"The Pulitzer just gives you a lot of credibility," says Deborah Blum. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for a series about the ethical issues in primate research while writing for the Sacramento Bee. "And also, there's a brief moment where it gives winners a certain celebrity, when possibilities open up."
Blum grabbed one such possibility, signing with Suzanne Gluck at the William Morris Literary Agency and adapting her award-winning news series into her first book, The Monkey Wars, in 1994. She has since written or co-written five other books and joined the faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's School of Journalism and Mass Communications in 1997.
How hard was the transition from newspapers to books?
"(Newspaper writing) is wonderful training for a writer because you have to work every day to interest readers in topics they often don't care about." Blum was the first full-time science writer for the Sacramento Bee and wrote on heady, complex topics like ozone depletion, vanishing species in the west, chronic disease in the US and the mismanagement of nuclear weapons labs. The latter, written in 1987, won numerous national awards, including the Livingston Award in National Reporting.
"It really pushes you to find a way to tell a story well."
Always an "over-researcher," Blum had gathered copious amounts of information while writing the primate research series, and with a one-year leave of absence granted to her by the Bee, she signed a contract to turn the series into a book. She learned very quickly that newspaper research is nothing like book research.
"Because newspaper stories move really fast - I always think of them as a sprint - the writer can't dwell on the details at length." But nonfiction books have a slower rhythm and room for more details. "You have to dig for information you usually don't need in a newspaper story," she continues. "I needed to see the research facilities in person…draw portraits of the scientists, watch surgeries on the monkeys."
Gathering all that extra information isn't always easy. Blum admits she uses most of her advances on traveling for research and each of her books have presented their own issues when it comes to research. Sometimes it's just about persuading people to talk to her, but the subjects of her current book (about murder and poisons in the Jazz Age) left little in the way of records so it's been like a scavenger hunt.
"I've tracked down grandchildren, burrowed in odd corners of archives, hunted down long extinct newspapers. It's been pretty incredible." Fortunately, she has a graduate student assisting her.
What is involved in researching a science based book?
Blum blocks out her research plan while she's working on the proposal, starting with gathering all the printed material she can find on her subject. She'll use their bibliographies to find more sources. From here she can plan her travel needs. For instance, her second book, Love at Goon Park, was centered on the work of very controversial psychologists and she had to travel a lot because so many people were nervous and the interviews needed to be done in person. For Ghost Hunters, her last book, she spent weeks at archives in New York and Cambridge.
Her contracts usually give her two years to finish the book and she spends a year or more on the research. Then she thoroughly checks and verifies her facts. For Sex on the Brain, she set up a panel with four scientists to ask about her interpretations of the facts and details.
"I'm pretty neurotic about checking things," Blum admits, and then adds, "It’s probably impossible to error-proof a book, but if it’s not credible, what’s the point?"
What is the hardest thing about writing nonfiction books?
Deadlines help the self-proclaimed over-researcher know when she's ready to write. Without them, she admits she'd still be researching her first book. There's just a moment, she says, when she knows she's ready to tell the story. Now there's another challenge to face.
"Reality is not always that satisfying," Blum says. "For instance, my ghost hunters never proved that the dead float among us. In fiction, I could have made them stumble onto the truth about the afterlife." Instead, they had to wrestle with ambiguity and disappointment and she had to figure out how to make their failures compelling and worth reading.
Next Blum would like to write about 21st-century science since this latest is her third historic book, and she won't abandon her first love - newspaper writing.
"I love the ideal of them," she says. "(I love) the way they can give voice to people whom often lack a voice."
She still writes freelance occasionally for such papers as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times as well as the local The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Learn more about Deborah Blum, click here.
Irish author Paul Kildoff will answer your questions about writing and his new book Ruinair as he kicks off his Virtual Book Tour here at 3 Questions...and Answers May 19. Read more and leave your questions here by 6pm EDT Friday, May 16.
0 comments:
Post a Comment