Fearless Women

I am not a fearless woman. I’m actually quite timid. I like order and predictability and rules. When I was a magazine editor, I started each editing task by making sure the fonts and margins and other formatting issues were right. Only then could I tackle the content.

I’ve been thinking about this lately because in the author bio of my most recent book, Roller Derby Rivals, my editor at Holiday House wrote, “Sue Macy loves to write about sports and fearless women.” And it’s true. Nellie Bly got herself committed to an insane asylum so she could write an expose. Cyclist Dora Rinehart rode more than 17,000 miles in 1896 through the muddy, rocky, mountain roads around Denver. Midge “Toughie” Brasuhn (right) regularly careened around Roller Derby rinks with no concern about injuries—and ended up with eight broken noses during her career. To me, these accomplishments are alternately inspiring and terrifying.

As someone who was trained as a journalist, I find it perfectly acceptable observing and writing about fearless women while remaining out of the fray myself. I am moved by women who have the drive and determination to overcome society’s taboos or their own fears in order to follow their dreams. I’ve listened to scores of women who played in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League talk about their motivation, and the common thread among all of them is the passion they had for the game. Over and over again, they’ve said, “They were paying me, but I would have played for free.”

When people are really passionate about what they’re doing, they grab my attention. At the start of my research on Roller Derby history, I went to a contemporary bout between the Garden State Rollergirls and a visiting team from Maryland. I barely knew the rules of the game at that point. What’s more, the announcer was muffled by an inadequate sound system and the action was so fast and furious that it was hard to follow. But one woman stood out. She was a New Jersey skater, covered with tattoos on just about every visible patch of skin, and she was magnificent. She wove in and out of the opposing skaters, lapping the field and then passing her opponents to score points. Her Derby name was Jenna Von Fury and her skill convinced me that Roller Derby was indeed a sport worth writing about.

Late last year, the computer search engine Bing produced an awesome TV commercial highlighting some of the female heroes of 2013. To the tune of Sara Bareilles’s song, “Brave,” Bing celebrated several fearless girls and women, among them the young Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai; marathon swimmer Diana Nyad; and Edie Windsor, who brought the Supreme Court case that that struck down a portion of the Defense of Marriage Act. It was an impressive example of the never-ending parade of fearless women whose achievements have made an impact on the world, and a virtual shopping list of topics for a writer seeking to be inspired.

So as I finish my final post for I.N.K., I promise to continue producing books about women who made their mark as they challenged the status quo. I'll also occasionally blog on my Web site, suemacy.com. Check it out when you get the chance. Or follow me on Twitter @suemacy1. And thanks for reading.

Who Gets To Write What?

I tuned into ESPN the other night, clicking away at my laptop as I waited for the Stanford-North Carolina women’s basketball game to begin. The end of the Louisville-Maryland contest was on. There was about a minute left, and Louisville was losing by 10 points, which pretty much guaranteed Maryland the win. But wait. A Louisville player, number 23, floated in a terrific three-point shot with 30 seconds left. Then the same player hit another three-pointer with 18 seconds left. And yet another with five seconds left. Maryland had made two foul shots during the Louisville run, and the score was now 76-73. But it was Louisville’s ball. One more three-pointer would send the game into overtime.

I’m a sucker for an athlete who performs well under pressure, so I put down my laptop and stared at the screen. The announcers were full of praise for the Louisville player, a senior named Shoni Schimmel. I have rarely seen anyone with a smoother, more poetic stroke. When Maryland took a timeout before the game's last play, I went back to my computer and Googled her.

I admit I don’t follow college basketball as much as I should. If I did, I would have known that Shoni, and her sister Jude, who also plays for the University of Louisville, are a genuine phenomenon. Their games attract thousands of people who drive from all over the U.S. and Canada to see them. The sisters are Native Americans who grew up on the Umatilla reservation in Pendleton, Oregon. Their success has galvanized Native fans and even attracted a filmmaker, who made a documentary about them titled Off the Rez.

As I read about the Schimmel sisters, I thought, “This is a great story. I should write it.” You probably know that I’ve made a career bringing the true tales of athletes and other bold and brilliant women to the mainstream. As first Shoni and then Jude graduate from college and enter the WNBA, their journeys should have the makings of a great book.

