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Dec 20, 2009, 11:36pm

Worlds of Wonder Community :: Writer Resources :: Mechanics 101 :: How NOT to write a biography

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Topic: How NOT to write a biography (Read 189 times)

JP Dellova
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How NOT to write a biography
« Thread Started on Jul 13, 2006, 8:12pm »

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In the early eighties a lady editor friend of mine asked me to ghost-write a biography of Sara Dalano. She'd gotten a grant for the project and supposedly had already done the research -- Yeah, right.

The research she was talking about was interviews she'd conducted with all but one of the Franklin/Eleanor children, the missing sibling had already died.

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So, I went through her interview notes, which were totally inept. None of the Roosevelt's wanted to talk about their grandmother. They seemed to have had fond memories of her, but remembered surprisingly little about the old girl as a person, other than her having been very nice to them.

That didn't deter my colleague, who badgered them with questions like, "You mean, you don't recall her favorite color? Her favorite flower? Her favorite meal? Her favorite --?"

They all wanted to talk about other things, boring stuff like the Depression and WWII and either their mother or father's part in one or the other, things like that. My colleague would have none of it, she wanted Sara and only Sara. I nearly puked when she told me how the daughter kept talking about the circumstances of FDR's death and how his old flame had been present, but not Eleanor. Also wanted to talk about how her grandmother had been hell on earth for her mother till she'd nearly wrecked the marriage and it was only then that she backed off a little.

So, we had an argument and parted ways. She never realized that they wanted to give her enough information for three or four books, all much better than the mother's bio, which we could have faked while saving the interviews for a more interesting project.

Anyway, I never got to meet those people, met some other peripherals who still lived in Upstate New York at the time, but I think all the children other than Elliot were dead by the time I came onto the ill-fated Sara project.

For my own part I have to confess to some arrogance and stupidity (shocking!! :eek:

). Her handling of those interviews at once turned me off and, after that, I didn't think Sara was interesting enough to write a book about. But I was probably wrong; for better or worse she did a lot to shape a key president, his globe trotting wife, and an interesting family.

It's possible there's still an interesting book in there, but it would be harder to put it together now as everything would need to be secondhand information.

Sometimes we get the right opportunity, but at the wrong time.

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Sharon
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Re: How NOT to write a biography
« Reply #1 on Jul 17, 2006, 11:01pm »

What an opportunity lost!

That woman should have her "writer's liscence" revoked

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JP Dellova
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Re: How NOT to write a biography
« Reply #2 on Jul 18, 2006, 12:38pm »

Agreed, Sharon, except I don't think she ever got that license in the first place.

Unlike yourself, a fine writer who is also a fine editor, she was only an editor -- and an excellent one -- but she couldn't write if her life depended on it.

We met in the mid-70s in Greenwich Village. I don't know how writing entered into the picture but I do remember her saying, once in a cafe, "You can't spell, you can't handle grammar properly and you're really just a thug who reads a lot and through some quirk of evolution is a good writer. Look, I know perfectly well that I'm boring. We ought to team up." And we did, I'd write her book reviews under her name and, in exchange, she let me keep the books.

When she approached me with this Sara D. deal she at first said, "This is your big chance. We'll be coauthors, your name can go first [hers started with an E] and we'll split it, 55 to me and 45 to you. I've already done all the research, all you need to do is write it, that's all. It will take you a week at the most and I'll correct your work."

I agreed. We started working on it. Her interview notes were bad enough, then I found out she used a cassette recorder and used the same tape for all of them, rewinding it back to the start after she'd written her notes from the actual interview, destroying it with the next one. How moronically cheap is that one? The only interview that remained was the one with the Roosevelt daughter and when I listened to it my blood curdled. Couldn't help it, kept hearing that woman wanted to tell things about both her parents infidelities, about how her father as president got back at the military personnel (mainly navy officers) who had flings with his wife -- and that lunatic kept acting as though it was something she'd rather not get into, just Sara Delano, thank you, nothing else.

That was when I walked out it. Oh, also, she suddenly changed the arrangement. "I'll tell the publisher that you helped me write it, that ought to be good enough, but my name has to be the only one as author. If it makes a profit I'll give you a fair cut." So, to be more precise, that was when I walked out.

A week or so later she came over a table I was at and said, "Oh come on, you aren't still angry are you?"

-- Have you ever fallen in love with a crazy person?

Years later I saw her again, a timid looking guy at her side. "This is my husband, Fritz." Except he already put his hand out and introduced himself as Fred. I shook it and she corrected him, "Fritz." Ahhh, better him than me.

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