Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
“Girl Reporter” Turned Bestselling Author
My guest blogger this Wednesday is Julia Flynn Siler, whose bestselling House of Mondavi is a finalist for the James Beard Foundation Award and for a Gerald Loeb Award. Like Margaret Mitchell, whom she writes about here, Julie is a "Girl Reporter Turned Bestselling Author." For both, years of work underlie the "overnight" success.
One of the most uplifting stories I’ve come across recently is that of Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone with the Wind. Known as Peggy by her friends, Mitchell became the first woman to cover hard news in the early 1920s for the Atlanta Journal, one of the predecessor papers to today’s Atlanta Journal Constitution.
A fifth-generation Atlantan from a socially prominent family, Mitchell stood just four feet ten inches and shocked Atlanta society during her debut by staging a racy “Apache Dance.” She’s denied admission to the Junior League in part because of that dance, but also because she did charity work in the wards of a local hospital with African Americans.
A fall from a horse, as well as ongoing pain in her ankles and feet, landed Mitchell in bed in 1926, forcing her to quit her job as a reporter. Her husband John Marsh, also a former reporter, brought her books from the library. But one day, as she lay in bed in the couple’s cramped one-bedroom apartment that Mitchell had nicknamed “The Dump,” John brought her something else instead.
“Madam, I greet you on the beginning of a new career,” he said, plunking a Remington typewriter down in front of her. Mitchell started writing – stashing chapters or portions of chapters all over the house, tucked into manila folders. Three years later, in 1929, she completes the bulk of her book.
It languished in the proverbial drawer (or, more precisely in Michell’s case, those manila folders) for six years, until Harold Latham of McMillan Publishing, on a scouting expedition for new literary talent to Atlanta, reads it and is mesmerized. His only major change was to rename Mitchell’s heroine Scarlett instead of Pansy, which was what the fiery tempered beauty of Mitchell’s book was originally called.
Until J.K. Rowling came around, Mitchell’s publishing house could boast that her book sold more copies worldwide than any other book except the Bible. Mitchell was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for her novel in 1937 and it became a
Hollywood movie starring Vivien Leigh as Scarlett and Clark Gable as Rhett Butler.
Although my experience isn’t as dramatic as Mitchell’s, there are some parallels. I, also, have been “a girl reporter” for most of my working life – writing for the Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, and the New York Times. After a stint as a London-based foreign correspondent for BusinessWeek and then the Journal, I returned to the U.S. and had a brief and unhappy experience working in a family business.
The business broke up and I returned to writing for the Journal. In one of those quirks of fate, ended up writing a front-page story for the paper about the Mondavi family and the Napa Valley-based wine empire they had founded. A day or two after the story ran, a publisher in New York named Bill Shinker at Gotham Books emailed me, asking if I would consider writing a book about the family based on my story.
In one sense, it was my Cinderella moment. But my reaction – instead of joy – was one of dread. None of the principal actors in the unfolding family drama at the Robert Mondavi Corporation had agreed to talk to me for my Journal story. How could I write a book without their help?
Three years and more than 500 hours of interviews later – including with most of the key family members – The House of Mondavi was published. Almost immediately, it hit the New York Times bestseller list. The hardcover edition is now in its eighth printing and the paperback just came out May 1st. I’m very honored to say it’s also a finalist for a James Beard Foundation Award and for a Gerald Loeb Award for distinguished business reporting.
I hadn’t known much about Margaret Mitchell before my book event in Atlanta this week for the paperback tour of The House of Mondavi, I had the great pleasure of visiting the Margaret Mitchell House & Museum with my 80-year-old escort Mendel Romm, who drove me there in his wife’s midnight blue Cadillac STS. Mendel, a born and bred Atlantan, had met Margaret Mitchell, as well as Martin Luther King, Jr., and most ever other prominent Atlantans. When we got to the Margaret Mitchell House, Sarah Dollacker took Mendel and me us on a guided tour.
Sarah is a book blogger, who maintains a delightful site called Red Room Library in her spare time. She helped explain that the Margaret Mitchell House has become a literary hub for Atlanta, hosting authors several times a month and providing a home for book clubs, as well as helping to organize the annual Georgia Author Book Bash, held this year on June 29th.
