Carolyn Meyer

There are many stages involved in writing a book, from the early minutes/hours/days when an idea starts to emerge until the day the first copy is in my hands: the research, the writing of several drafts, the comments of the editor, followed by more rewriting and more comments and more tweaking, and finally the sense that I've told my story as well as I can. A time to relax a little, clean out my files, sew on buttons, answer letters.

But not so fast! You're not done yet! The copy editor has yet to speak. This person not only looks for sloppy punctuation and points out that you have used "get" or "got" a few dozen times too many and notices that the guy you call Sam on page 37 suddenly becomes Bill on page 119. The CE, as she's known, also acts as a fact-checker (sometimes another person takes over this job). If one of your characters plays a song on the piano, was that song actually written by that time? If you write that 1920s movie star Rudolph Valentino died on Monday August 23rd, why does your character, a devoted Valentino fan, not hear about it on the radio until Wednesday the 25th?

Yeeesh.

It has to be said: Copy editors are a pain in the neck, but they also save your neck, too. Because if those little errors and inconsistencies and quirks aren't caught now, you can be sure they will be later. Years ago I mentioned a "horny toad" in Texas and how it hopped, and I was promptly nailed by a gleeful expert who pointed out that they are not toads but lizards, they don't hop, and since I was so wrong about that fact he would never again trust anything I wrote.

And that's why I say thank you to Lisa and all the other unsung copy editors who have kept me from embarrassing errors in so many books over so many years.  Read More 

I just looked up the word, Doldrums, to be sure I'm using it correctly. It came into use in the 18th century when sailors sometimes encountered periods of calm in the ocean when there was no wind for days, the sails flapped uselessly, and the ship went nowhere. This is what Coleridge wrote about the doldrums in his poem, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner":

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, no breath no motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

That's where I am today, with no wind in my sails. This is not the same as "writer's block." Young writers often email me and ask what I do about it. I don't believe writer's block really exists. My advice is to put that idea out of your mind and simply write something--anything--even if you throw it out the next day. The cure for writer's block is to write.

The Doldrums is not the same thing. A few weeks ago I finished rewriting WAITRESS: THE JOURNAL OF A HARVEY GIRL, and now I'm waiting to hear from the editor if the manuscript has been approved or if another round of rewrites is needed. The galley proofs of ANASTASIA AND HER SISTERS came back from another publisher, and I read through the 300 pages and made minor corrections, so that's done.

I did additional research for an upcoming project that has not yet gotten a final go-ahead, and I'm about 25 pages into a draft, but I'm reluctant to proceed without approval. I've done a lot of background reading for another proposal that has so far had a first-round approval, and now I'm waiting for final word: YES - full speed ahead! or NO - this book is not for us.

The waiting drives me crazy. Being "between books" drives me crazy. I'm as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean, and although it's nice to have a break from the pressure of deadlines, I'm happiest when I'm deeply into a new novel. Let's hope the winds come back soon. Read More 

In 1986 after VOICES OF SOUTH AFRICA had been published, I took off again, this time for Northern Ireland, to learn what I could about "The Troubles," tension between Catholics and Protestants that too often erupted in violence and death. I wanted to hear from the young people in both camps, about their feelings about "the other."

For six sodden weeks that summer I traveled the counties that make up Northern Ireland, armed with very few contacts and a pair of not-quite-waterproof shoes. I prepared for the trip by reading history, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and set out to discover how the people managed from day to day in a country long torn by religious, political, and economic strife. I found the people charming, friendly--and exasperating.

I spoke to Catholics and "Prods," to police and soldiers, to kids whose fathers and grandfathers had been unemployed for as long as anyone could remember. I visited with peace groups and groups claiming connection to the IRA. I attended family celebrations and wakes. And I found that life goes on, pretty much as usual.