But then I wondered, “Should I write it?” In recent months, there has been a lot of discussion about the underrepresentation of people of color in children’s books. The postings on multicultural literature on the listserv of the Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC) of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, were coming fast and furious the entire month of February. A few weeks later, Walter Dean Myers and Christopher Myers wrote companion essays in the Sunday Review section of The New York Times under the title, “Where Are the People of Color in Children’s Books?”

One of the strands on the CCBC listserv focused on who actually writes books with characters or subjects of color, and as a corollary, who should write those books. A number of posters were pretty adamant that they thought books were more authentic—and by extension more acceptable—when they were written by members of the groups they portrayed. By that logic, a book about the Schimmel sisters would be best by a Native person. But why should authors be limited by their backgrounds? I’ve written more than a dozen books, including three biographies, and I’ve never written one with a main character who shares my Jewish heritage. For me, part of the joy of writing nonfiction is getting to explore new worlds while developing the context to tell the story.

That’s what I was thinking as I read many of the CCBC posts. And now I’m finally putting it into words. People expressed a valid concern about getting a more diverse pool of authors (and editors) producing children’s books, but I don’t feel that any authors should be dissuaded from tackling any topics that ignite their passions. Every voice is valid and every perspective is worth considering as we inspire kids' curiosity about and understanding of the world around them.

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For the record, Louisville didn’t win the game, despite an inspired play that put the ball in Schimmel’s hands for one more three-point attempt. She shot, and the ball hit the rim and ricocheted away as time ran out. It was Shoni’s last college game, but hopefully the prelude to an exciting professional career. Perhaps someone will write a book about Shoni and her sister one day. Perhaps it will be me.

What's in a Name?

In case you missed it, I'm rerunning this offering from last October as my "Best of" summer post. When it originally ran, I was excited to hear from a number of people with their own examples of landmarks named after women. To see those, click here. Feel free to add your own in the comments section. And have a great summer!

In downtown Rochester, New York, a triple steel arch bridge carries Interstate 490 over the Genesee River. Originally called the Troup-Howell Bridge, this structure was renamed the Frederick Douglass-Susan B. Anthony Memorial Bridge in 2007, after two historic heavyweights with ties to the city. Locals affectionately call it the “Freddie-Sue Bridge,” as I learned on a visit there last week. It’s just one of several local monuments to Ms. Anthony. (There’s also a local Roller Derby skater with the truly inspired Derby name Susan B. Agony, but that’s a topic for another post.)

As someone who grew up in a world where almost all schools, bridges, and other public memorials were named after men, I rejoiced at the very visible presence of Ms. Anthony in her adopted hometown. Nothing pleases me more than to see women’s names carved in stone or displayed on highway signs. When I wrote Bull’s-Eye, my biography of Annie Oakley, I shared in the pride that members of the Annie Oakley Foundation felt when they successfully lobbied the Ohio legislature to rename a portion of US127 the Annie Oakley Memorial Pike. When I was working on Bylines, my biography of Nellie Bly, I even was thrilled upon driving past the dilapidated Nellie Bly Amusement Park in Brooklyn, New York. Alas, this tribute to Nellie’s round the world voyage was renamed the Adventurers Family Entertainment Center when it was refurbished in 2007.

It’s important for women to stamp their names on things, at least as important as it is for men. It helps us remind people of our achievements and our presence in the world. I know I’m not the only one who thinks so. A few years ago, I attended a weekend celebration of women who graduated from Princeton, and President Shirley Tilghman told the story behind the naming of the university’s newest residential college. The college, home to some 500 undergraduates, was built with donations from 30 donors, but primarily from then eBay CEO Meg Whitman, Class of 1977, and her family and colleagues. President Tilghman implored Whitman to lend her name to the college, but she relented only after the president pointed out that every other residential college, including Rockefeller, Wilson, and Forbes, was named for a man.