Mitchell died in 1949, before turning fifty. She was hit by a car driven by an off-duty cab driver as she was crossing Peachtree Street to go to the theater. I can’t help but think she would be tickled to be hosting literary soirees for other journalists-turned-authors such as Tony Horwitz, who spoke there to rave reviews on Wednesday night about his new book, A Voyage Long and Strange.
Horwitz and Mitchell may have lived a half a century apart from one another. But they both found a way to channel their journalistic skills into other, arguably even more powerful forms of storytelling. As Peggy’s novelistic creation Scarlett O’Hara – the ultimate survivor -- might say to all those discouraged journalists out there trying to figure out what to do next: “Tomorrow is another day!”
One of the most uplifting stories I’ve come across recently is that of Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone with the Wind. Known as Peggy by her friends, Mitchell became the first woman to cover hard news in the early 1920s for the Atlanta Journal, one of the predecessor papers to today’s Atlanta Journal Constitution.A fifth-generation Atlantan from a socially prominent family, Mitchell stood just four feet ten inches and shocked Atlanta society during her debut by staging a racy “Apache Dance.” She’s denied admission to the Junior League in part because of that dance, but also because she did charity work in the wards of a local hospital with African Americans.
A fall from a horse, as well as ongoing pain in her ankles and feet, landed Mitchell in bed in 1926, forcing her to quit her job as a reporter. Her husband John Marsh, also a former reporter, brought her books from the library. But one day, as she lay in bed in the couple’s cramped one-bedroom apartment that Mitchell had nicknamed “The Dump,” John brought her something else instead.
“Madam, I greet you on the beginning of a new career,” he said, plunking a Remington typewriter down in front of her. Mitchell started writing – stashing chapters or portions of chapters all over the house, tucked into manila folders. Three years later, in 1929, she completes the bulk of her book.
It languished in the proverbial drawer (or, more precisely in Michell’s case, those manila folders) for six years, until Harold Latham of McMillan Publishing, on a scouting expedition for new literary talent to Atlanta, reads it and is mesmerized. His only major change was to rename Mitchell’s heroine Scarlett instead of Pansy, which was what the fiery tempered beauty of Mitchell’s book was originally called.
Until J.K. Rowling came around, Mitchell’s publishing house could boast that her book sold more copies worldwide than any other book except the Bible. Mitchell was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for her novel in 1937 and it became a
Hollywood movie starring Vivien Leigh as Scarlett and Clark Gable as Rhett Butler.Although my experience isn’t as dramatic as Mitchell’s, there are some parallels. I, also, have been “a girl reporter” for most of my working life – writing for the Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, and the New York Times. After a stint as a London-based foreign correspondent for BusinessWeek and then the Journal, I returned to the U.S. and had a brief and unhappy experience working in a family business.
The business broke up and I returned to writing for the Journal. In one of those quirks of fate, ended up writing a front-page story for the paper about the Mondavi family and the Napa Valley-based wine empire they had founded. A day or two after the story ran, a publisher in New York named Bill Shinker at Gotham Books emailed me, asking if I would consider writing a book about the family based on my story.
In one sense, it was my Cinderella moment. But my reaction – instead of joy – was one of dread. None of the principal actors in the unfolding family drama at the Robert Mondavi Corporation had agreed to talk to me for my Journal story. How could I write a book without their help?
Three years and more than 500 hours of interviews later – including with most of the key family members – The House of Mondavi was published. Almost immediately, it hit the New York Times bestseller list. The hardcover edition is now in its eighth printing and the paperback just came out May 1st. I’m very honored to say it’s also a finalist for a James Beard Foundation Award and for a Gerald Loeb Award for distinguished business reporting.
I hadn’t known much about Margaret Mitchell before my book event in Atlanta this week for the paperback tour of The House of Mondavi, I had the great pleasure of visiting the Margaret Mitchell House & Museum with my 80-year-old escort Mendel Romm, who drove me there in his wife’s midnight blue Cadillac STS. Mendel, a born and bred Atlantan, had met Margaret Mitchell, as well as Martin Luther King, Jr., and most ever other prominent Atlantans. When we got to the Margaret Mitchell House, Sarah Dollacker took Mendel and me us on a guided tour.
Sarah is a book blogger, who maintains a delightful site called Red Room Library in her spare time. She helped explain that the Margaret Mitchell House has become a literary hub for Atlanta, hosting authors several times a month and providing a home for book clubs, as well as helping to organize the annual Georgia Author Book Bash, held this year on June 29th.
