Alice is a nationally recognized best-selling author of eight books, including three Pulitzer Prize finalists and one winner of the National Book Award. Also a professor of the humanities at Johns Hopkins University, Alice walks us through both her creative process as well as the business side of writing, from publishing to press tours.
Transcript
My name is Alice McDermott. I am a novelist and a professor of the humanities at Johns Hopkins University. My probably best known novel is called "Charming Billy." It won the National Book Award in 1998. My latest book is called "The Ninth Hour," just out in the fall. It's writing all the time, it's rewriting. It's thinking about it. It's taking notes. It's doing research. So it is, it's a full-time job to be completely focused and dedicated to the work at hand. So, every novel has its own genesis. Sometimes it's a story, sometimes it's a character, sometimes it's just ideas you have about things, but then you have to find out, what's the sound of it, who's telling the story, what's the voice of the writing, so it really is, not to make it sound too much like bricklaying, but it really is like bricklaying. It's one sentence, and then another sentence, then you go back and make the other sentence better, and just slowly sort of accruing sentences that seem to be going somewhere. Yeah, I mean, the first most practical element is a writer needs a literary agent. This is the person who represents you to publishers. I was very fortunate very early in my career. A writer I studied with in graduate school introduced me to an agent who was able to sell my first novel before I finished it. And the editor she sold it to has been my editor ever since. So it is that process of a literary agent reads your work, takes you on as a client, and then the agent will represent you to editors across publishing houses. So, I show my editor pretty much a completed manuscript and we have this conversation. I bring him my questions, he's a brilliant guy and a really good reader so I trust his opinion. And then we have various edits, copyediting, making sure you've got your commas and semicolons all in the right places, you do that with a copyeditor. They have what you call galley proofs, you go through that. And then once the book is printed, then marketing comes in, and that's when your life changes. (laughs) You go from working alone in your room with your fictional characters to being out in the world, giving interviews, giving readings, traveling on book tours. Reviews start to come out. I don't read my reviews, but my agent and my editor reads them for me.
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