This I believe: writing a book is an organic process. It lives and breaths.
Obviously there are the mundane and (perhaps) less vibrant parts … the setting aside of time, the waking up and stumbling into the office, the firing up of the computer, the sitting down and beginning. And there is the intellectual work of choosing a format in which to tell your story, of shoring up the structure and hanging your story just so on top of it. All of this is important and most writers will agree that the sweat of these private hours is the price of a successful book.
But equally important, at least to me, is the other stuff, the messy stuff. I am talking about the connections I make when I am not writing, when I am doing things that are seemingly unrelated to my writing. Like talking to librarians. Or grocery shopping. Or listening to the radio. Today’s Stories Behind the Story star was an important part of the organic process that was the creation of TRACKING TRASH.
After one revision, my editor Erica Zappy and I were happy with the TRACKING TRASH manuscript … except for the last chapter. We both felt the ending needed something; but neither of us could articulate very well what that something was. And so I was in a state of deep contemplation (um, I was well and truly STUCK!) when I got a phone message from my friend Steve Schray. He knew I was working on a book about a scientist who studied ocean currents by tracking debris in the ocean, and he had heard an NPR story on his way to work that seemed relevant. He called to make sure I had heard it. As I was much too busy being STUCK to listen to the radio, I had not heard it. But within minutes of his call I had listened to the audio clip online and I was instantly, blessedly, and resolutely UNSTUCK.
The scientists profiled in the NPR piece were removing net debris from the ocean. And based on what I heard in that online clip, I was pretty sure they were finding those nets by using the tools created by my TRACKING TRASH scientists. Within a week I had interviewed the scientists and, sure enough, had my ending.
Organic, I tell you. Alive. The book I pitched to Houghton Mifflin is just part of the book I eventually wrote. And all of me … the scientist, the writer, the parent, the citizen, the keeper of friends who pay attention to radio programs … all of me and my world are in it.
Thank you, Steve, for feeding the rich, organic, trash-tracking process!