How to Go From Idea to Publication, with Ada Calhoun

Writer Ada Calhoun was miserable. She had written and published books, was in a successful relationship and parenting experience and had great reviews for her professional work, and yet she was lying awake each night wondering about her life and its meaning. She then began to wonder how many other women her age were doing the same. She had an idea that middle-aged women were being overlooked – that research does not reflect their status, and one thing led to another to a bestselling book. How to go from idea to publication is not always a straight path, but it is one this author knows something about. Let’s listen in and read along as she tells us what she knows.

Marion: My guest today is Ada Calhoun. She’s the author of three books, including the new bestselling, Why We Can’t Sleep: Women’s New Midlife Crisis. She’s written for Time, National Geographic Traveler, The New Republic, Billboard, Cosmopolitan, Redbook, has contributed three essays to The New Yorker’s online Page Turner column, three Modern Love columns, four Lives columns to The New York Times, and she’s been a crime reporter for the New York Post. She contributes to The New York Times book review and more. She’s won multiple awards for her reporting and has taught reporting and writing at colleges and workshops. So welcome, Ada. You’re just the person I want to talk to about having a writing life and how to go from idea to publication.

Ada: I’m so glad. Thanks for having me.

Marion: You’re welcome. And I have to tell you that I suspect a lot of people begin the interviews these days by telling you that they laid awake all night last night. But I really did lie awake most of the night. But I wasn’t worrying about interviewing you. I was worrying about my work and how strung out amid my many roles I am, and how to fulfill the obligations. So I just love the title of your book, Why We Can’t Sleep: Women’s New Midlife Crisis, so thank you for that.

Ada: Well, thank you. It’s sadly relatable to a lot of people, the title.

Marion: It is. And I’m a Boomer, but I relate to it completely. So let’s set up this title a little bit. In 2017, you get an email from oprah.com suggesting you write a piece on how Gen X women seem to be floundering in midlife. You were dubious, you’ve said, I’ve read in a few interviews with you. And in the book, you are dubious. So when along the way of reporting did this idea begin to look like a book to you?

Ada: It wasn’t really until the article came out that I saw it as a book. And the reason that I did at that time was that I just started getting hundreds of messages from women around the country saying that when they read the article that something clicked for them, and that they felt like something that they had been feeling finally had a name to it. And I thought, “This is bigger than me. This is bigger than just a few friends of mine.” And I saw it as a larger project.

Marion: That’s great. So, the audience for QWERTY is mostly writers, so I want to keep the focus on helping them to write. And in the case of this new bestselling book, as we said, it came out of a piece that went viral after you published it. But you’re also a prolific essayist, so let’s walk them back through the process of thinking through what to write. Before you write anything, you get an idea. And in this case, somebody called you and gave you an idea, but you get an idea, and you feel it has some grit. But where do you go from there? How do you begin to test that idea?

Ada: Yeah. So for me, writing essays and reported stories have always felt kind of separate. So with essays, typically I get an idea, often in the middle of the night, or right when I first wake up, or right after I’ve had a fight with someone, or whenever I’m feeling particularly emotional. And I write it usually all kind of in one fell swoop. They often feel not exactly divinely inspired, but they come from somewhere, and I write them all at once, often. And then with reported pieces, I usually get an idea and I pitch it first before I do very much work. I usually report it out a little bit, just enough to maybe hook an editor, and then I pitch.

So I still get rejected a lot. I don’t know if that’s a consolation to writing students. But that is where I test it, basically is sending it to editors I know and saying, “Oh, hey. Do you want me to write a couple thousands words about this thing I’m seeing?” And then very often, the answer is no. But if they like it, then that is proof enough for me that it’s worth going to do.

Marion: So, this idea of testing I think is important. I pitch my stuff to my sister, who’s a writer. I pitch my stuff to my agent, or I pitch my stuff to my editor. I pitch my stuff. We test in different ways. But I think people lose sight of that fact that it doesn’t just drop into your head fully formed. It’s something, you try it, you think about it. As you said, it might come out of a fight. It might come out of a controversy at school, with your kids, it might come out of anything. But then you’ve really got to talk about it with somebody a little bit, whether it be the editor, or the agent, or maybe somebody at home. So we’re really talking about getting something kind of support for your ideas. Aren’t we?

