I've read the 'Public Enemies' script and, no, it's not 100 percent historically accurate. But it's by far the closest thing to fact Hollywood has attempted, and for that, I am both excited and quietly relieved.

There's always a slight tension when you sell a book to Hollywood, especially a nonfiction book. The author wants his story told intact; the nonfiction author wants it told accurately.

All the way back in 1999, when I first stumbled upon the idea of a project tracking John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson and all the major Depression-era bank robbers, I thought the subject was too big to be a single book. Instead, with a friend's help, I pitched the idea as a miniseries to HBO. To my amazement, they bought it.

Just being able to get paid to do something you love is a wonderful thing. That said, a writer's daily routine, unless you're Dominick Dunne, isn't exactly glamorous. Much of it amounts to drudgery, staring at a computer screen all day in a room by yourself, juggling nouns and verbs to make a demanding editor happy.