The Writer's Predicament
Okay, where were we?
Oh yes, back at the beginning, in January of 2006. I’d taken my son to a baseball camp at Vanderbilt University in Nashville and had picked up a copy of “The Lincoln Lawyer” to help me pass the time. When I finished the book, which was a bestseller and has since been made into a movie, I said to myself, “I can write something like this.”
It was a tumultuous time for me and my family. I’d been jailed and charged with contempt of court by a criminal court judge a month earlier. I’d been suspended from practicing law pending the outcome of a disciplinary proceeding. I was front page news in the paper and the lead story on television news broadcasts, all because of an email I sent to a client in which I said, “Everybody lies in criminal court.” It was true, but it was a monstrously stupid thing to say, especially in writing. The client to whom I sent the email gave a copy of it to the judge who was presiding over her case. The judge and I had been feuding for years. He saw an opportunity to stick it to me, and he took it. The entire situation was horrifying, degrading, humiliating, and, I believed, grossly unfair. I decided I would refuse to cooperate with the Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility (the lawyer police) and that I would never practice law again.
But I had to do something. I made a good living practicing law until it all came crashing down that morning in November, 2005. I had a wife and two children who depended on me. I couldn’t just crawl into a hole and die, although I have to admit there were many, many times when that’s exactly what I wanted to do. When I returned from Nashville with my son that January, I sat down with my wife and said, “I’m going to write books.” She didn’t ask any questions, didn’t seem the least bit surprised. She just looked at me and said, “If that’s what you want to do, go ahead. I’m with you, baby.”
I’d worked as a journalist when I was younger and had written a screenplay about the infamous pirate Blackbeard, but I had never attempted a novel. The next day, I sat down at my computer at eight o’clock in the morning and I started writing. I knew nothing about plot or structure or conflict. I was a complete idiot when it came to writing a book. But I’d read a lot and I knew I had a certain knack for writing. I also knew I wanted to write legal fiction, mysteries or thrillers or both. It was a start.
About a month into it, my wife suggested that I get ahold of a woman named Renni Browne. I’d talked to Renni over the telephone because she hired me to defend an old friend of hers on a couple of drunk driving charges. Her friend was a delightful man with a serious drinking problem, and in the course of representing him I learned that both he and Renni were editors. Renni, he told me, had worked at a couple of big New York publishing houses before she packed up and moved to Greeneville, Tennessee, many years before. He was also an editor – a Princeton graduate, no less – and he’d worked for Renni for many years. So I called her, met her for lunch, and showed her a little of what I’d been writing. She read a couple of pages and said, “You can write.” That was all I needed to hear.
As it turned out, Renni had started a company called “The Editorial Department” thirty years earlier. She’d also written a book called “Self Editing for Fiction Writers,” which was published in 1993 and is the best-selling book in history on the subject of writers editing themselves. We worked together for a year getting a workable manuscript together. I wrote six or seven hours a day for the first seven or eight months, but as I saw myself getting closer to the finish line, I started writing eight to ten hours a day. I tore out hundreds of pages, rewrote dozens of chapters, changed plot lines and characters. You name it, I did it wrong at least once. An early form of the manuscript made the rounds to a dozen agents. Everybody passed. I tore the book apart again and rewrote it. I read James Scott Bell’s “Plot and Structure,” which helped me tremendously. Thank you, Mr. Bell. I bounced everything off of Renni. She was expensive as hell (I wound up paying her ten thousand dollars and she got a percentage of the royalties after we sold the book) and I was quickly running out of money, but she’d become like a security blanket to me. I didn’t think I could do it without her. Finally, in August of 2007, “An Innocent Client” was born along with its protagonist, Joe Dillard, a.k.a. the alter ego of Scott Pratt. Renni sent it to Philip Spitzer on a Tuesday and he called me on Thursday and told me he wanted to represent me. I was excited, relieved and baffled. I had no idea what the next step would be.
Next blog, I’ll start telling you about my agent, my publisher, and the massive changes that were going on in the publishing industry back in 2007-08. I knew nothing of those changes at the time, but they’ve had a tremendous impact on me and on thousands of others like me, folks who find themselves in the Writer’s Predicament each and every day.
