WORD A creatice writing commentary

Author: ABIGAIL MITCHELL

By the time he was 22 years old, Don Mitchell had already become a successful Hollywood screenwriter. Shortly after graduating from Swarthmore College, he owned two apartments in San Francisco and had two Porsches to shuttle himself back and forth between them. Mitchell is one of those incredibly rare examples of an artist who hits it big on the first try - and at such a young age! He certainly did not experience the average post-college years of eating canned tuna fish on a dingy futon in a one-room apartment while working 10-hour days as an office gopher. Instead, he was being courted by Hollywood, living in style and watching the production of his movie, "Thumb Tripping."

The movie was based on Mitchell's first novel, also entitled "Thumb Tripping" (1970). It was inspired by a summer during college that Mitchell spent hitchhiking around San Francisco with his girlfriend, Cheryl, who is now his wife of almost 44 years. A life of activism, protesting and hitchhiking was a far cry from Mitchell's conservative, religious Midwestern roots.

However, not long after his movie was released, Mitchell ditched his career in Hollywood and opted for rural farm life. Like many other educated people of his time, Mitchell became drawn to the "Make America Green" and "Back to the Land" movements of the 1960s and 70s. In 1974, he liquidated his California assets (Porsches and all) and bought a sheep farm in Vermont. In addition to raising sheep, Mitchell learned to design and construct buildings. In 1986, he became a member of the Middlebury faculty, where he currently serves as a lecturer in both the English Department and the Program in Film and Media Culture.

When I ask him how he looks back upon his early Hollywood fame, Mitchell replies, "Most of my life has been a severe reaction to that early success." However, Mitchell's success as a writer has flourished, as his four novels, three essay collections and numerous screenplays attest to. When asked what his favorite genre is, he immediately cites the novel, as it allows for the most possibilities.

One unique aspect of Mitchell's writing is that it has never featured his family or background. He strives for a more "pure fiction" in which no one in his life plays an obvious role. If you draw from people and events in your own life, Mitchell explains, then you risk making that life less authentic. "Writing is all about problem-solving," Mitchell says, "as is building and even sheep farming."