Ada: I think so. I mean, obviously to get anything in a magazine, you need literal support in the form of money or space. So I think that for me winds up being the biggest test. And I often find that they’re right. I’ve pitched so many stories that now I look back and I think, “I’m glad they were turned down. They weren’t that good.” And then, or later on, I’ve found different ways into the subject. So I really respect editors a lot, I think. I’ve also written for a lot of different places, and I know a lot of different kinds of editors. And that I think is the greatest gift for a freelancer, is just to have a lot of different ideas about ways to structure something, places to send it, and people who might be able to help you craft it in one way or another, depending on the publication.

Marion: Yeah. I think that it’s part of our skill, our toolbox, is having people to help craft it. And speaking of toolboxes, I suspect working as a crime reporter for the New York Post is everything it sounds like in a skill builder. I worked for The New York Times, and I walked away with a nice little toolbox, but not every writer has those experiences, so let’s talk about interviewing. I tell people all the time, I predominantly work with memoirists, and I tell people that they need to interview people in their lives. And they’re always really surprised that they should do that. But for Why We Can’t Sleep, your new book, you interviewed over 200 people, and broad swaths, the broadest swaths of women over 28.

And you admit in the original magazine piece, as well as in the forward of the book, that all the time, despite all the outward shows of success, you had a new book out at the time, you had gotten on the Today Show and in The Washington Post. You were in your 40s and you were miserable. So how do we not bring our own intent to interviews? You didn’t, I’m sure, stick a microphone in someone’s face and say, “So you’re miserable too, right?” How do you allow them to tell their own tale when you’ve got an idea?

Ada: Well, my idea was that I was really curious to hear everyone’s stories. I find that it’s actually incredibly helpful to me personally to hear other people’s stories in great detail and to really hear them. It gets me out of my own miserable head for a bit, and it often gives me some perspective. And you mentioned working as a crime reporter, that was the best thing I ever did in terms of becoming a better writer. I didn’t go to school. I’ve never taken a journalism class or writing class. And I learned as a freelancer and I made a lot of mistakes along the way as a beat reporter in various areas.

But having to call people on really, really bad days, so often, it was in the wake of some kind of tragedy, and trying to find the girlfriend of the guy who just got arrested and interview her, things like that. It made is so that I didn’t mind being yelled at. I didn’t mind after a while, getting hung up on. It became part of my day, this expectation that even if I came at things with good intentions and compassion, that it might not be enough to make someone want to talk to me, and that was all right. That was fully within their rights to hang up on me or shut the door. And it got rid of the fear.

Ada: I think I used to be anxious. And I think doing that job made me have a lot of clarity about what this job is when you’re interviewing someone. You’re trying to find something out. You have to genuinely want to know, whatever the answer is. And to not, I think not anticipate what you’re going to hear. That’s one thing that always has bothered me in some, especially trend magazine stories, where you go in and you know what they’re going to say. And you even try to craft what they say. I’ve heard being in various news rooms, I’ve heard people say things like, “Okay. I need you to tell me something like this,” for quotes, which is appalling I think because-

Marion: It is.

Ada: What you want is you want to be able to call someone and say, “Did this happen?” And to be interested whether they say yes or no.

Marion: Yeah. It’s wonderful. And the agility that’s required of one’s curiosity and one’s ability to go with it, whatever they say, is part of the wonder of this experience and learning. But you do have to go in without that intent. I too have overheard people say, “I need you to say something like this,” and it is appalling, absolutely. So you learned a lot while you were writing about your generation. In fact, you write about how generation, gen X, marks the end of the American dream of prosperity. And the generation that we refer to as gen X is actually downwardly mobile with more dead and declining job stability. And while that’s fascinating, again, I want to return to the assignment at hand.

Marion: You’re reporting. You started out feeling unhappy in your otherwise successful looking life, only to report on that life and find out that things are actually far worse than you realized as you do all this data research. So let’s talk a little bit about the burden of story because some stories are a burden to carry. I mean, in some ways, I kept thinking about you as I was reading this and thinking about how you were feeling, and thinking about somebody I know who wrote a story once, where he discovered that he had a genetic marker for an illness. It’s like, “Oh, no.” And so how do you carry that along? This is kind of a bummer to realize in the cold hard terms, or to realize in cold hard terms how few advantages your generation will enjoy. So did you find that a burden?

