One Indie Author's Journey to the Big 6 and Back Again (a publishing saga as illustrated by my hair)

This is me at the time of my first professional writing gig. In 1976, I was an 8th grade misfit at an academically boffo but ideologically stifling Evangelical school. Girls in my class consumed True Confessions Magazine every month. (Who loves porn more than Puritan's, right?) Reading the stories typically titled "My Father Sold Me" or "A Sophomore's Secret" or some such, I thought, "Heck, I can do that." Because I knew virtually nothing about sex beyond the vague "pulsing" and "engorging" alluded to in True Confessions and the "manroot" physiology of my book-a-day Gothic romance novel habit, my erotic tragedies relied heavily on witty dialogue and lush descriptions of locations, current pop music and fast food. For $1/page, I wrote customized stories starring a classmate and her made-to-order crush. In cases where the crush was a real boy who failed to live up to expectations, a brief epilogue featuring his untimely death could be had for a quarter. Word spread, and I expanded my business to a local roller skating rink, passing off the folded pages in the privacy of the grimy girls' bathroom like a drug dealer. On the first day of 9th grade, I was ironing my hair on the ironing board and branded a broad stripe down the front of my nose. This pretty much set the tone for my high school years.

Here's me at the time I started writing my first novel, originally titled MacPeter's Midlife Crisis. I'd given up ironing my hair, and apparently, it was particularly humid the day this photo was taken. In 1981, I was a late night DJ at a rock station in Helena, Montana, crazy in love with a brilliant but damaged Vietnam vet, and supplementing my income busking at bars and tourist attractions. The novel started as a script I intended to enter in a playwright competition. During my super-useful college career as a theatre major, part of my Stanislavsky acting training included writing character studies, and mine usually ran about 12 times the recommended length, spinning out elaborate backstory and imagining offstage scenes. I was still reading a book a day, but had moved on to Tom Robbins, Irving Stone, Eudora Welty and all things Bronte. I worshiped authors, and it never occurred to me that I could have a book published. I was writing this story purely for the love of laying words in a row, and needless to say, it was about a late night DJ and the brilliant, damaged Vietnam vet with whom she was crazy in love.

Here's me when I started writing my second novel, Sugarland. I was diagnosed with lymphoma in 1994, shortly after my husband and I moved to Houston with our two small children. After years of dabbling, I'd finished my first novel, now titled Last Chance Gulch, queried it to six dozen agents and publishers and collected six dozen rejections. I had zero hope of ever being published, but in the crucible of chemo, I suddenly understood why I was writing: because I'm a writer. So I wrote.

Here's me when I got my first book contract in 1996. Gary started shaving his head to be in solidarity with me during chemo. And no we're not on the same cricket team; the sweats were 3/$10 at Wallgreen's, and we were flat broke. And that's not a wig; my hair came back jet black and kinky a la Shaft. The amazing Fred Ramey (now at Unbridled Books) pulled my first novel from the slush pile, masterfully edited it from a 124K word swampland to a lean, mean 93K word fiction machine, and literally saved my life. Fred gets the credit for the most fitting book title of my career: Crazy For Trying. The advance was $4,000. We promptly took the kids to Disney World. While Crazy For Trying was in the pipeline, I lost my remission and turned to adjunct therapies to supplement the chemo. Above my desk was posted Isaac Asimov's famous two-word answer to being asked what he would do if he knew he had one year to live: "Type faster!"

Here's me in Good Housekeeping Magazine in 2001, when they featured a Book Bonus excerpt from my memoir Bald in the Land of Big Hair, which got my name on the bestseller lists for the first time. My second batch of regrown hair was straight and mostly gray, so I was a different shade of red almost every month. I was also exploring my new publishing career, which was wide open, because I'd stumbled into it with no preconceptions, expectations or plans. And nothing to fall back on. Marjorie Braman, my fabulous editor at HarperCollins, encouraged me to write a syndicated newspaper column while I got busy on another novel. That led to an advice column for a national magazine. In 2004, I was invited to do my first collaboration at Simon & Schuster, which led to a collaboration at Random House, which led to a whole lot of other stuff, but I did eventually finish my third novel, The Secret Sisters, which was pubbed by HarperCollins in 2006. Ghostwriting was something I'd never really thought about until I started doing it, but these great stories came along, and I'm a writer, so I wrote them.

And here's me today. I've done more than a dozen books, several of them NYT bestsellers, and worked with fantastic editors at five of the Big 6. I've learned that publishing, like personal style, is a process of constant reinvention, adaptation and a whole lotta get over yourself. The decision to indie pub my backlist ebooks and forthcoming fiction has opened a thrilling new chapter. I'm not leaving traditional publishing behind. I plan to work hand in hand with my agent and transition my indie pubbed ebooks to print deals with standing houses. But I've grown up a lot. I've been to the puppet show and seen the strings, as they say. I began my writing career delivering stories directly into the hands of readers, so indie publishing feels like coming full circle. On roller skates.

