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THE BRIEF on ExactingEditor.com Aspiring novelists have a thousand places to go for support. Not so those of us who produce government, historical, psych or other "serious" writing for niche markets. Therefore, www.ExactingEditor.com is a resource for imaginative producers of non-fiction text. And my series of "Author Profiles" -- see 100-word summaries below -- has absolutely nothing to do with writing novels. Rather, it's a set of "conversational case studies" on HOW you turn ideas and personal drives into saleable products. INTERVIEWS with NON-FICTION AUTHORS Ira Chaleff is both creative and methodical (a rare blend among intuitors). Way too many books map and magnify "leadership," and Ira produced a great one -- The Courageous Follower -- centered on the rank and file. Buy some copies for your staff -- but not to make your own managerial life more placid. A good follower should be able to analyze and articulate independently even while maintaining institutional loyalty. Ira shows them -- and "them" is sometimes us (especially when we're consulting) -- why and how: www.ExactingEditor.com/CourageousFollower.html As Federal personnel director from 1981 to '85, Donald J. Devine earned his Washington Post designation as “Reagan’s Terrible Swift Sword of the Civil Service.” Today he directs the Federalist Leadership Center and holds a professorship at Bellevue University. His early career was as a professor of political science at the U. of Maryland and he has authored seven books. "A vigorous and able man who wants to prove government can be managed," said the Wall Street Journal; and it's that very cauldron -- where presidential policy change, group and administrative interests, and "neutral bureaucracy" notions bring matters to a boil -- that makes this Winter 2009 discussion bubble: www.ExactingEditor.com/DonDevine.html Novels receive the PR hype, but nonfiction books build their drama with diligent research and new truth. In fact, the "life course" of a book is its own drama -- from the founding idea, to the push for sponsorship (which can take various forms), to the sift and sort of themes and personalities, to the budgeting and marketing, to repackaging under pressure. This Q&A with Kathie Durbin conveys that palpably pulpy process superbly: Learn how one generates a book about 40 years of business and politics in and around the planet's largest temperate rain forest. You need to be a methodical reporter while making sure the plot remains lively -- and the best interviews require boats and planes! www.ExactingEditor.com/KathieDurbin.html Dr. Richard W. Etulain, author of many books, is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of New Mexico. Nine hours with him have been refined into a textual map of the American West. About two-thirds of the way into this transcript are rapid-fire accounts of Ten Valuable Books. You also get an audio sidebar, where Etulain conveys the life and times of Wallace Stegner, "our Wise Man of the American West." This Q&A takes us well beyond rodeos and the Marlboro Man. To really grasp USA West, you also need environmental themes, urbanization, and Deadwood Dick: www.ExactingEditor.com/RichardEtulain.html Continuing with the Exacting Editor's first five years of Author Profiles, Loretta Hall produced Underground Buildings: More than Meets the Eye. Her story shows how to do well as an independent writer by mapping the "obvious" course and persisting patiently. A tough choice then emerges: Should Hall deepen her focus and "hold" on this niche topic -- or does she continue the free-lance mode by moving on to the next intellectually satisfying zone? www.ExactingEditor.com/LorettaHall.html Lauren Kessler directs the graduate program in literary nonfiction at the University of Oregon -- http://lnf.uoregon.edu. She has authored 11 books, and our Q&A opens with the latest: Dancing with Rose, conveying humanity inside an Alzheimer's facility. Then we discuss Clever Girl (2003), her fascinating biography of Elizabeth Bentley. Bentley became a spy for the USSR in the 1930s, and later, in November 1945, went to the FBI with knowledge that greatly reduced Soviet spying just as the Cold War took shape. Finally, Kessler makes the best case I've ever heard -- in her "Power of Fact" audio file -- for avoiding "embroidery and embellishment" while crafting our non-fiction. Instead, stick with "deep research" and mine those details: www.ExactingEditor.com/LaurenKessler.html In Nonfiction Book Proposals Anybody Can Write, author and instructor Elizabeth Lyon clarifies a process that my friends and clients have treated as a mix of sweetheart deals and lottery tickets. “The biggest mistake writers make,” declares Lyon, “is to start writing too soon, before they’ve done any planning or organization or additional research. That process begins with deeper examination of your idea, of its merits and marketability, and of your writing skill.” Shock and dismay – along with the beginnings of liberation – are what I felt reading that passage. Don’t let your zeal for “brainstorms” and Big Ideas be a roadblock to publishing something distinctive and useful: www.ExactingEditor.com/ElizabethLyon.html Julianne Lutz Newton is president of the Burroughs Institute at Woodchuck Lodge in Roxbury, New York. Her 2006 book Aldo Leopold’s Odyssey offers conservative minds a pragmatically balanced way to protect species and advance what Leopold (1887-1948) called “land health.” He was a pioneering ecologist, restless thinker -- and lifelong hunter. Author Newton’s articles have appeared in Conservation Biology, The Illinois Steward, Journal of Civil Society, and American Midland Naturalist. Newton brings Leopold to life, and explains how she put together Odyssey, her first book:
www.ExactingEditor.com/JLNewton-Leopold.html In Why Decisions Fail, Dr. Paul C. Nutt serves up 15 case-study "debacles" that pave the way for advice on how to prevent big trouble. This Q&A should work well for people who see "strategy" as a discipline; who consult for or otherwise guide parts of larger enterprises; and who are wary of management books that romanticize individualism while slighting structure and systems. By contrast, if you like Tom Peters, or are philosophical about cost overruns, or get jazzed by one nifty idea at the expense of examining what your situation truly requires -- well, Paul Nutt is here with a stream of cold water. But it cleanses! www.ExactingEditor.com/PaulNutt.html Myrna Oakley is both writing coach and travel author. An early authority on bed & breakfasts, she went on to craft eight editions of Off the Beaten Path for Oregon and seven for Washington. I visited Oakley not just to better understand Oregon, but also to dig into travel-guide assembly – the backstage design work and details only hinted at in the actual book. If you’re a diligent tourist, you’ll love Myrna’s books. Yet few tourists will end up at a site whose focus is research, writing and editing. So? Let’s assume you’re open to the “how” of a travel book, using the distinctive “where” of Oregon: www.ExactingEditor.com/MyrnaOakley.html Volunteering with the trash-collectors and having to navigate cramped urban streets, Elizabeth Royte reports: "I was struck by the way the men spoke to one another. They were loud and harsh, in one another's faces... Inside, the complaints never ceased. So-and-so was an idiot. The night crew never did its job right. The boss could go to hell. I'd be crushed by such contempt, but no one here seemed to mind." It's a lively array of human and environmental excavation in her book Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash. Whatever your ecological stance, this Q&A shows you how a free-lance writer/advocate deploys dry wit and dogged research to make a name for herself while doing good: www.ExactingEditor.com/ElizabethRoyte.html Dr. Mel Steely has known lifelong GOP insurgent Newt Gingrich since the early 1970s. Now partly retired, Steely directs the "Georgia's Political Heritage" A/V program at the University of West Georgia in Carrollton. In this interview, he details the twists and turns of producing a full-scale political biography. Throw nothing out, wait for the landscape to ripen, don't rely on small-time stretched-out publishers, and -- well, this story has more than its share of treacherous curves. Newt isn't going to become President. But, if it happens, Steely is my candidate to author Volume Two: www.ExactingEditor.com/MelSteely.html If you value well-written histories that tackle the tough issues yet maintain a reasonable (though not blah) tone, you know how rare such books are. In September 2006, I spent three hours with an author who calmly walks that tightrope: University of New Mexico professor Ferenc M. Szasz. Two of his six books -- The Day the Sun Rose Twice, and Larger Than Life: New Mexico in the 20th Century -- figure prominently in our Q&A. Learn how passion to dig out a complete story can jive nicely with empathy for the people who lived out that story: www.ExactingEditor.com/SzaszNewMexico.html Steve West coaches your editor on a landscape of a mutual fascination: The Great American Desert. If deserts don't happen to be your cup of water, savor this next Q&A for a different reason -- to find out how West produced a guidebook with more photos in it than paragraphs. (And don't be thrown by its horticultural title; this book is about all manner of desert growth.) A teacher of high-school science, Steve has a greenhouse attached to his classroom. We also went to the Carlsbad Caverns National Park to band cave swallows, on which Steve is one of this country's experts: www.ExactingEditor.com/SteveWest.html Frank J. Williams was Chief Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court until late '09. Since the age of 11, he had admired Abraham Lincoln -- creating a parallel career as a collector, author/editor and lecturer. During 1962-67, Williams logged two years in West Germany and three in South Vietnam. I went to Providence to ask him about an earlier war (dated 1861-65); the present-day conflict (much bigger than Iraq); and of course his hero and mine, America's 16th President. Don't miss the audio sidebar, where in 20 minutes we move through an array of Civil War figures and the related books: www.ExactingEditor.com/FrankWilliams.html Van Wishard mapped the 20th Century in Between Two Ages. Along the way he expanded certain Carl Jung concepts. Not in-sync with Carl Jung? Then stick with the Exacting Editor's drive to use the Q&A mode effectively. You see, Van is a serious man and powerful writer -- but he never became a household name, and he hates to write about himself. Yet I always felt his life trajectory to be as compelling as his ideas. That's what led to our Q&A, which has two goals: (1) To suggest a role model for young writers who rely on experience and intuition as opposed to credentialism or ideology; and (2) to show you what a "whole professional life" looks and feels like in transcript form: www.ExactingEditor.com/VanWishard.html Professor Donald Worster is one of America’s most accomplished historians of nature and ecologists. Turning to biography in the mid-‘90s, he gave us the definitive story of John Wesley Powell and will soon do the same for John Muir. Worster outlines what a writer discovers -- in historic nooks and crannies, as well as about himself -- while striving to produce a landmark biography. This Q&A also has him describing a movement no longer easy to classify: “What does it mean to be an environmentalist in India? What does it mean to be a free-market environmentalist today? What does it mean to be an African-American environmentalist?” Contact Don Worster at the University of Kansas using (785) 864-9474 or DWorster@ku.edu. www.ExactingEditor.com/DonaldWorster.html All for now. I appreciate your amplification, counsel and door-openings during the first five years of ExactingEditor.com.
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