Ada: That part, I did not find a burden. I actually found it a profound gift. And what’s been so interesting too in hearing people’s reactions to the article and then to the book, is that not knowing what’s going on is the worst, feeling like you alone are failing, and you alone screwed something up. It’s really hard on us. And if we’re able to see context and to think, “Oh, no. There are other forces at work,” there’s something about that, that provides some kind of peace. And that was definitely what I found working on the book. The more stories I heard, the more numbers I came up with, the more I thought, first of all, I was excited because I’m like, “This is something people haven’t talked about and aren’t necessarily pointing to.” And I think we should. I think gen X doesn’t get paid attention to.

I think middle-aged women don’t get paid attention to. And I can do that. I can point out something that people are feeling and sensing, but aren’t able to put numbers and facts and stories to. And so I found it a great gift. I think now I’m feeling a little of what you’re talking about, which is that a lot of the book really is about death, ultimately, when you boil it down. It’s about fear and death. And so I think now I do feel like I’m carrying it a little bit, just in the stories I’m hearing from women and the role I’m seeing the book play in the culture. It does feel like a responsibility now. But it didn’t when I was working on it. I just felt psyched.

Marion: That’s interesting. And ultimately, I have to say the book is so not a bummer, quite the opposite. In the chapter called New Narratives, you say the thing that every writer wonders about. You say, “Writing this book cured my midlife crisis.” So I need to ask you. What happened? Are we growing new neuro pathways as we write? I mean, people say that all the time. I hear that all the time from my writers who work with sex abuse. They talk about getting ahold of their story. And not writing an untrue end, it’s not that. It’s that they get to choose where it ends. So do you think along the path to reporting, you actually started to grow a new sense of who you are, where you are in this world?

Ada: I think writing always helps me figure things out, so every time I’ve ever had a real problem in any area of my life, the way that I came to understand it and came to get out of it was through writing about it and finding ways to describe it and to tell the story that made sense to me. Whenever I teach memoir writing, I always tell people, “You need to figure out what the beginning, middle and end of the story are, and who the heroes are, and who the villains are, and what the turning points are.” And there’s something about being able to do that for your life on the page that lets you actually, I think, do it in your life for real. I think that being able to tell the story and have it make sense, and making yourself the hero of the story is extremely powerful. And I’ve seen people transform their lives, not to be like hooley-booley about it. But I think it’s so strong. I think being able to tell the story in a way that makes you powerful, it can change lives.

Marion: I really agree. I’ve worked with hundreds of people through their sex abuse, writing essays, writing book length pieces. And I have seen them choose differently because they were writing about it, and have them write then about what the choices they made were. And I find it fascinating and wonderful, and I always feel honored to witness it. But I particularly loved the way you said this. It cured my midlife crisis. I was like, “Yes, that’s the best, best possible ending.” So you use a good dose of memoir. Talking about memoir: You teach memoir. I teach memoir. And you used a good dose of it to open the book, get us through the book. And we get to read and metabolize the culture touchstones you experienced along the way.

Marion: We’ve got Madonna’s pointy bras and the effect they had on all of us, the Challenger disaster, and many other things. So talk about the decision to put yourself in this book. I mean, you could’ve written a purely social science book, of course, but you carry the story along. How was that decision? Was it hard to make? Was it easy to make?

Ada: It was easy to make. As an editor, I always loved a slush pile. I always used almost everything that came in, in some way or another. And I just feel like if I have personal experiences, and I have friends, and I have interviews, and I have number, I’m going to find a way to use all those things. It would seem wasteful to not include myself if there was something relevant, or that people would want to hear.

Marion: I agree with you. I’m really a cannibal. In knowing how to go from idea to publication, I believe if it happens, I use it. If I’ve got it, it goes in. If I cut it out from a piece, I make another piece out of it. So I think it’s, I like the idea of the slush pile. When I was in the newspaper business, we had spikes on our desk of everything that came through. I miss my old spike, putting all the … And then you could pull it off at the end of the day and see what you didn’t use in a story.

One of the phrases I love in the book is that “caregiving rack.” And I laughed like hell, you call it the caregiving rack as opposed to what we’re usually seeing is this phrase sandwich generation, for what women become so easily when we’ve got kids and parents to care for. And I’ve always hated every food like memoir when it’s applied to women. It just makes me incredibly uncomfortable. I am not a baked good. You know? But you call it the rack, as in being on the rack, wrists and ankles tied in opposite directions. So, this takes a kind of courage that writers struggle with because it’s so easy to just the language that everyone thinks is recognizable. So how important is it to stake out your territory with your very own language, do you think?