Mitchell died in 1949, before turning fifty. She was hit by a car driven by an off-duty cab driver as she was crossing Peachtree Street to go to the theater. I can’t help but think she would be tickled to be hosting literary soirees for other journalists-turned-authors such as Tony Horwitz, who spoke there to rave reviews on Wednesday night about his new book, A Voyage Long and Strange.
Horwitz and Mitchell may have lived a half a century apart from one another. But they both found a way to channel their journalistic skills into other, arguably even more powerful forms of storytelling. As Peggy’s novelistic creation Scarlett O’Hara – the ultimate survivor -- might say to all those discouraged journalists out there trying to figure out what to do next: “Tomorrow is another day!”
Thursday, May 15, 2008
The Slanted Journey
I'm so pleased to kick off the guest posts on 1st Books with novelist Christina Meldrum and her debut novel, MADAPPLE. It seems I can't go anywhere lately without coming upon praise for this beautiful and compelling book. It has garnered well-deserved stars from Booklist and from Kirkus - which named it one of the top debuts of the summer and called it "a beautiful, unusual novel" that "will haunt readers long after they have finished the book."
One of my favorite Emily Dickinson poems begins,
Tell all the Truth, but tell it slant
Success in Circuit lies.
This could have been the motto for my first book, MADAPPLE, which was released by Knopf this week. For me, writing and finally completing and publishing the book definitely lied in Circuit. The American Heritage Dictionary defines “circuit” as, “A path or route the complete traversal of which…requires returning to the starting point.” It was my goal for MADAPPLE to tell some version of Truth, and I was fine with telling it slant, per Emily. The Circuit part, however, was not part of the plan!
Nevertheless, I see now Emily knew what she was talking about. Success did lie in Circuit, at least for me. I began MADAPPLE over ten years ago while I was working as a litigator. I would rise at five each morning to write before work. I completed the initial draft of the book this way—although the initial draft bears almost no resemblance to the final product. Writing MADAPPLE had little to do with linear progression. I wrote around and around and around. And then I added layers to the spiral, making it feel at times as if MADAPPLE consisted of three (or more!) unwieldy dimensions. More often than not, I was certain I’d landed right back where I’d started.
And I had. Yet I hadn’t. I may have been back at square one, but I’d changed along the way, so that I saw square one a little differently. In fact, square one wasn’t quite the square I thought it was. Actually, it wasn’t a square at all: it was a circle (or a Circuit!).
When I finally finished MADAPPLE and was ready to think about getting it published, I headed back to the starting point.
Agents? Editors? Publishing houses?
Writing conferences? Query letters? Synopses?
Rejections. Rejections. Rejections.
Oh my!
I felt a bit like the hamster on the wheel. What did any of this have to do with Truth? I wanted to ask Emily.
Ultimately, I had to answer this question myself. And the answer? Well, it turns out that, for me, this journey had everything to do with Truth, actually.
My point is this: writing and publishing my first book was as much about the slanted journey as it was about anything. Any given journey may take a year, or five years or ten. Or it may take a lifetime. But success in Circuit lies. Writing one’s first book is often a very gradual, circuitous journey. But as Emily says in the last lines of her poem:
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind—
One of my favorite Emily Dickinson poems begins,
Tell all the Truth, but tell it slant
Success in Circuit lies.
This could have been the motto for my first book, MADAPPLE, which was released by Knopf this week. For me, writing and finally completing and publishing the book definitely lied in Circuit. The American Heritage Dictionary defines “circuit” as, “A path or route the complete traversal of which…requires returning to the starting point.” It was my goal for MADAPPLE to tell some version of Truth, and I was fine with telling it slant, per Emily. The Circuit part, however, was not part of the plan!
Nevertheless, I see now Emily knew what she was talking about. Success did lie in Circuit, at least for me. I began MADAPPLE over ten years ago while I was working as a litigator. I would rise at five each morning to write before work. I completed the initial draft of the book this way—although the initial draft bears almost no resemblance to the final product. Writing MADAPPLE had little to do with linear progression. I wrote around and around and around. And then I added layers to the spiral, making it feel at times as if MADAPPLE consisted of three (or more!) unwieldy dimensions. More often than not, I was certain I’d landed right back where I’d started.