In 2003, I had the satisfaction of taking part in the dedication ceremony for another institution named for a woman. Madeline “Maddy” English was a veteran teacher and guidance counselor with the Everett, Massachusetts, Public Schools. She was also a standout third basewoman on the Racine Belles of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. After the town voted to name its newest school for her, Maddy asked me to represent the league at the event, since I was then on the board of the Players’ Association and lived only a few hundred miles away. I got to say a few words about her as an athlete and see her pride as the entire community celebrated her achievements. Sadly, Maddy passed away less than a year later, but her school and its “Madeline English Bulldogs” are still going strong.

Some time back, journalists Lynn Sherr and Jurate Kazickas put together a book titled Susan B. Anthony Slept Here: A Guide to American Women’s Landmarks. It’s full of parks, museums, libraries, and other sites that are significant to women’s history. I’d love to see a companion volume of buildings, bridges, and other structures named for women. Are there any in your neck of the woods? Let me know by commenting below.

Personal History

This month, each of us I.N.K. bloggers is supposed to write our last original post for the 2012-2013 school year, followed by a rerun of one of our favorite blogs in July and then a month off in August. But forgive me if I break protocol. Try as I might, I can't seem to write something original this month. My dad passed away on May 5, 2013, at age 93, and I'm still adjusting to the world without him in it. He was a wonderful father and a terrific role model who instilled in me a spirit of independence, a sense of humor, a love of sports, and a steadfast integrity in work and life. I had decided to run this post from December 2009 as my "best of" next month, but I offer it now, in his memory.

My dad will be 90 years old on December 8. To celebrate, we’re having a big party this Sunday, commemorating the milestone with excellent food, good cheer, and even a surprise or two. My brother, a one-time stand-up comedian, will be master of ceremonies at the festivities. Not surprisingly, my contribution will be providing the historical context.

A few years ago, for my parents’ 50^th anniversary, I created mini-magazines with pictures, short articles, and even a few puzzles about their life together—no doubt a reflection of my many years as an editor of Scholastic’s classroom magazines. This time, having just completed the back matter for an upcoming book, I decided to apply one of the go-to standards of nonfiction back matter to my dad’s life—the timeline.

Since I wanted this timeline to make a visual statement as well as an emotional one, I started by searching for software that would enable me both to organize events and import pictures. I found a few different programs, designed for business presentation purposes but adaptable for personal use. I took the plunge and bought one, then started working on the content. It turns out that despite knowing my dad for 55 years, I could not pinpoint as many defining moments and turning points as I thought. So I doggedly pursued the details of his life as I had those of Annie Oakley and Nellie Bly before him, poring over scrapbooks and photo albums and turning every visit to my parents’ home into an oral history session.

I learned volumes. For instance, my dad, who helped found one of the biggest accounting firms in New Jersey, got his start in business at age seven, when his older brother “forced” him to sell copies of Collier’s magazine for five cents door-to-door. He turned 13 in the midst of the Great Depression, so he celebrated his Bar Mitzvah with a party at home; he said his best gift was a $2½ gold piece. (Who even knew there was such a thing?) In the 1950s, both of my parents campaigned for Adlai Stevenson; they’ve got a letter signed by Stevenson thanking them for their support and a souvenir ticket to one of his rallies. Later in the decade, my dad continued his commitment to civic affairs by serving on the Citizens Advisory Zoning Committee in our town and the Citizens Planning Association for the area.

When I write biographies, I start with a subject who had an impact on society and use every available resource to try and learn more about who that person was. Working on my dad’s timeline, I went in the opposite direction. For most of my life, I’ve seen my dad from the context of our family, from my particular perspective as his older child, his only daughter. But looking at his accomplishments all mapped out on a colorful timeline helped me get a clear sense of his place in the world beyond our front door. What a great learning experience. What a great man.

 

Click on the timelines to see larger images.

The Road Not Taken

Bergen County Court House, Hackensack, NJ

When I was in high school, I fully expected to grow up to be a lawyer. It seemed to be an honorable and exciting way to make a living, at least based on the exploits of the legal shows I watched on TV. I didn’t actually know any lawyers. My family circle included loads of CPAs, some doctors, and a bunch of store owners. But that handsome, young Ben Caldwell on Judd for the Defense sure made the law look interesting.