Ada: I think if the given language works, I think use it. But in that particular case, one friend of mine said that the sandwich generation always sounded so cozy, like, oh, yes, with the crusts cut off and a side of Tang. And in fact, it can be so brutal that it needs a different metaphor. It needs something a little more violent. I tried panini. I tried a few things. And it felt like you needed a torture device. That was what I thought was called for.

Marion: Yeah. I agree with you, having gone through caregiving with both my parents. I can absolutely … I loved the rack. And I thought, “Yeah. That’s it. That’s good. That works.” So you have this now famous modern love piece that you published about a wedding toast you’ll never give, and it preceded the book titled Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give, which is a collections of essays on staying married, which I appreciate because I’ve been married a very long time. So let’s talk about the process of going big to small, or small to big, to write an essay, and then to expand that into a book. Does planning it out as an essay, whittling down the idea, eventually benefit you as a writer as you go to expand that idea into a book length piece? I frequently try to convince people to do that. And I’d love you to back me up here, Ada.

Ada: I’d be happy to back you up. I’m trying to think. So, I’ve done it twice, and of course, the great gift of having an essay go viral and then become a book is that you have people who want the book. So, I’ve done both. I’ve pitched a book just from scratch. I did that with my New York City history, Saint Marks is Dead. No one was clamoring for that book. I really had to kind of force it into the hands of editors. When you have an essay, it’s a nice way of testing the audience. So, if you publish it and you hear nothing, which of course has happened with most of the essays I’ve published, then you know it might not have legs as a book. And then if something comes out, and you’re getting tons and tons of messages and hearing all of these different people’s stories, then I think it becomes like a … What’s it called when the king asks you to do something? Royal command.

And that is a great gift. It’s been different every time. So, in that case, I’d had a few essays in Modern Love and Lives that I was able to then use for that essay collection that was kind of a memoir. And then in the case of the oprah.com story that became Why We Can’t Sleep, I over reported that story so, so much. I think I had 40,000 words of material from the article that ran at 6000 words, so I had a really nice jumping off point. But it’s funny, I think every project is different. And I always think every project has a size it wants to be, at least one size that it wants to be, and sometimes two, and that you just have to look at the material and be really honest with yourself. Even if you feel like you’d rather write a book, if it really wants to be 1500 words, you have to respect that story.

Marion: Every project has a size it wants to be, yes. And it’s knowing that, knowing if you can go the distance with something as an idea on so many levels. Can I live with this for three years? Can I live with this for only an hour and a half? And then is there that much to say? So having 40,000 words for a 6,000 word piece is a great indicator that there’s something there. But you’re absolutely right, the response is just wonderful. I think the online world allows for so much more of a finger on the pulse for writers to know. It used to be, we had to kind of wait to see if we got any mail, as in letters. These days, it’s likes and comments and all of that. And it’s a great mechanism I think for gauging whether something should be expanded into a larger piece.

I had a listener write in this week asking me to ask writers about their practice. So I’m going to ask you. Do you write in the morning? Do you use Scrivener or Word? How about discipline? Do you use a word count, a daily word count, a page count? How do you work, standing up at a desk, lying in bed, sitting at the bus stop in the car? I mean, let’s talk a little bit about what this looks like in your life?

Ada: Well, I don’t know that I’m a very good role model for anyone because it’s different every single day, so I also ghost write books. I’ve ghost written 14 books in the last 10 years in addition to the ones I’ve written under my own name. And when I’m ghost writing for someone else, it becomes easier because often the deadline is three months away, and I have to get 90,000 words in three months, and I just do the math. And I’m like, “Okay, well, we need this many thousand words every week.” And I make sure that I get enough interviews to get that material. And then I send it in week after week. And I get that done.

It’s kind of work for hire. It feels like kind of clocking in and out, and I write either at the library, I’ve rented an office one time. I often work at coffee shops. I work on my couch sometimes, surrounded by Legos. I don’t have any structure. I mean, some days, if I’m on deadline for something, I’ll start working when I wake up in the morning, and I’ll take time out to feed my family and things like that. But then I’ll get back on the computer and work until the middle of the night. And then some days, like today, I had lunch with my husband. I walked around. So I don’t have any schedule or structure, and I don’t recommend it, but I don’t know any other way to be.

