The Writing Life: Interview with Craig Tomashoff, author of 'The Can't-idates: Running for President When Nobody Knows Your Name'
Craig Tomashoff
is a freelance writer/producer based in Los Angeles. His blogs appear regularly
at Huffington Post.com. Most recently, he was a producer for The Queen
Latifah Show. Prior to that, he served as Executive Editor of TV Guide,
and has also worked as Associate Bureau Chief for People. In addition,
he has written for the Hollywood Reporter, the Los Angeles Times,
the New York Times and Emmy Magazine. Prior to The
Can’t-idates, he was the author of You Live, You Learn: The Alanis
Morissette Story and co-wrote I’m Screaming As Fast As I Can: My Life In
B-Movies with Linnea Quigley. He has also worked as a television
writer/producer for such series as VH1’s Behind the Music, The Martin
Short Show and The Late Show With Craig Kilborn.
His latest book
is The
Can’t-idates: Running For President When Nobody Knows Your Name.
For More Information
About the Book:
I’m not a political person by
nature. Most of the time, it seems the political world plays out more like a
lame ‘70s sitcom with all its predictable characters and routine storylines.
However, last spring, I
The Can’t-idates is about dreamers -- not all
of whom are tin-foil hat crazy -- who just want to fill a hole in their lives
by running for president. And as I drove to meet them all, I realized a lot
about not just my life but also about the country. If we could all take time to
believe in what our parents always told us -- "Someday you can grow up to
be president" -- maybe we wouldn't be in the shape we're in.
For More Information
- The Can’t-idates: Running For President When Nobody Knows Your Name is available at Amazon.
- Pick up your copy at Barnes & Noble.
Q: Welcome to The Writer's
Life! Now that your book has been
published, we’d love to find out more about the process. Can we begin by having you take us at the
beginning? Where did you come up with
the idea to write your book?
It was a bit of a long and
winding road that led me to The
Can’t-idates: Running For President When Nobody Knows Your Name. The idea
actually goes back to my childhood, where I was told that anyone could grow up
to be president. The older I got, the more I realized this was an epic lie
right up there with Santa Claus. Then, five years ago, I was working on an
Australian TV show that was filmed in Los Angeles.
He wanted to do field pieces that showed the crazy side of America,
so I suggested we book one of the 500 wacky people who had filled out their
paperwork to run for president. And I ended up using a pro
wrestler/vampire/Republican. After that, I became a bit obsessed by this notion
that even though most of us know we can’t be president, there are some who
still cling to that principle. I wanted to celebrate that, not mock it. I
couldn’t figure out how to do that until the spring of 2015, when it became
clear that the entire country was unhappy with our mainstream presidential
options. Realizing that there were nearly 1700 people who had filed their
paperwork to run in 2016, I thought it’d be fun to go meet some of them to see
if there was a diamond in the rough out there. Which became a 10,000 mile road
trip into the heart of America,
which doesn’t look or feel at all like the major parties describe it.
Q: How hard was it to write a
book like this and do you have any tips that you could pass on which would make
the journey easier for other writers?
Well, I’d divide my answer into
two parts. The research part of my book – finding presidential candidates,
getting to know them, spending hours upon hours interviewing them – required a
lot of prep work. I spent a couple of months doing my research, and then three
weeks straight on the road to get to these folks. I loved it all….the
journalist in me was overjoyed to dig into the topic. To be honest, I was kind
of dreading the writing process because a) no agent or publisher would listen
to my proposal for the book and b) even my friends told me this was a crazy
idea. However, as I began to write, the process became far easier than I’d
expected. I think that’s because I loved the topic I was writing about, and had
made a personal investment in it. I felt it as much as I wrote it. Which would
be my main suggestion for anyone trying to do a book. This is going to soak up
every ounce of your being. It will be your life for a very long time. So make
sure it’s something you have a connection to. That’s what keeps you going on
those days when the words aren’t flowing. Your love of what you’re writing
about will eventually help you find the words. One other important thing, at
least for me, was teaching myself not to reread and revise as I went along.
This was incredibly hard because, like most writers, I instantly hate what I
write. I probably did a dozen different versions of my first chapter because I
kept going back to look at it. Which, inevitably, led me to want to change
everything. However, when I finally learned to just look ahead instead of look
back, the writing began to flow. I stopped judging myself so harshly, knowing
that once the entire book was done, I could go back through and make it better.
Until you finish a book, you really don’t know what you have so it’s crazy to
get bogged down in rewriting rather than writing.
Q: Who is your publisher and how
did you find them or did you self-publish?
My publisher is a company based
in Brooklyn called Bobtimystic Books. The truth is, I
couldn’t get anyone to even look at my proposal and was prepared to sink ever
more money into self-publishing The
Can’t-idates. However, somebody I got to know two decade before when I
worked at Time Inc. saw a Facebook post of mine. He told me he had launched his
own publishing house and would love to work with me on the book. That
partnership flourished and now….we have a book!
Q: Is there anything that
surprised you about getting your first book published?
The very fact that I got a book
published is surprising to me. It’s been my dream since I was in the third
grade to publish a book. Actually, I did self-publish a couple of books at that
time. I used the family typewriter to created adventures of a bunch of
superpowered animals who called themselves The Foogaloon Foursome. (Think
Banana Splits Meets The Avengers.) My teacher let me use the copy machine to
make copies of the book, which I also illustrated myself. (My mom still has
copies if any major movie studios are reading this and interested.) After
inhaling that intoxicating smell of copier fluid, I’d sell the books for a
nickel. To absolutely nobody, except my aforementioned mom. Then I tried
writing a weekly sports newspaper. Which also only sold to my mom, who didn’t
like sports but thankfully liked her son. Still, this notion that I could take
an idea of mine, spread it out over 300 pages and convince other people to read
it drove me throughout my entire writing career. It was a shock – a good shock
– when it dawned on me that others were looking at my work and enjoying it. I
suppose the only surprise was the absolute impossibility of getting one’s book
noticed. I have no PR machine to help. It’s just me and the publisher
constantly trying to get people to read it. I will say that you do learn a lot
about the people in your life when you have a book because you have to rely on
them to help get the word out.
Q: What other books (if any) are
you working on and when will they be published?
I have an idea for a book, using
my chronic depression as a starting point. Depression is such a poorly
understood illness that I want to let people who don’t experience it understand
what the brain of a clinically depressed person is. I do have an idea for how
to frame this, but am still working out the details.
Q: What’s one fact about your
book that would surprise people?
That’s easy. It’s that ordinary
people who run for president aren’t necessarily nuts. We assume there are
because the press only tends to seize on the crazy ones for those quick, end of
a news broadcast pieces. As I talked to them, though, it became clear to me
that they probably believed in the spirit of America
more than most of us. Sure they’ll never win, but at least they were trying
something other than complaining. There was some tragedy in most of their lives
that caused them to see running for president as the solution. And the more I
talked to these people, the more I began to sympathize with them.
Q: Finally, what message (if any)
are you trying to get across with your book?
The primary message is, “Do your
crazy thing.” We all have something in our lives that we really want to do but
seldom try it because everyone will think we’re nuts. I would love us all to
get over that fear of judgment and tackle whatever it is that we feel we can’t
live without doing. Run for president when nobody knows your name. Write a book
about the people who are running. Take up water polo. It doesn’t matter.
Whatever you want to try – short of anything illegal, of course – just do it. Even
if nobody else supports you, you need
to support you.
Q: Thank you again for this
interview! Do you have any final words?
I have three final words.
Actually, four. “Please. Buy. The. Book.”
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