I’m flashing back to my childhood plans for a few reasons. First, I’m on jury duty as I write this. Once every three years, the citizens of my county get themselves to the courthouse to watch a “You the Jury” film and spend one day in the lottery that plucks jurors from the general population. This time, the film struck a chord because it was introduced by Stuart Rabner, Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court. Back in the early 1970s, when both of us were teenagers, our dads were undergoing medical procedures at the same time. I remember the future Chief Justice from the hospital waiting room.

Today there were four possible trials needing jurors, three civil and one criminal. I got called for the criminal pool, but was excused after I informed the judge about my approaching book deadline. (Fortunately, I didn’t even have to make a lame joke about how my editor might turn up on his docket for murdering me if I was too late with the manuscript.) It was a gun possession case with two defendants and three lawyers. From my vast experience watching The Good Wife and the various incarnations of Law and Order, I know that the more lawyers you have, the longer the trial will be.

That’s not the only reason lawyers are on my mind. I also recently attended an alumni conference at my college alma mater, where about 80 percent of those present seemed to be lawyers. Some were corporate attorneys, to be sure, but the vast majority were involved with social justice issues like marriage equality and sexual abuse in the military. I admit I was envious at their abilities to not just talk (or write) about change, but to do the nitty-gritty work of making it happen. While I don’t regret my ultimate career path, I kind of respect my younger self for my good intentions.

So what happened to my aspirations to the law? I took a constitutional law course sophomore year in college and realized that legal reasoning didn’t seem to have much in common with actual logic. I just couldn’t wrap my head around the extent to which semantics dictated the outcome of a case. The “letter of the law” seemed to depend so much on the actual wording of a statue that common sense was lost in the process. I preferred to use words to inform, rather than to debate. So I switched my major from Politics to History and never looked back.

You Write Like a Boy

I recently had occasion to look through my ninth-grade diary, where I came upon this curious notation: “English—Miss K. said I write like a boy! Thanks!” Needless to say, this entry brings up some questions:

• Why, exactly, did Miss K. think I wrote like a boy?
• Was her comment meant as a compliment or a criticism?
• When I wrote, "Thanks!" was I expressing sarcasm or pride?

I’ve thought long and hard about my English teacher’s comment. From my current perch as a journalistic, nonfiction author, I wonder if she had picked up on the fact that my writing tended to be more reportorial than emotional. Was there a dispassion in my ninth-grade writing that she pegged as “masculine”? Did I rely more heavily on verbs than adjectives and thus not write flowery prose? Or was it the content that made her draw that conclusion? I don’t know which piece of writing prompted her comment, but in those days, I know I wasn’t writing about sports. Still, perhaps the protagonist in a story I wrote was more self-confident than those of the other girls in my class. I guess it will remain a mystery.

As for the second question, I’m hoping it was more of an observation than either a compliment or criticism. To put the comment in historical context, it was written in 1969, when the second wave of feminism was in full swing. I don’t recall Miss K. being a feminist. (She was known as “Miss” K., but that was before “Ms.” became a popular option.) I asked my brother, who had her as a teacher a few years after me, but all he remembered was that she was “cute.” I remember her being relatively new to the profession, and perhaps not as nurturing or supportive as some of my more memorable instructors. Still, I’d like to give her credit for being evolved enough not to criticize me for my writing voice. So I’ll take her words as either a compliment or an observation.

Alas, to the third point, I think I really did feel proud of her assessment. In the late 1960s, men got the great jobs and had the adventures that girls like me secretly wished we could have. I never wanted to be a boy, but I did read Boy’s Life and fervently wished I could go on the escapades chronicled in that magazine. In my mind, by saying that I wrote like a boy, Miss K. was telling me she thought I was tough and adventurous. That meant I might have the stuff to pursue a worldly career beyond marriage and childrearing. So I am 99 percent sure that I was expressing pride, rather than sarcasm, when I wrote, "Thanks!"

In my quest for enlightenment about my diary entry, I pulled out my ninth-grade yearbook and looked up Miss K. Yep, now I remember her. She even signed my yearbook. Here’s what she wrote: “You certainly have the ambition and ability to go very far in life. Best of luck and success to a very intelligent girl.” Now I wonder if it was my ambition and drive that she thought were masculine. I was always pretty competitive, whether in gym or in English class. And since this was three years before Title IX started to level the playing field for women and men, ambition wasn’t exactly an accepted part of a high school girl’s DNA. 