But they couldn't quite figure out how to label ME--my name didn't fit into either camp. Interestingly, they always decided that my sympathies surely lay with THEIR side.
And then I came home and wrote the story--which turned out to be my story as much as theirs. Read More 

From the book jacket: "I cried when I left South Africa. I cried because it is a rich and beautiful country torn by strife, fearful Whites on one side, angry Blacks on the other. And I don't know if there is enough compassion and goodwill to triumph over misunderstanding, stubbornness,, and greed and to to prevent the disaster that seems inevitable. I had met dozens of South Africans, become close to a few of them, liked them even when I disagreed with them. When their lives touched mine, my life was changed; maybe theirs were too. When I left, I knew that I would never see most of t hose people again. But I will not forget them."

I wrote those words in January 1986, shortly before publication of the book. Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990, worked to end apartheid, was elected the first black President of his country in 1994, and served for five years. He died two days ago at the age of 95. Read More 

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For the past few months I've been writing about the story behind each book, recalling something about the inspiration and my writing process. So far I've reached back to books I wrote more than 25 years ago. Now I'm taking a break from that to consider the end result: what happens when the book is finished and goes out into the world.

The actual time for research, writing, rewriting, and re-rewriting a book takes about a year; add in time for the editorial work and production (fact-checking, copyediting, proofreading, jacket design, printing), and a couple of years roll by from the birth of the idea to the arrival of the book on the shelves.

Then another process begins, and it can be both exhilarating and painful. I wonder how the book will fare, now that it's out there. Will reviewers love it or hate it or simply ignore it? Once upon a time, before amazon.com and goodreads, only "professionals" reviewed books--librarians, for instance (School Library Journal), and services that advise booksellers (Kirkus). Years ago I wrote a monthly column about children's books for the now defunct McCall's Magazine. What I learned is that reviewing a book is a totally subjective enterprise, and I'm not very good at it.

I've written more than 50 books--closer to 60 now--and almost every book has been both praised and trashed. Another thing I've learned is that great reviews, although great for the ego, don't always translate into great sales--and vice versa. Amazingly, my very first book, MISS PATCH'S LEARN-TO-SEW BOOK, published in 1969, is being reissued next fall--after 45 years! And one of the books I wrote for the Royal Diary series, ANASTASIA: THE LAST GRAND DUCHESS, published a dozen years ago, has just been reissued in a new format.

Negative reviews are worthless. It's impossible to learn anything useful from them, because they are often contradictory. One amazonian may mutter that the opening is too slow and the ending is too rushed, while another will grumble that it started out well and then ran out of gas at the end. One goodreader might complain that there's too much detail and another says too much has been left out.

Sometimes I wonder if they're talking about somebody else's book, because I don't recognize my own. At some point I reread my book--I've been away from it for months, and I'm deeply engrossed in a new project--and try to see it through a stranger's eyes. Then I ask myself if I could have done something differently. The answer is always no.  Read More 

Back in the 1980's I was asked by my publisher if I would go to South Africa and write about what it was like to be a young person growing up under the iron fist of apartheid. I jumped at the chance, without the remotest idea of what I was getting into--or how I was going to do it.

Almost from the very beginning, I got lucky. I happened to meet a man from South Africa when I was at the travel agent's office; he introduced me to his wife, and the two of them came up with a short list of contacts, friends who might be helpful when I got there. Then a friend told me about a fellow who was repairing her roof who was a South African; I met him, and he put me in touch with his mother. By the time I took off for Johannesburg in the summer of 1985, the country was seething with anger, and I had a list of people to call when I got there.

From the beginning, I thought it was a beautiful country living under a horrible system. I wasn't permitted to stay with a black family, but a black Anglican priest got me into his township and took me to his church. I visited lots of schools, both black and white. I met a lot of kids. I met Archbishop Tutu.

I took the train from Jo'burg to Cape Town, visited Stellenbosch, rented a car and drove along the coat through Port Elizabeth to Durban, staying with families along the way. My white hosts tried to explain why the system was the way it was. They were kind. I was polite.

