In 1953, a Brit named Charles Edmund Dumaresq Clavell moved to Hollywood and became a screenwriter. His first film was The Fly in 1958 (the same story was remade by David Cronenberg in 1986). In 1960, the writers’ strike put his screenwriting career on hold.  But Clavell didn’t stop writing, instead he wrote a novel–King Rat. King Rat was a fictionalized account of his experiences as a POW in Changi Prison during World War II. This was the first novel that launched the book-writing career of James Clavell.

I hope other writers can writ their first big novel during the current writer’s strike. Apparently many of them are working on it.