at least a book. You can find it on Amazon, in a bookstore or by e-mailing me at donlechman@socal.rr.com.
See how easy it is to become a writer. See what happens when you never give up.
Writing has been my passion since, oh, 1954. I knew then that I wanted to write books. So you’d think I’d have learned something by now. Well, I have.
It seemed like a strange profession for a farm boy of German-Russian immigrant parents, but maybe not. In fact, many famous and successful people have come from backgrounds that gave little hint of their future. So the reason I didn’t become a published writer of books was nobody’s fault but my own.
To help me to make a living while I tried to achieve my goal I found a profession where writing was an integral part of my job – a journalist. I started as a reporter at age 20 for the Sterling Journal Advocate in Colorado. My first job was collecting interesting facts for a 50th anniversary edition in the 100-degree attic of our newspaper office in the summer of 1960. I advanced to the top (only) reporter on the staff when the regular guy was fired. I covered everything during my three summers I was in college before I went into the army. I wrote congressional correspondence (more writing) in the army and even worked for the Korean Times in Seoul.
When I was 25, I was hired by Copley Los Angeles Newspapers. My first assignment was at the Alhambra Post-Advocate where I delighted (exasperated) conservative editor Bob Studer with my liberal views. Then I went to work at the Culver City Star News where my reigning memories are accompanying the veteran police reporter on his early morning rounds which included a stop at a bar for his shot of vodka at 6 a.m.
Then I went to the Daily Breeze in Torrance, the standard bearer of the L.A. papers. Managing editor John Moon loved me. “Goddamn it ,” he would growl in the morning in the newsroom. “Why can’t you goddamn guys be like Lechman. He puts on those dark glasses and goes out the door, and I don’t see him until 4 o’clock.” He was trying to say I was out beating the bushes for news. Well, I was. One of my jobs was the police beat, and then I returned to help put out the Streak before producing enough stories to fill the second front with news of the Carson-Wilmington area. In the evening, I spent my time coming up with proposals for TV series and writing short stories, screenplays, novels and children books. None published, of course.
Soon, my boss Jim Box assigned me to special sections. My compatriot, the late Cary Koegle and I, put out the entertainment, TV and business pages daily, all the special pages of the newspaper, 11 weekly throwaways and Sunday Scene magazine. In our “spare” time, we wrote stories, features and reviews in 40 hours a week. Yeah, right. We never worked s little as 40 hours a week. We were paid for 40 hours a week. I eventually became entertainment editor, critic, columnist, features editor, copyeditor and magazine editor for the next 38 years. I “retired” in 2005. And guess what?
I did become a published writer of books. My first one, Los Angeles Dodgers Pitchers: Seven Decades of Diamond Dominance, was published this month by The History Press with another, : Notre Dame Vs. USC: The Rivalry, soon to follow. I am now writer of books or at least a book. You can find it on Amazon, in a bookstore or by e-mailing me at donlechman@socal.rr.com.
See how easy it is to become a writer. See what happens when you never give up.
