Great questions!

Hi!
I’ve gotten behind here and there are many questions to answer. I’ll tackle some here and in two other posts.

Annette asks about the most challenging part of the process. For me, it’s the writing. Blank pages mock me. Before I can start a chapter, I have to “see” it in my mind’s eye—what it will say, in what order and how. But most challenging is getting it down in a way that is engaging and that moves along easily, while also capturing the right tone and information and remaining accurate. Great anecdotes and details make that easier. But oh, it’s so hard to leave out good stuff! There are choices to make every step of the way.
Tammy asked about how I wrestle all the research into submission. Well, like your high school English teacher probably said, organization is everything.

In order to pitch a book to an editor, we have to write a proposal and come up with chapter outlines, or at least a list of the chapters you envision. This is a great way to organize your thoughts early on, so you have a road map for where you’re going. If you don’t know what the chapters are going to be, roughly, it’s very hard to know what research to do. Of course, the chapters will change as you go along, but if the proposal is good, they won’t change much.

On Six Days, I gathered up everything I could find about the crash and even recruited some of my friends in NY to meet me at the public library, where we copied every story about those October days in every newspaper—and there were several newspapers in those days!

Before writing, I make file folders for each chapter (or sometimes, part of a chapter). Then, all of the material for each section goes in a folder. If it doesn’t fit in that chapter, it is set aside. If it is a key resource that will be used in a lot of chapters, it goes in a folder at the front. I have two or three rolling file carts, from Target and Container Store, and I usually fill one for each book.

With so much electronic now, I also create a “notes” file for each chapter. Then I can use the “search” function to find things. Once the writing starts, there is more filtering. But if I’ve organized well, the documents in each chapter file are more or less in order when I’m done, which makes fact-checking easier.
More than you really want to know, I’m sure!
Best,
Karen