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Legendary television writer/producer Stephen Cannell will be remembered but missed by TV students past and present at Chapman.  Cannell passed away after an amazing a career that included creating or co-creating 40 TV series, writing 450 episodic scripts, and producing over 1500 episodes of television.  He also published 15 novels – and still found time to come speak to our students on several occasions over the years.

Cannell was an incredible inspiration and motivator for our students.  He told them, “If I can be a writer, you can be a writer.  I have severe dyslexia, flunked out of the third grade and eighth grade, but still became a writer because that’s what I wanted to be.”  The heart of Cannell’s message to aspiring writers: writing is about hard work, writing every day, practicing your craft diligently until slowly but surely, you get better, a tiny bit at a time, year after year.

When Cannell got out of college (an achievement all by itself given his dyslexia), he worked nine to five in his family’s furniture store.  Then he went home, wrote from 5 pm to 10 pm Monday through Friday, wrote all day Saturday, half a day on Sunday.  It took him six years to get good enough to land an agent and then a professional writing assignment.  But his persistence paid off and he reached his dream.

After one appearance here at Chapman, I had a student email that he was so pumped up by hearing Cannell speak, that he now wrote three hours a day, every day, rain or shine.

RIP, Stephen Cannell.  Your spirit and your words – printed and spoken – will live on in our hearts.