Ben Mezrich, who began his career writing thrillers, has had two works of narrative nonfiction (âBringing Down the Houseâ and âThe Accidental Billionairesâ) turned into successful films (â21â and âThe Social Networkâ). This fall, Mezrich returns to fiction with âSeven Wonders,â a novel intended for the screen, developed with the film producers Brett Ratner and Beau Flynn.
THE HIGH LIFE: We live on the top floor of the Prudential Center, and my office is one floor down. Itâs been my apartment since 1996. Itâs my refuge. It used to be my bachelor pad, and I still call it my man cave. It used to have air hockey and fish tanks and leather couches, but now my wife got ahold of it and it looks more like something from the set of âMad Men.ââ Sometimes I write in hotels. I wrote âBringing Down the Houseââ in Vegas in a different suite every night.
Advertisement
DARKNESS AUDIBLE: I have rituals. After college, I used to sit with a bottle of Jack Daniels on my desk. I learned very quickly that was a bad way to write. Then I used to play backgammon with myself for 45 minutes before I started writing. Now my ritual involves music and the dark â I turn off all the lights.
BUZZ FEED: I drink a lot of Diet Coke, and when Iâm really writing, I switch to Diet Red Bull. But Red Bull gives you just 45 minutes [of energy], and by the third one, you feel awful.
DONâT LOOK BACK: Iâm one of those writers who, when they hand something in, never want to look at it again. In a lot of ways, âBringing Down the Houseâ was my best book, and I didnât change a word and finished it in six weeks. Lately Iâve been using dictation software. It was a real learning process, but now I speak a chapter, then I go through it. Thereâs a mistake in almost every sentence â itâs dictation software, so itâs not that good yet â and as I retype it, thatâs when Iâm doing most of the editing. Once I finish a chapter, though, I donât look back.
Advertisement
CANâT STOP WONâT STOP: I do all the research I can, and then I have massive amounts of pages and photographs and interviews, and then I lock myself up and write. Itâs around-the-clock writing. Iâve got little kids, so itâs trickier to do the all night thing, but I lock myself up for three months. Then I go onto the next project. I never take off. Iâm not a big vacation guy. I canât stop. You have to remember to eat. I think itâs harder on my wife than on me.
STORY BEHIND THE STORY: I was in between projects, and I have a list of people that I always e-mail when Iâm in between projects to see if they have any stories. I e-mailed [FILM DIRECTOR] Brett [Ratner] to see if he had any ideas, and [Ratner and PRODUCER Beau Flynn] got on the phone and asked me if I knew anything about the Seven Wonders of the World. Iâve always been a geeky kid â I was building dioramas of the pyramids in my backyard when I was 12, so Iâve always been obsessed with things like that. I put together a proposal, and we actually sold the book and the movie simultaneously. Itâs going to be a trilogy of films for 20th Century Fox â an Indiana Jones for the 21st century.
LICENSE TO THRILL: Iâve always approached my nonfiction as if itâs a thriller. To actually write a thriller, I didnât have to change all that much. If you read Janet Maslinâs review of me in The New York Times, [writing fiction] doesnât change anything [about my writing process].
Eugenia Williamson is a writer and editor living in Somerville. She can be reached at eugenia.williamson@ gmail.com.
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/bostonglobe/TO3UYU24DZCUFHIMMMFVHQUQO4.png)