After a few weeks I flew home again and tried to make sense of what I'd seen and heard. Nelson Mandela was still a prisoner at Robben Island. I wasn't optimistic that he'd ever be free, or that apartheid would ever end. But I wrote the book.

I've never been so glad to be WRONG. Read More 

The popular Royal Diaries series was launched in 1999 with authors like Kathryn Lasky and Kristiana Gregory, who wrote about Queen Elizabeth and Cleopatra. My first book in the series, ISABEL, JEWEL OF CASTILLA, came out in 2000, followed by ANASTASIA.

I quickly learned that writing a fictional diary is tricky, quite unlike a novel with a first person narrator, which is more like an autobiography or a memoir. The difference is that the diarist has no idea what's coming next in her life; she is in the moment. The memoirist is looking back over the events of her life; she is telling us how she got from there to here and recalling what happened along the way.

The guidelines for writing the Royal Diaries were strict: each entry must be less than three pages, and could be only limited use of dialogue, more common in a conventional novel than in a "diary." This forced me to learn a lot about pacing as I worked on ANASTASIA, ISABEL, and my third Royal Diary, KRISTINA OF SWEDEN.

ANASTASIA has been successful since its publication, and now Scholastic has reissued it in a new paperback format with a very different look to the young duchess on the cover. Thirteen years have passed since the youngest daughter of the Russian tsar made her appearance, and it will interesting to see how she fares today.  Read More 

One summer in the 1990's I went back to my home town, Lewistown, Pennsylvania, for a visit. I no longer had any family there, my parents both long dead, and everything had changed so much over the decades that I could scarcely find my way around.

Nevertheless, one day I was wandering along Market Street, looking for anything that looked familiar, when I ran into an old family friend. Stanley Siegel had been my mother's lawyer, as his father had been before that. He suggested that we have lunch, and I agreed. I didn't know Stan very well, and I was curious about him and his family. Lewistown was a very small town with lots of German names, mostly "Pennsylvania Dutch"--my grandparents' name was Knepp--and only a small handful of Jewish families. So I asked Stan how his father had ended up there, of all places. And he told me his story.

His grandfather had been driven out of Europe and wound up in Philadelphia, where he became a peddler, traveling to Lancaster County every week with a pack on his back to sell his goods to Amish farmers. Stan's father, Harry Siegel, went with him. It was a good business relationship, Stan told me, because they had a nearly common language--Yiddish and the German dialect spoken by the Amish. They also were deeply religious, although not the same religion. Eventually, Stan's father went to law school, but at that time, many big city law firms didn't hire Jews. So he made his way to central Pennsylvania, to Lewistown, and established his practice there.

I was fascinated by this story, and of course the research was fun, searching for commonalities of which there were a lot. Not one of my most popular books, but one I really enjoyed writing. Read More 

There's nothing like moving to a new city to stir up the creative juices. I had barely gotten settled in Texas when the '90s gulf war forced the return of my stepdaughter, Vered, from her school in Israel. She came to live with her father and me and enrolled in the local high school. It did not go well.

Vered wanted to play her flute in the marching band, but when she learned that the halftime program was based on Christian hymns played while the band marched down the field in the form of a cross, she rebelled and I called the ACLU. All that separation-of-church-and-state stuff didn't seem to apply in Denton. Things went downhill fast, and when the band was barred from performing their halftime program, our girl was targeted. Her life was made miserable. There was one boy--ONE BOY!--who came to her defense. It wasn't enough, and eventually she dropped out.

When I wasn't tearing my hair, I was saving articles from the local paper. The situation made national news, but when it all finally calmed down and life went on, I began to write DRUMMERS OF JERICHO, about a Jewish girl who is vilified, and a church-going boy who has the courage to stick up for her.

There's happy ending. Vered got her GED, graduated from college with a Fine Arts degree, launched a small publishing company in Alaska, and is now in grad school. One thing more: she published my HOTLINE series in e-book form. Read More