Of course, one conclusion I could draw is that Miss K.’s comment said more about her than it did about me. Today, when gender roles are somewhat fluid and political correctness is paramount, I can’t imagine any teacher thinking, let alone telling a girl she writes like a boy, or visa versa. Though I suspect most teachers wouldn’t have voiced those thoughts in 1969, either, maybe it was an acceptable faux pas for a young woman just out of teachers’ college.

At any rate, I suspect I've spent a lot more time thinking about Miss K.'s comment now than I did when she originally made it.

How To Write Funny

My friend, Julie Winterbottom, writes funny stuff. She was editor-in-chief of Nickelodeon Magazine, and she has a new book coming out on March 19. Since I sometimes find it challenging to write funny, I thought I'd ask her to take my I.N.K. slot this month and explain how she does it.

I was a little surprised when Sue asked me to write a guest post for I.N.K. because my forthcoming book, Pranklopedia, while technically nonfiction, is more likely to get shelved under “Humor.” But Sue’s invitation got me thinking about the role of humor in nonfiction. Humor can draw kids who don’t like to read into enjoying nonfiction as much as they enjoy short-sheeting a bed (well, almost). In fact, my hope is that kids will pick up Pranklopedia to learn new pranks and end up reading the many (nonfiction) sidebars about creative capers in history, art, sports, and the White House.

There was another surprise: I found myself thinking about something I don’t usually pay much attention to—the process of writing humor and more specifically, the techniques I use to get myself into a funny frame of mind. I thought I’d share them here. I learned most of them during my 12 years as an editor at Nickelodeon Magazine, where the humor bar was set high. Even the masthead had to be funny! At Nick Mag, we often wrote humor pieces in pairs or small groups. It strikes me now that most of my techniques bring collaborators—real or imagined—into the writing process.

1. Read Something Funny

When I’m not feeling funny, I read someone who is. While working on Pranklopedia, I often started the day by reading a few pages from How to Play In Traffic, one of Penn & Teller’s hilarious books of pranks for adults. It helped me find a devious, slightly conspiratorial voice that was perfect for writing about pranks. On days when my ideas seemed too tame, I would dip into Mad Magazine to unleash my more irreverent side. For those who are more literary, one nonfiction writer I know suggests reading P.G. Wodehouse to get into funny mode.

2. Live With Someone Funny (or have easy phone access)

My boyfriend Stephen should probably be listed as co-author of Pranklopedia. He isn’t a prankster himself, and he doesn’t know much about writing for kids. But he has a fine ear for what’s funny and what isn’t. Whenever I had doubts about something I wrote, I would run it by Stephen. He would not only nix the bad ideas, he would help me brainstorm better ones.

3. Ask Yourself: What Would Jim Do?

My friend Jim is a natural-born prankster. Where other people see a boring trip to the supermarket or another tedious day at the office, Jim sees opportunities for pranks. Whenever I got stuck trying to come up with new pranks, I would pretend to be Jim. I’d find myself looking at everything around me, from the eggs in the refrigerator to the houseplants in the living room, as potential prank material. This technique let me ditch the cautious editor inside me and come up with lots of crazy ideas—some of which actually worked. Who knew that the musical birthday card on my living room shelf would make an excellent prank when taped to the inside edge of a closet door?

4. Wait a Day

When you’re working alone, it can be hard to know if what you wrote is actually funny. One way to find out (besides asking Stephen) is to put the writing aside and read it first thing in the morning. You will know right away whether or not it is funny. This can be a very disappointing experience. I’ve spent whole days writing what I thought was hysterical material only to read it the next morning and cringe: It was forced, unoriginal, and definitely not funny. The good part is that when this happens, it usually leads me to write a much better replacement.

