Ask the Author: Delia Ephron
Answered Questions (9)
Delia Ephron
Hi Ana,
The producer suggested to us that The Shop Around the Corner could be updated using email. It wasn't our idea. But it was a good reason to remake it and make it contemporary. And then the big bookstores were putting little bookstores out of business at that time, so we used that idea. You've Got Mail is actually an adaption of the movie The Shop Around the Corner, and that is an adaption of a 1937 Romanian play. So is She Loves me. It all goes back to Romania.
The producer suggested to us that The Shop Around the Corner could be updated using email. It wasn't our idea. But it was a good reason to remake it and make it contemporary. And then the big bookstores were putting little bookstores out of business at that time, so we used that idea. You've Got Mail is actually an adaption of the movie The Shop Around the Corner, and that is an adaption of a 1937 Romanian play. So is She Loves me. It all goes back to Romania.
Delia Ephron
Hi Jeannie,
I think you have to have your agent take care of that. Agents are the experts. Good luck.
Delia
I think you have to have your agent take care of that. Agents are the experts. Good luck.
Delia
Delia Ephron
I was very interested to write about marriage and what happens to couples on a vacation. The isolation, the sense of being cut adrift from normal life. There is one line in Siracusa, "Couples collaborate, hiding even from themselves who is calling the shots and who is along for the ride." When I wrote it, I realized what my book was about.
Delia Ephron
It's different things. My last novel, The Lion Is In, was something I dreamed. Siracusa -- I visited Siracusa years before and the first day I thought, this is the most magical place I have ever been, and the second day I thought, I could go mad here. So when I got home I started writing Siracusa.
Delia Ephron
The screenplay for Siracusa. Working Title, a wonderful film company bought the rights. Alfonso Gomez Rejon (Me, Earl and the Dying Girl) will direct.
Delia Ephron
Be driven. Never give up.
Delia Ephron
Shopping during the week.
I guess, in all seriousness, getting to use my imagination all day.
I guess, in all seriousness, getting to use my imagination all day.
Delia Ephron
When I had it -- I don't anymore -- I put myself on a schedule. Have to sit down at 10 and not get up from the computer until noon. No email etc. Then sit down again, two to four. Can't do anything else during that time. You don't have to write but you can't do anything else. Eventually you write. The thing is to turn writing into habit. Then it turns into love.
Delia Ephron
They are so different. When I have an idea I generally know what it is -- a book, movie, essay, etc. Screenwriting has a lot of rules -- three act structure, inciting incident. Film is basically a visual medium and it is a collaboration. And it isn't literary. It's a blueprint for something else. I am more likely to "structure" the story -- know exactly where it's going with a screenplay. With a novel, I discover it as I go along, even though I do a ton of research on my characters and their histories.
I've never belonged to a writers group but I have lots of writer friends who love them. I do depend on my writer friends for advice and editing before I turn anything in.
I've never belonged to a writers group but I have lots of writer friends who love them. I do depend on my writer friends for advice and editing before I turn anything in.
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