THE WRITER'S LIFE

CCAE - NWU, April 11, 2007

 

Session 1: "From Idea to Bookshelf: Authors Share Their Publishing Stories"

 

By Susan E. Schopp

 

 

"Allow plenty of time"; "Produce the best quality writing you can";  "Don't fear rejection" were just a few of the suggestions that authors Clara Silverstein, Megan Marshall and David Valdes Greenwood offered at the first session of the 2007 series of "The Writer's Life." 

 

Clara Silverstein, author of White Girl, initially thought her experience as one of ten white students bused to an otherwise all-black school would make a magazine article. It turned out, however, that a memoir was more appropriate. "Be open with whatever material you have," she suggested. "And allow time." She spent a year on the first draft, threw most of it out, and finally got the story she wanted to tell in draft #7. Including re-writes, it took her five years to write the book and then two more years to find a publisher. One year after the manuscript was accepted by a university press, the book came out.

 

"Be prepared for lots of rejections," Clara counseled the audience. She accumulated 36 of them – yes, thirty-six -- and at one point put the manuscript in a box with a sign reading "RIP." But six months later she retrieved the manuscript, threw out the "R.I.P." and got back to work. Perseverance is key when you truly believe in your project.

 

 

In case you've been thinking your project is doomed if it seems to be taking forever, or if you think you can't write and raise a family at the same time, take heart from Megan Marshall, whose prize-winning biography The Peabody Sisters took her nearly twenty years to complete. Megan was unprepared for the amount of time the research would take. "I promised the book to the publisher in three years, but at the end of three years, I was still in the archives," she noted. Would people still be reading books by the time hers was ready for publication? she wondered. Would biographies of women still be popular?

As it turned out, they were, but her editors proved less long-lasting. She went through five of them by the time The Peabody Sisters came out. "But the fifth editor was wonderful." Her advice: "You don't know how long it will take or what will happen along the way. But the one thing you can control is your writing. Write the best you can, and get better."

 

Another useful suggestion: You can write anywhere! Megan printed out pages at home and then took them with her in the car when she drove her children to soccer and other activities. While the children were on the playing field, she worked on the book, a method that enabled her to produce one to two paragraphs a day. And here's something else to keep in mind: "At one paragraph a day, I thought I'd never finish," she commented. If you've seen The Peabody Sisters, you can imagine how many paragraphs she had to write; it's a thick volume. "But," she noted, "I did."

 

Finally, "Keep your ears open. Keep learning. Don't focus just on getting published and not learn anything else." She also formed a group of six women biographers to help each other, and valued the help she got from professional groups such as the Emerson Society.

 

 

David Valdes Greenwood opened his remarks with a cautionary tale about the perils of never submitting what you write. A friend of his who is a poet produces beautiful work but is never quite satisfied that a poem is finished. Furthermore, she'll submit to only the most rarefied markets, enormously limiting her exposure. And once you've been published at the top, where else can you go?? "Don't be eternally revising and never submit," he warned; if you don't submit, you'll never be published.

 

David started out "by writing for everything I could." His early experience led to pieces in Bay Windows and then in the Boston Phoenix. From there he began submitting pieces to the Boston Globe. His strategy paid off; the publisher of his book Homo Domesticus: Notes from a Same-Sex Marriage approached him on the basis of the pieces he wrote for the "Coupling" column of the Globe.

 

He, too, had a few words to offer on the subject of rejection. "Don't fear rejection," he advised. "And don't obsess with fame; find opportunity. Don't scorn small markets," he added. "Have your voice out there. Publishers need to know that you can write." And don't forget the business side of writing. "Writing is work, a business. It's not a one-time miracle. And the draft you turn in is not the one that will be published." You've also got to be sure you actually do write. "If you're not making time to write, you're not a writer."