5. Pray for a Last-Minute Request From Your Editor

Some of the funniest pranks and sidebars in Pranklopedia are the ones I added very late in the game, after the book had been designed and there were holes that needed filling. There’s something about a tight deadline that produces superior comedy. I saw this happen all the time at Nick Mag: The humor piece that we wrote in two hours because an ad dropped out at the last minute was always the funniest. Of course it’s hard to employ this technique if external forces are not cooperating. Hmm…maybe I can get writers to hire me to impersonate their editors and then I will make last-minute requests for new material. Any takers?

A Day in the Life

Where did the time go? I wrote my first I.N.K. blog post five years ago this month. That makes this one of the steadiest jobs I've ever had. But what do I do with my time? In an effort to record some semblance of an answer for posterity, I present a chronicle of one recent day.

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

8:20 a.m.: Alarm goes off. Today is a sleep-in day. I usually get up about 7 a.m. to go to the gym, but on Wednesdays I like to sleep late. I inadvertently sleep extra late when I roll over and doze again.

9:00: Finally get up. Feed the cats. Put on my computer.

9:15: Read e-mails, Twitter, Facebook, I.N.K. (Nice post, Marfe.)

9:40: Go over revised book contract for my biography of Sally Ride. We’ve been working on this for three months (the contract, not the book), and it’s almost there. E-mail my attorney with a few points that still need to be fixed.

9:55: Breakfast (pineapple yogurt and iced tea), shower.

10:30: Surprise! The morning mail has brought a jury duty notice. True to form, they’ve scheduled my jury duty for the week I’ll be in California doing school visits. Fortunately, my county makes it easy to request a postponement. I go to their Web site and fill out the form.

10:45: Skim books on tennis history for information on Alice Marble, the 1930s champion who at one time taught the game to Sally Ride. I’ve had these books for decades and feel a tug of nostalgia as I turn to the index and flip pages, rather than typing words into search engines.

11:30: Head to Staples to do some careful photocopying of archival Roller Derby programs that I borrowed from the proprietor of the National Roller Derby Hall of Fame. No, Sally Ride never skated Roller Derby. This is for a picture book. While I’m out, I decide to give myself a treat and buy a six-inch Subway sandwich for lunch. I resist the urge to measure it to see if it really is six inches long. (If you don’t get that reference, see here.)

12:15 p.m.: Arrive home with my sandwich to find an e-mail with a revised contract. Check it and find that a few changes still need to be made. E-mail my attorney.

12:45: Eat lunch, watch a rerun of Flashpoint to clear my head. Mourn the fact that this fine Canadian import ended its first-run shows last week. Wash dishes. Clean litter box.

2:00: Check e-mail and find that my book contract has been revised to perfection. Hallelujah! Print out four copies and sign them. Then realize I’m not sure whether to mail the package to my editor or the publisher’s attorney. Write e-mails. Get answer. Address it to the attorney.

2:45: Check the AT&T Archives Web site to see if they have posted any of the archival films with bonus intros that I wrote last summer. And they have: War and the Telephone. I watch the wonderful George Kupczak deliver the lines that I wrote about the operators who ran AT&T’s World War II telephone centers at shipyards and military bases. It’s my first filmed script.

3:00: FINALLY start writing. Alice Marble, Sally Ride, tennis. Great stuff.

6:15: Feed the cats. Make dinner (a Mexican concoction with cornbread, cheese, chorizos, salsa, and guacamole). Check in on Brian Williams. Listen to him talk about high winds and heavy rain that are approaching the Northeast. Decide to make extra ice cubes, power up my cell phone, and save my work-in-progress on a flash drive in case the electricity goes out. Wash dishes and clean the litter box.

8:00: Start this blog. Wish I could report that I did more actual writing today, but this is nonfiction and I can't make things up. I did stay up till 12:30 last night working on my manuscript, since I knew I could sleep late. When there's a deadline on the horizon, one day pretty much blends into the next.

9:00: Time for a dose of Law & Order: SVU and Top Chef. Crime. Competition. Food. An excellent end to a writer’s day.

Ethics in Nonfiction for Kids

There’s something special about speaking at the main branch of the New York Public Library. Walking up the grand steps between Patience and Fortitude – I never remember which lion is which – gives one a sense of arrival, that you are a member of that rarified club called writers. And does that feel good.

