Picked Becoming Superman up(purchased hardbound edition from amazon)and read it in one night.
Very interesting, however I was pointed to it as a source of writing advice and picked it up for other reasons; which was good because it has not much writing advice beyond 'write from the time you get up to the time you pass out', which is the extreme form of the advice 'keep writing'.
I was more interested in how he coped with abuse and rose above it; and it really does a good job of that.
However there was a bonus insight into both the world of hollywood and tv writing and even some into writing for comics.
One observation though: he does a great job of describing how he used a sort of negating thought process that he was not going to do any of the things that were done to him--that his father did. However he seems to gloss over or miss the importance of his fathers need to control things and people, which it might be said may play a part in his personal relationship within interaction with the powers that be in those writing platforms.
What I mean by that is that while he was adamant with such things as not blaming everyone else--as his father does--for things that go wrong and for the abuse inflicted on others and vowed that he would accept personal responsibility for his life; though he was hyper aware of his father's need to control everything, he failed to look at some of his own issues of control and instead he leaned heavily upon his own perceived moral outlook as an excuse for his action.
ie:
It's just not morally right to knuckle under to all the demands made by these people so my only out was to quit and wash my hands of the whole thing.
Although he did a great job with Babylon 5 and wrote some record breaking numbers of episodes himself--it also indicated his need to control things and inability to delegate the writing to others.(Although in relation to the final season he seemed to have a good reason for this--the question of control still remains.)