And I had. Yet I hadn’t. I may have been back at square one, but I’d changed along the way, so that I saw square one a little differently. In fact, square one wasn’t quite the square I thought it was. Actually, it wasn’t a square at all: it was a circle (or a Circuit!).
When I finally finished MADAPPLE and was ready to think about getting it published, I headed back to the starting point.
Agents? Editors? Publishing houses?
Writing conferences? Query letters? Synopses?
Rejections. Rejections. Rejections.
Oh my!
I felt a bit like the hamster on the wheel. What did any of this have to do with Truth? I wanted to ask Emily.
Ultimately, I had to answer this question myself. And the answer? Well, it turns out that, for me, this journey had everything to do with Truth, actually.
My point is this: writing and publishing my first book was as much about the slanted journey as it was about anything. Any given journey may take a year, or five years or ten. Or it may take a lifetime. But success in Circuit lies. Writing one’s first book is often a very gradual, circuitous journey. But as Emily says in the last lines of her poem:
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind—
Saturday, May 10, 2008
On Your Way to the Incinerator
If you think writers are born rather than made and brilliant writing is recognized immediately, those rejection slips for your novel—or story or nonfiction query, or (heaven help you) letter to your own mother—can seem a daunting thing. The truth is getting started as a writer takes hard work, persistence, and a bit of luck.
No one will ever see Ernest Gaines' first novel. He sent it off to New York, and got it back with a rejection slip sometime later, and took it to the incinerator and ... yes, I’m afraid so. He was young, maybe that’s an excuse. He did keep writing, though. He eventually won a prestigious Stegner Fellowship at Stanford—and then supported himself doing menial work for another seven years before his first novel came out. He went on to write The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman and to win the National Book Critics' Circle Award for A Lesson Before Dying. Makes you wonder what might have been in that manuscript that went up in flames, doesn’t it?
Scott Turow, in and interview with Jeffrey Cole of Litigation, said, “So, yes, there were lots of rejection slips. More than I can remember.” And despite, like Gaines, getting a writing fellowship at Stanford, he felt his early writing career was “not going well.” His solution? Law school. But he vowed to keep writing, and did so, writing One L during breaks from his first year law books and Presumed Innocent (published eight years after he graduated) on the train to and from work.
Sue Grafton’s A is for Alibi was her eighth novel. She didn’t burn the first three; they’re in a drawer somewhere. The fourth and fifth were published. The sixth and seventh were not. Now she’s working her way toward Z. She calls her first attempts amateurish, but says, “I was teaching myself three vital lessons about writing: persist, persist, persist.”
Even William Faulkner, regarded by many as the finest American writer of all time, struggled. The first novel he set in his Yoknapatawpha county—the now-famous fictional setting for many of his novels—was rejected not only by his own editor, but by pretty much everyone in New York. His literary career was as good as over. Or so he thought.
And don’t you love the taste of envelope glue, anyway?
No one will ever see Ernest Gaines' first novel. He sent it off to New York, and got it back with a rejection slip sometime later, and took it to the incinerator and ... yes, I’m afraid so. He was young, maybe that’s an excuse. He did keep writing, though. He eventually won a prestigious Stegner Fellowship at Stanford—and then supported himself doing menial work for another seven years before his first novel came out. He went on to write The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman and to win the National Book Critics' Circle Award for A Lesson Before Dying. Makes you wonder what might have been in that manuscript that went up in flames, doesn’t it?
Scott Turow, in and interview with Jeffrey Cole of Litigation, said, “So, yes, there were lots of rejection slips. More than I can remember.” And despite, like Gaines, getting a writing fellowship at Stanford, he felt his early writing career was “not going well.” His solution? Law school. But he vowed to keep writing, and did so, writing One L during breaks from his first year law books and Presumed Innocent (published eight years after he graduated) on the train to and from work.
Sue Grafton’s A is for Alibi was her eighth novel. She didn’t burn the first three; they’re in a drawer somewhere. The fourth and fifth were published. The sixth and seventh were not. Now she’s working her way toward Z. She calls her first attempts amateurish, but says, “I was teaching myself three vital lessons about writing: persist, persist, persist.”
Even William Faulkner, regarded by many as the finest American writer of all time, struggled. The first novel he set in his Yoknapatawpha county—the now-famous fictional setting for many of his novels—was rejected not only by his own editor, but by pretty much everyone in New York. His literary career was as good as over. Or so he thought.
And don’t you love the taste of envelope glue, anyway?
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