Last Saturday, Meghan McCarthy, fellow INKers, Deborah Heiligman, Sue Macy, and I, participated in a panel discussion about ethics in nonfiction for kids. It was part of Betsy Bird’s Children’s Literary Salon that meets there the first Saturday of each month. The wood paneled room on the second floor quickly filled as Betsy scurried around for more chairs. Deb, Sue, Meghan, and I took seats atop a plush Oriental carpet. I wondered what great writers stood on these warps and wefts.

With my colleagues permission I taped our panel. Or I should say I taped most of it because my recorder was on the chair beside me, and as I shifted my butt, the recorder would stop. This is yet another reason to always bring along additional recorders. A number of people have asked if there was an audiotape. Rather than playing the entire tape, I’ve pulled together a few excerpts. 

Part of our discussion had to do with selectivity in nonfiction – what we put in our books/what we leave out. I hope my selective choices and shaping of the tape fit the ethical standards of my colleagues.

Betsy started us off with a question about our process. I turned on the recorder as Sue Macy was describing her collection of bicycle memorabilia for her book, Wheels of Change: How Women Rode the Bicycle to Freedom [With a Few Flat Tires Along the Way.]

Sue: I went to a bicycle auction. I also do typical research. I go to libraries and read diaries and scrapbooks. I do a lot of newspaper research because I find reading articles from contemporary newspapers is a really good way to get back to that time period – to see how people are speaking about their subject back then. And now, thanks to the Library of Congress and other sources, a lot of those newspapers are online.

Deborah: Well, I’ll tag on that. I’m a primary source junkie. When I talk about writing nonfiction, my talk is titled “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up.” And what I mean by that is two-fold, one is you can’t make this stuff up. Nonfiction is so amazingly wonderful. I think we all feel that way. There are great stories out there. And then the other you-can’t-make-this stuff-up means you’re not allowed to make stuff up. When I wrote Charles and Emma, I could have read the bazillions and millions of pages that had already written about Charles Darwin, secondary sources. But I wanted to encounter Charles Darwin and Emma Wedgwood Darwin on my own. I wanted to meet them not through anyone else’s filters. I was lucky to be able to read letters, autobiographies, diaries, and Darwin’s notebooks. And by so doing that I was able to do original research that nobody else had done. I looked at diary entries and journal entries at the same time as letters and scientific notebooks. Then I pieced together the story of Darwin’s work and his family life. I wouldn’t have been able to do that if I was using secondary sources because Emma Darwin was only a line or a paragraph in every book.

            I firmly believe that the person you are married to influences who you are and what you do. I knew in my heart starting out that she was a big influence on Charles Darwin, but I had to do the research to back that up. Since I write mostly about dead people, unlike Sue and Susan, I haven’t figured out how to contact them in any other way, but I do also interview experts. I’m your primary source gal.

Susan:  None of my people are dead. My books are based on interviews with people who represent a subject. They are not the entire representations of the subject, but a piece of it. For example, my last subject was capital punishment, specifically teenagers on death row. One thing I learned quickly from talking to various lawyers was that I knew nothing. Before I could begin working I took a course in capital punishment at NYU Law School. Usually I don’t like to do that. I want to be a blank page so that I’m completely open to the thoughts of the people I interview. But I really needed to know what questions to ask.

            The second thing I have to do is find the people who will participate in the books. That takes most of my time. I go to various organizations that represent people in whatever subject I am studying. I look for the very, very best organizations, ones that sorta get me, and understands what I’m trying to do.

Sue: Do you ever get people who want money from you?

Susan: I’ve had two, what I would call shakedowns, and they are not included in my book. No one is paid.

Deborah: I once had an expert ask for money to read my book. I said, “You know what, I’m going to find somebody else.” And I easily did.

Meghan: I go to antique stores because you can get lots of magazines of a period and get a sense of the time period from ads and articles. Some of the stuff from the 1950s and 60s is very shocking. They were very sexist and racist.

Betsy: Has anyone ever had a book idea that you had to drop because you couldn’t get the research?

