TUSTIN : Aspiring Writers Praise Novel Teacher

Aspiring writers who take Raymond Obstfeld’s class are rarely disappointed.

The award-winning author has written more than 30 novels ranging in genre from suspense to Westerns. And for the past 17 years, the Tustin resident has been a creative writing teacher at Orange Coast College.

“He’s thrown me years ahead of other students working on their first novel,” said 22-year-old Greg Hammond, a student in Obstfeld’s novel-writing workshop. “I have a real edge on everyone else.”

Obstfeld’s students include full- and part-time college students and people with established careers who have decided they “have something to say and they want to write,” Obstfeld said.

Vickie Merrill began writing a few years ago and has been a student of Obstfeld’s for three years.

“He’s patient and he spends a lot of time going over our work,” said Merrill, who is working on her first novel at 40. “He teaches us how to build a character to make it more fully realized, how to stay away from stereotypes.”

Merrill, a Laguna Niguel resident who owns a landscape maintenance business, said she has found Obstfeld’s workshops inspiring and challenging.

“He helps push us further . . . and shows us how it could be better,” she said.

But teaching is not a one-way street for Obstfeld, whose latest novel “Borrowed Lives,” written under the pseudonym Laramie Dunaway, has received rave reviews and has caught the attention of several movie studios.

“Teaching helps my writing,” said Obstfeld, 40, who was hired at Orange Coast after completing a master’s degree in English and creative writing at UC Davis. “It keeps me from becoming too isolated. Being in my own mind every day is emotionally claustrophobic. Teaching keeps me from taking myself as a writer too seriously.”

Hammond, who is also enrolled at UC Irvine, said watching Obstfeld work steadily every day has taught him to do the same.

“He works on his novel every day no matter what,” said Hammond, who is managing editor of the Orange Coast Review, a literary magazine Obstfeld sponsors at Orange Coast College. “And he shows us he has as much trouble and cross-outs and editing as we do.”

According to Obstfeld, students often lack stamina and discipline, which can lead them to eventually stop writing.

“Writing is an amazingly frustrating experience,” he said. “A lot of people write a first chapter, and are excited about it. Then they recognize the enormity of what it takes to write a novel, and they lose wind because nothing comes out as you imagine it. . . . People want to stop after 50 pages and start a new novel.”

Students say they appreciate not only the example Obstfeld provides as a successful writer but also the new perspective he brings to writing. Obstfeld infuses philosophy and psychology into his lectures in an effort to broaden his students’ understanding of human character and to make their fictional characters more complete.

Mark Sevi, who makes his living as a screenwriter, credited Obstfeld with widening his scope.

“He exposed me to a new world I didn’t know existed,” Sevi said.

Although Sevi has had a movie produced and has several more in the works, he continues to learn from Obstfeld.

“I’ve never found a limit to Raymond,” Sevi said. “He’s a real nuts-and-bolts kind of writer. He has a good work ethic--he’s realistic and somewhat jaded. But he still gets enthusiastic when he sees something good. He’s taught me what it means to be a professional.”