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How Does He Do It?

February 23, 2007
by Brent Kellogg

Note: While published this date, the article you are about to read was written long before Brent figured out that Cane can't be Phillip IV's biological daddy.

Since putting a report together explaining how the Genoa City News came to be, I've received questions pertaining to how I can write about the madness we see on Y&R, how long it takes, do I ever get frustrated, how I maintain my sanity, and do I think about the characters when I'm sleeping or walking the dog.

If it weren't for the convoluted events in the silly city of Genoa, there wouldn't be much to write about. So long as I can come up with a lead-in to any given event in Genoa City, from which I can segue into the facts and insert commentary, it takes about 45 minutes. The hardest part of writing current event articles is coming up with an ending because what I'm writing about is usually open-ended.

I do get frustrated. I scream when Lynn Marie Latham, Y&R's top scribe, makes the claim that she carefully plots the plots and is focused on continuity. You don't need me telling you about the incontinence. With the Sheila Carter story fresh in our minds, I understand she was whacked out of her mind, but no psycho would be so dumb as to send her victims a photo of where she was holed up with the "two babies and a lady."

What was the point of disguising herself when she practically told everyone where she was? Why did she keep calling Paul Williams? Why take the risk of getting caught if her goal was to steal the babies and why take along one mother, but not both mothers, especially the mother of mothers she hated most, Lauren Baldwin? Where did Sheila think she could take the babies that she wouldn't be found? For someone so capable of cheating death and confusing her victims, Sheila surely must have known the authorities would have been looking for her.

I won't get into how Kevin Fisher was recruited to isolate sounds in Sheila's phone calls, or that from hearing a cow moo and a train whistle, they knew where she was. Why didn't Williams, why didn't anyone, go to the cops? Doesn't the FBI have experts to isolate sounds and trace calls?

I must say though: This case made the Frito Banditos look good.

Has there been a time when I've said, that's it, I'm throwing in the towel? Oh yes, plenty of times. Just last week, when there was a rush to get Noah Newman out of town for fear he'd learn of the kidnapping only to bring him back less than a day later, I said, "Stick a fork in me; I'm done with this crap."

And Sharon Newman, so worried Noah would hear, asked granny Nikki Newman to keep the car radio off and then allowed the boy to be on hand subsequent to the killing of Sheila because Noah had read about it on the Internet. All this despite the fact that Noah had freaked out only to grumble at the end that he'd missed most of the action.

This is continuity? Either Noah's an overprotected baby who must be guarded against reality, or he's a big boy capable of handling it. And since Noah is aware that rarely a month goes by that some member of his family isn't going through a tragedy, what's one more? 

As for maintaining my sanity, I take drugs. Seriously.

Unlike the drugs Paul and Lauren got for Sheila from their doctors, mine are legally prescribed. The pills aren't anti-psychotic, but rather to manage pain caused by a medical malady. It so happens that the meds are taken at the same time I'm getting ready to write whatever it is on my mind on a given day. Thus, I can say I take drugs to numb the pain and therefore maintain my sanity.

Once the conditions are met, the articles almost write themselves. While I strive for perfection, and write based on what I know the facts to be, there are instances where I'll get something wrong. Most difficult too, is keeping track of who in Genoa City is related to whom and what their full names are at the time.

For example, I often write Lily Winters; not Lily Romalotti. For some reason, I forget she's married to the twit, Daniel. Or is it the other way around? He's married to a twit.

As an aside, if my wife were reading this she'd remark, "You don't know they're twits." Gail gripes when she hears me talking to myself about the Genoa City crowd. She got me hooked on Y&R, but stopped watching years ago. Wonder what that says about me?

Beyond the task of keeping track of the married names, I must have some idea of who has said and done what in the past. Take Victor Newman's saying how important family is, and then saying he can't trust his own kids. Always wanting to protect his brood from danger, it is Victor himself who often puts them in danger.

Then there are those who say having sex with Tom, Dick or Mary, was just sex, happened once, and that they'll never do it again only to do it again and again. If sex isn't just sex, it's like a drug they are addicted to and thus are to be forgiven their addiction. J.T. Hellstrom is one to watch because a few weeks ago he said Colleen Carlton can go to hell if she doesn't want him; he won't care. But the last time I saw him he was getting drunk and crying how much he cares.

That's why I often write that these people are weasels. You can't trust them. For years Ashley Abbott stabbed her brother in the back, but last year you'd think she and Jack were just the sweetest brother and sister team ever the way they fell all over themselves like ferrets in heat.

Mistakes? Typos? You know it. While I try to correct errors before you see them, it's amazing how so many get by. I can proof an article and tell myself it's clean, then re-read it an hour later and find mistakes.

As for thinking about these nitwits when I'm sleeping or walking the dog, the answer is yes. I can't tell you how many hours I've spent trying to understand the reliquary yarn. I try to visualize how I'd go about getting such a treasure and how I'd be able to convince some Nazis that the artifacts my wife constructed in a makeshift arts & crafts class in anyway resembled the original artifacts.

I often think how I'd like to come forward at age 90 to tell the district attorney that I robbed a bank thirty years ago, stashed some of the cash inside the walls of an apartment building I lived in at the time, and ask if the DA would help me find the cash left behind. I know, what Katherine Sterling did isn't the same, I'm just saying I can't imagine confessing to a crime I got away with.

As a kid abandoned by his parents, I often wonder why Heather Williams Lynch hasn't asked who her father is and whether April Stevens Williams Lynch has ever told her. I wonder how Victor Newman JR and Ricky Williams can go through life without a father and if Kyle Abbott isn't asking Diane Jenkins right about now who and where his daddy is. What about Nina Webster? Think she's ever searched again for her daddy? And now that we know Phillip Chancellor III is alive, will Nina be told, and if she is, will she want her son, Phillip Chancellor IV, to meet his real daddy, or will Phillip IV be content with knowing that Ryan McNeil was the only daddy he ever knew?

Once the stories have been written, headlines and 'slugs' must be made for them on the front page as how else would readers know to read them? Slugs are the teaser lines to draw the reader in. Short and to the point, they usually write themselves except for when I sit gawking at the computer monitor drawing blanks watching the clock tick away.

An early bird, I like to be up when most everyone is sleeping as the quietness and hum of the computer usually stir the creative juices. Once the front page has been updated I write the Editor's Desk column then think about the next day in Genoa City hoping to come up with something to cover in the Daily Daze.

When the newsbrief comes in, I go through it looking for teaser headlines for it on the front page, check it for errors at least once, sometimes twice and even then some escape me, post it and finished around 8:30, start working on the Daze which with luck I can be done with by 10A. From then on the rest of the day is mine except for checking in for any breaking news, or to discover the computer has gone down, or the network failed.

So, that's how I do it. Aren't you glad you asked?

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