I've given up trying to color my hair dark. The few strands that aren't white are bleached blonde to blend in. The only thing that hasn't changed is that daily longing to find the right words, the compulsion to set them down on paper. And so I write.

A Leap into the Unknown: Laura Harrington on the unexpected twists and turns of the writing life

Last month, I posted a Buy This Book nudge for Laura Harrington's lovely debut novel Alice Bliss which grew out of her off-Broadway musical "Alice Unwrapped." We invited Laura to share some thoughts on the writing life, and here's what she had to say:

I went to grad school thinking I would write a novel. My first semester I took a playwriting class with Arthur Kopit for the electrifying reason that the class description, which said we would have to read each other’s work out loud, terrified me. That class changed my life. In the three dimensional world of the theatre, I found an art form that was built from language and image and often, music. The three loves of my life. I dropped my attachment to the novel like a hot potato even though I continued my lifelong habit of reading. In fact, I still read plays dutifully without enjoying them much, whereas I read books – both fiction and nonfiction – with intense, almost guilty pleasure.

For the next twenty-five years I wrote for the theatre: plays, operas, musicals, radio plays, screenplays and teleplays, librettos and lyrics. I was in love with theatre; the never-ending challenges were intoxicating. I was blessed with opportunities, with wonderful collaborators: composers, directors, designers, performers. My work was performed across the US, and in Canada and Europe.

As with every profession, there were also the negative experiences: controlling collaborators (the composer who refused to do any revising whatsoever because he’d decided the opera should have 666 measures. I can laugh about it now, at the time I wanted to strangle him), avid competition for scarce resources, snarky directors, bad reviews, the inevitable rejection letters. And, as the years flew by, playwright Robert Anderson’s famous comment: “You can make a killing in the theatre, but not a living,” rang louder and louder.

And then in 2008 I was given this incredible award that changed my life again. The Kleban Award (funded by the estate of Edward Kleban, the lyricist for A Chorus Line) is given each year to “the most promising librettist in American Musical Theatre.” This was both a wonderful affirmation of my theatre career and a cash award that gave me two years of writing time. But when they handed me the check I didn’t think: Oh boy, I can’t wait to write my next musical. Instead I thought: I want to do something I‘ve never done before. I want to re-connect to the creative process. I want to be a beginner again.

I decided I wanted to try to write a novel. I wanted to write every day without worrying about selling tickets, or how large the cast was, or whether I could get a theatre producer interested in a story I was passionate about. It’s not that those are huge problems necessarily, just that there are already constraints in place before you even begin to write, and these constraints inevitably impact your imagination.

Being a beginner, tackling something you’ve never done before is a rare experience, especially as we get older. I remember feeling a mixture of excitement, elation, and fear. It was exciting to be standing on the edge of a new experience, to take a flying leap into the unknown. I was elated to feel so free, to clear my head and my mind and try to imagine writing in a completely new way. And I was full of fear. Not so much the fear of failure – I tend to view first drafts as experiments – but could I actually figure out how to write a book? Would any of my theatre skills apply? Or would they get in the way?

I was also haunted by a kind of identity crisis. Who was I? What was I? I wasn’t a novelist. Not yet. Was I still a playwright? Could I move back and forth between the genres? What would happen to my playwriting career that I’d spent so much time and love and energy on if I ignored it for a while?

I had to let go. It’s an illusion anyways that we’re in control of our lives or our careers, and I had to remind myself constantly to just trust and move forward. Trust and show up every day. Trust and listen to my characters. Trust and enjoy the process. Embrace the mystery and the unknown. Let it be fun. Let if be play. Be playful. Be foolish. No one’s watching. No one’s waiting. No one cares. This was the freedom of being a beginner. The freedom to re-write the rules, the freedom to discover, the freedom not to know the answers, not to know where I was going, and, finally, the freedom to trust the journey, wherever it might lead.

You get my drift (a southern writer shovels snow in Montana)

Visiting my folks in Helena while Dad (aka Mr. Invincible) recovers from bypass surgery. It's been a while since I shoveled snow, but I discovered this morning it's a lot like writing a book.

At first, it's all fun and excitement. After a while the novelty wears off, and you discover it's actually a whole lot of dang hard work. Every once in a while you slip and fall on your keister, but you get up and get back to it. It'll go easier if you have the right kind of shovel.

You never know when opportunity's going to come knocking, so it's important to keep the front walk clear and hospitable. Mom and Dad aren't able to drive right now, but I shoveled the driveway nonetheless. No matter what's going on in the house, you've got to hang on to the possibility of going somewhere.

You have to discover your own methodology, but it pretty much comes down to scraping away one line at a time. You make a pass across the pavement, then go back and catch the fallout, and finally go around and tidy up the edges.

Ultimately, life and writing are about doing what needs to be done, and doing it with genuine joy. If nothing else, your life's work in all its variations should be a balm and boon to the people you love.

Several more inches expected by Friday.