Oh yes, back at the beginning, in January of 2006. I’d taken my son to a baseball camp at Vanderbilt University in Nashville and had picked up a copy of “The Lincoln Lawyer” to help me pass the time. When I finished the book, which was a bestseller and has since been made into a movie, I said to myself, “I can write something like this.”
It was a tumultuous time for me and my family. I’d been jailed and charged with contempt of court by a criminal court judge a month earlier. I’d been suspended from practicing law pending the outcome of a disciplinary proceeding. I was front page news in the paper and the lead story on television news broadcasts, all because of an email I sent to a client in which I said, “Everybody lies in criminal court.” It was true, but it was a monstrously stupid thing to say, especially in writing. The client to whom I sent the email gave a copy of it to the judge who was presiding over her case. The judge and I had been feuding for years. He saw an opportunity to stick it to me, and he took it. The entire situation was horrifying, degrading, humiliating, and, I believed, grossly unfair. I decided I would refuse to cooperate with the Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility (the lawyer police) and that I would never practice law again.
But I had to do something. I made a good living practicing law until it all came crashing down that morning in November, 2005. I had a wife and two children who depended on me. I couldn’t just crawl into a hole and die, although I have to admit there were many, many times when that’s exactly what I wanted to do. When I returned from Nashville with my son that January, I sat down with my wife and said, “I’m going to write books.” She didn’t ask any questions, didn’t seem the least bit surprised. She just looked at me and said, “If that’s what you want to do, go ahead. I’m with you, baby.”
I’d worked as a journalist when I was younger and had written a screenplay about the infamous pirate Blackbeard, but I had never attempted a novel. The next day, I sat down at my computer at eight o’clock in the morning and I started writing. I knew nothing about plot or structure or conflict. I was a complete idiot when it came to writing a book. But I’d read a lot and I knew I had a certain knack for writing. I also knew I wanted to write legal fiction, mysteries or thrillers or both. It was a start.
About a month into it, my wife suggested that I get ahold of a woman named Renni Browne. I’d talked to Renni over the telephone because she hired me to defend an old friend of hers on a couple of drunk driving charges. Her friend was a delightful man with a serious drinking problem, and in the course of representing him I learned that both he and Renni were editors. Renni, he told me, had worked at a couple of big New York publishing houses before she packed up and moved to Greeneville, Tennessee, many years before. He was also an editor – a Princeton graduate, no less – and he’d worked for Renni for many years. So I called her, met her for lunch, and showed her a little of what I’d been writing. She read a couple of pages and said, “You can write.” That was all I needed to hear.
As it turned out, Renni had started a company called “The Editorial Department” thirty years earlier. She’d also written a book called “Self Editing for Fiction Writers,” which was published in 1993 and is the best-selling book in history on the subject of writers editing themselves. We worked together for a year getting a workable manuscript together. I wrote six or seven hours a day for the first seven or eight months, but as I saw myself getting closer to the finish line, I started writing eight to ten hours a day. I tore out hundreds of pages, rewrote dozens of chapters, changed plot lines and characters. You name it, I did it wrong at least once. An early form of the manuscript made the rounds to a dozen agents. Everybody passed. I tore the book apart again and rewrote it. I read James Scott Bell’s “Plot and Structure,” which helped me tremendously. Thank you, Mr. Bell. I bounced everything off of Renni. She was expensive as hell (I wound up paying her ten thousand dollars and she got a percentage of the royalties after we sold the book) and I was quickly running out of money, but she’d become like a security blanket to me. I didn’t think I could do it without her. Finally, in August of 2007, “An Innocent Client” was born along with its protagonist, Joe Dillard, a.k.a. the alter ego of Scott Pratt. Renni sent it to Philip Spitzer on a Tuesday and he called me on Thursday and told me he wanted to represent me. I was excited, relieved and baffled. I had no idea what the next step would be.
Next blog, I’ll start telling you about my agent, my publisher, and the massive changes that were going on in the publishing industry back in 2007-08. I knew nothing of those changes at the time, but they’ve had a tremendous impact on me and on thousands of others like me, folks who find themselves in the Writer’s Predicament each and every day.
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