Luke Ford

Get in a regular writing class. Find a great teacher near you and go every week. Also, get psycho-therapy and tape-record your sessions and use that as writing fodder.

>Is there more of a career in online writing such as in blogging or advertising? Or is it a better idea to work towards publishing books? Do you do work outside of your writing? Or do you make money from it?

I made my living as a writer from 97-2007, but have worked other jobs since. It is very difficult to earn a living as a writer.
I usually earn a few hundred dollars a month from my writing.
Just write and let your curiosity about things dictate what you write.
Books or blog don’t matter as long as you are writing and building connections with other writers.

I love to go 12 step groups. It is great way to connect, network, grow for everything. Choose a vice that is yours.

>I have things rattling around in my head all day, and i barely have time to jot down anything much less concentrate and write

Get a Sony digital recorder. I never leave home without it. I put down my dreams etc and upload the files to my google drive and I can access them anywhere. I just use it for inspiration, to jump start. I tape my readings to my class and their feedback. I journal every day, just force myself to pour things out in a jumble. First draft is most raw. I try to capture my crazy thoughts on my recorder or journal and sculpt ’em later

>I think i read that you’re single? How do you find your writing effects your relationships? Do you have to avoid certain subjects for friends and family?

I am single. It winnows, narrows things. My family is in Australia. They’re pretty tolerant.

>So do you write with grammar, punctuation etc or do you just work to get down your thoughts when handwriting? I’ve been so used to writing for school I tend to get hung up on the editing process once I’ve written something and read it to death, changing it little bits each time. Do you find it better/easier/more popular when you write about your own past experiences, everyday experiences/thoughts/ideas or political controversial opinion related topics? Do you prefer one over the other? How do you feel about fiction writing? Pop novel and the like?

I prefer, at the moment, writing memoir.
Not many public policy issues I am expert in, ergo, I don’t feel the need to write on that.
I am perhaps best at interviewing others.
I love fiction, but have not written much of it.

Hand writing is best for the first draft, for finding your emotional truth. I have no concern for grammar and punctuation when I am creating. I just write it all out and then come back later and edit, but one should never create and edit at the same time.

The only thing that keeps me from growing a mullet is the Torah. My happiest days were when I rocked a mullet. When I was slicing through the ladies in the 1990s, I looked at this Jewish singer at Aish HaTorah who was married with kids but wore a mullet and I thought, “A mullet is not the Orthodox way.” He soon gave it up and went 613.

Down deep, I think my true self is a mullet-wearing rock star with insanity in his eyes and a total inability to care for himself (hence the need for a lot of female adoration). When I look at these Loverboy videos, that’s who I truly am. How do I get there?

I gotta do it my way or no way at all.

I see myself in a career where I get endless female attention. I see myself being pampered because my insights into life are just so keen.

When I was bed-ridden by Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in my 20s, my mom’s friend Katie Lynch told her (when she said I complained that she didn’t listen to me), “Luke’s a wounded young god. If he was healthy and at UCLA, he’d have 500 people paying attention to him.”

I could put on just as good a show as Loverboy or the Scorpions. I hope that 20,000 people show up to my one-man play.

Everyone’s watching to see what you will do
Everyone’s looking at you, oh
Everyone’s wondering, will you come out tonight
Everyone’s trying to get it right, get it right

Who are you really? I know you work in PR or as a lawyer or banker or rabbi, but how do you see yourself when you dream? Surely you’ve had a consistent fantasy about your true self from childhood? I see myself as a rock star with a mullet and endless female attention. I’m Klaus Meine. That’s me. Everything else is just an accommodation (to God, to reality, to family, community, etc).

When I pull up to a Jewish singles event in an “attention-grabbing, backfiring, polluting, serial killer van” (Lewis Fein), that’s not my true self. That’s not the Orthodox way.

I won’t be lonely, I won’t be lonely, when it’s over.

Three decades of rejecting my father hasn’t worked out too well for me, so now I’m talking in psycho-therapy about the ways I admire my old man.

As I moved through my teens, I was like most boys and distanced myself from my mom. I basically stopped talking to her.

I didn’t consciously start distancing myself from my dad until I embraced Judaism in the 1990s. The Jewish thinkers I loved, such as Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin, seemed to have all the things I loved about my dad and all the things I sought that were opposite of him.

As I moved into my 30s, I thought I was past my mom and dad. I wanted to keep them in my life but I wasn’t interested in emulating them. Now at 46, I’m realizing how profoundly they’ve shaped me. I have this vague sense that the way I deal with people and authority and money and relationships and the like is a reflection of how I relate to my parents. Most of the ways mom and dad are present in my daily decisions is not conscious to me. I think I’m choosing freely but I ain’t. I’m living out my addictions. I’m living out my un-chosen reactions. I’m living out my rebellion.

When I run into some goy in the hallway at work, I’m liable to start dealing with him as though he’s a proxy for my dad. When I’m criticized on Facebook, I have identical emotional reactions as my mother did to criticism.

The thing I love best about my dad (and the great loves of my life) is that they are reliable. When my dad says he’ll be somewhere at 2 p.m. next Tuesday, he’ll be there. I’m the same way. I’ve been taking this writing course over the past three years and I’ve never been late. I’ve never left early. I’ve never been without my pen and paper and tape recorder. Like my dad, I’m solid. Reliable. Dependable. No drama (with certain commitments).

Another thing I love about my dad is that he’s righteous. I never saw my dad do anything wrong. He was always ethical and upright and upstanding. He was a rock. He was always someone I could admire.

I love my dad’s thirst for knowledge. He reads for hours a day. He loves to travel. He loves to learn. He loves to improve himself.

My dad has a great sense of humor. Dinner time was usually laugh time. Dad was not only a great cook, but he kept us laughing while we ate. He liked to play practical jokes on me such as hiding the dessert.

When I was sick, mom and dad would check in on me and bring me whatever I needed. They’d read to me. They’d bring me soup. They’d drive me to the doctor.

When I was trying to learn something, my father would research it and report back to me what he found out. Dad taught me at an early age how to use a library and what sources were reliable and what books were thrilling and what newspapers were balanced (he recommended the Christian Science Monitor).

The most common advice my father gave me:

* Listen more.
* Don’t argue so much.
* You can’t talk to girls the same way you talk to boys.
* Be sure your sins will find you out.
* If you spend your health to get your wealth, you’ll spend your wealth trying to get back your health.

I always took great pride in my father’s accomplishments. I liked being Des Ford’s son. I liked the way the air changed when he walked into a room. I liked the sway he held over people as he preached from the pulpit. I liked that he was a man of God and knew the way to salvation.

When you say your mom or dad are dead to you, don’t matter to you, you’re just saying they’re so huge for you that you can’t deal.

I always knew I had daddy issues. Now I’m thinking about all the ways I react and relate like my mom. Just because your dad’s a superstar doesn’t mean that he has more influence on you than your lower profile mother.