Unless you're one of them, it's hard to know what the life of a really big-time author is like. Imagine having 20 bestsellers on your bookshelf and tons of fans tweeting you all day long. Now imagine that you've got all that...and you still can't really write what you want. One famous author had to keep trying, for 20 years, to create the one project he felt passionate about. His name was Michael Crichton, and his project was a little TV series called "ER." This author knew the art of being stubborn.
He Knew He Could
You know Michael Crichton. He's the guy who wrote "Jurassic Park," "Congo," "The Andromeda Strain" and like several other books that were made into bigtime feature films. But he's also the guy that's ultimately behind "ER," a project that he tried to get going for about 20 years.
He Knew He Could
You know Michael Crichton. He's the guy who wrote "Jurassic Park," "Congo," "The Andromeda Strain" and like several other books that were made into bigtime feature films. But he's also the guy that's ultimately behind "ER," a project that he tried to get going for about 20 years.
It's hard to believe that the author of "Jurassic Park" couldn't get any respect in the TV industry, but that's sort of what happened. Crichton really wanted to create a realistic medical movie or TV series, specifically about hospital emergency rooms, but was basically shut down cold when he started proposing the idea back in the 1970s. TV shows about hospitals didn't get much more real than "General Hospital" in those days, so no one was really interested in the project.
He didn't give up. Crichton continued to hold onto his idea, and honed his idea, and kept on trying to turn it into a reality. Finally, he teamed up with Stephen Spielberg in the 1990s to create "ER," thus making TV history and achieving one of his long-held goals.
Even successful authors run into obstacles and struggle to have their voices heard...yes, even when those voices are enjoyed by millions of readers. Michael Crichton wanted to do something new and different, and on TV instead of on the page. It took him a long time to make it happen, but ultimately he did.
There's a clear moral to this secret story about a famous author: you always have to be stubborn, have to keep trying and have to keep working. And once you do reach all your goals as an author, maybe go ahead and come up with some new ones. You never know what you'll do next.
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Found this blog very interesting! I read Jurassic Park and I am finishing up Congo now, but had no idea Crichton had a part in the TV show ER. My mom is a nurse and anytime the show is on she complains that things are not done how they are in real life and that the show is so dramatic. Makes me wonder if an archaeologist watching Jurassic Park is thinking the same thing that my mom thinks about ER. I don't know much about dinosaurs so the book seems true and believable to me, but I'm not an archaeologist. I wonder if Crichton was alive today and heard criticism about ER if he would change any of the show or if he would get criticism from archaeologists for Jurassic Park?
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