Sue: Last year I emailed you [Betsy] a story about the Black List, the Hollywood Black List. It’s still in my head. You have to use the facts to get your story, and I know what the story should be, but the facts didn’t support it. So it’s on hold until I can figure out the angle. I mostly write about women’s history. I want that sort of angle on the Hollywood ten, especially the TV black list. I keep trying and trying and reading things and reading things. That’s the problem with nonfiction. If it doesn’t fall into place, you either do fiction, or you don’t write it.

Susan: That’s where the ethics come in. We have a wide girth, but it has to be based on truth. So what do you do? Do you take a subject and try to find the material that fits your point of view, or do you let the subject lead you?

           

Meghan: I think it’s going to be slanted by the writer’s point of view to some extent. That’s a problem I find researching. One newspaper says this and another newspaper says this.

I had a horrible book accident. I had this great idea for a book because I had read an autobiography by a guy [Bob Heft] who said he had invented the fifty-star flag. This was in the 1950s. He had just died. He had this whole story about how he did it when he was a teenager in high school. He was on news shows and he posed with celebrities. There was a ton of stuff to back this up. But doing the research with my editor, I thought there was something that was just not right. He said that he was holding up a flag with Eisenhower. My editor asked me to illustrate this but I couldn’t find any photographs of it. She was determined to make this happen. She contacted the Eisenhower library, and it all started to fall apart. They said, “You know, we don’t have any documentation that this actually happened.” We looked into it further and the whole story was bogus. We canceled the project. This guy made up this up, and it turned out that lots of people came up with that same star design.

Deborah: Let me say this one thing. I think a book needs to be labeled fiction or nonfiction. As a grownup or a child I don’t want to be confused by that.

Meghan: I have a thing about Thomas Edison. They say that Thomas Edison invented the light bulb on such and such a date. I’m going to change that. I’m working on a graphic novel about electricity and stuff. I think there are a lot of inaccuracies about Thomas Edison. I didn’t think he was a good guy.

Deborah: Writing is about the choices we make.  In my new picture book, The Boy Who Loved Math: The Improbable Life of Paul Erdos [FYI: to be published in June by Roaring Brook], everything in the book is true, both in words and illustrations. But you sweat this stuff like nobody’s business. This is a book that took me so long to write. It’s a biography, essentially, but guess what, it’s for little kids. And you just can’t get everything in in thirty-two pages and make it a story that moves. I had to craft a story out of this man’s life, which turned out to be not so bad because he had such an amazing life. But in doing so, some things ended up on the cutting room floor. For example, when he was being born, his two older sisters died of Scarlet Fever. That was in many, many drafts, but it highjacked the book. You’re in first or second grade, and can’t get over that his two older sisters died of Scarlet Fever. It was a decision, a choice I made. [Note: Deborah put the sisters’ deaths in the author’s notes.]

We have to make the story true but that doesn’t mean we don’t craft the facts. We have to craft the story, shape the story.

Betsy:  So you’re killing yourselves to be accurate, and you show it to your editor. Have you ever been asked to remove anything that was accurate? Let’s say you put a toilet in outer space, Meghan? [Referring to Megan’s book, Astronaut Handbook]

Meghan: The toilet is in there.

Susan: Years ago I was asked to remove curse words. At the time some of my books covered some heavy-duty nonfiction subjects. My editor asked me to leave out the F-bomb. She said, “Don’t give people the excuse to not buy the book because of the profanities. Let them not buy it because they are racists, or sexists, or homophobic.” That’s changed. There’s lots of profanity in my next book.

Deb: There are lots of bathrooms in your new book.

Susan: Yes, lots of bathrooms.

Sue: I was never asked to take out things, but I was asked to put in things. When I wrote about the women’s baseball league in the 40s and 50s there were no black players. And my editor, Marc Aronson, said, “You have to say that upfront because it was a fact about this league that people should know. And then get it over with.”

            But I said it’s kinda like the putting a pall over the story, like what you were talking about [to Deborah], about the sisters. But I put it in because it was my first book, and he knew what he was talking about. Every critic said, “While there were no blacks in this league …,” they accepted it, and moved on to enjoy the story. So sometimes editors actually know best. [Laughter]

Susan, Meghan, Sue, and Deborah

To read more, Mahnaz Dar covered this event for SLJ.