Marion: It’s fine. And I think that there’s this, again, there’s this idea that there’s this completely regularized world every single day. And of course, the dog gets sick, kids get sick. I’ve written as much sitting waiting at the bus stop as I have anyplace else. And you do what you can as you can. I think that whole idea of ghost writing though opens up a whole line of inquiring because I too have done some ghost writing, and I thought it gave me a really interesting and different set of skills. And you just talked about the word count. You just do the math. It’s 90,000 words. It’s due in three months. Okay, I know what I’ve got to do here. And you’re going to divide that up into five days a week, or however many days a week you might be able to work.

The other thing that I thought that I thought that ghost writing gave me some real insight on, that I thought I knew cold was rewrite, the idea of the importance of rewrite because you’re really rewriting someone else’s voice, or you’re rewriting … Sometimes I was handed a manuscript that was in trouble, and I had to rewrite the entire thing. So what other skills? You’ve got the discipline of the word count. I found the rewrite to be interesting. What about you? What else do you think that the ghost writing experience has brought to your toolbox?

Ada: Structure, I would say. So every book I’ve done has been a different kind of book. I’ve done fashion and personal finance and a memoir. I’ve noticed that every, again, everything has a length it wants to be. Everything has a structure it wants to be. And I’ve started to see because I’ve done so many of them now that I can read a bunch of material or a bunch of transcripts and think, “Oh, I know. I know what the chapters are.” I know what this looks like, it kind of feels like the matrix or something, where I can just see the hidden structure. And then it’s just about, it’s like doing a crossword puzzle or something, like putting it together where it wants to go.

Marion: Yeah. I think structure is a great lesson, absolutely. I was having a conversation with a writer a couple of weeks ago. And we talked about where we get our structure ideas. And I remember, I hadn’t thought of this in years, I but I wrote a book years ago for Simon and Schuster on forensic science. And I was really, really, really, really struggling with the structure. And I went to the movies one early afternoon, I remember, to see that football movie that Oliver Stone made. I think it’s Any Given Sunday. And of all things, sitting in the movie, it occurred to me how I had to shoot the book because he shoots the whole football, all of these football scenes from the field, as opposed to above, as we’re used to seeing them now on TV. And so I said, “You’ve got to get out of the pulpit, Marion,” because I was writing it like every other forensic science book I ever wrote, which was very off, out of the hands of the reader. And what I really wanted to do was take you into the body bag with me. Right?

Ada: Right.

Marion: Because I got to go into all those places, and so I thought, “That’s how you do it.” So I think we get our cues a lot of the time, we might feel that’s a faulty place from which to get writing advice, sitting in a movie one afternoon. But it’s not really, I don’t think. We kind of take our cues how we can on structure and on voice. Have you ever had any wacky place that you’ve had a writing lesson like that, that’s unexpected, that you can think of?

Ada: I was thinking about it today actually because I’ve been trying to figure out if this book becomes a TV, or movie, or something like that. What would it look like? And I remembered this children’s book, The 12 Dancing Princesses, that I had when I was a little girl, that I read to my son, the same copy. And it’s this beautiful old early ’80s copy of the book. And it’s where all the women sneak out, all the princesses sneak out of the castle in the middle of the night, and they go to this magical world. And I’d started thinking about that and about how we’re all up all night, and a lot of us at this age. And what would it look like if we all somehow snuck out of the castle? It’s just a story that I’ve been thinking about all day long and thinking of it as a possible framework for an adaptation.

Marion: I love that idea. And I think that has to be encouraged because honestly, I’m grateful if I get any indication, whether it be from an apple tree, or a bird I’m walking by, or an Oliver Stone movie, I’ll take all the help I can get. But I think a lot of times with writers who are just beginning, they feel like those are illegitimate responses that they’re having, that it’s not like that. You should know what to do as soon as you sit down. And of course, if that were the case, no one would ever write because it’s such an adventure every day. It’s such an experience of annotation, of everything you’ve read and tasted and thought and heard and all of that. But you’ve got to kind of be, not to put too woo woo of woo woo on it, but you’ve got to kind of be open to all of that sort of stuff. I’m not very woo-woo. I’m more sort of like the S and M of writing. It’s a hard chair. It’s a lot of caffeine. But I do take my cues wherever I can get them, absolutely.

Ada: I think that’s great. Also, I think-

Marion: Yeah. Go ahead. What were you going to say?

Ada: I was going to say I think that young writers tend to think they have to lash themselves to their desk and make themselves just generate page, after page, after page. And I do think we need to go to the movies. And you carry a notebook around and write whenever you think of something. But if you have days where you don’t think of anything, it’s okay. You might just be saving it up somewhere in your brain. I think that a lot of people are just too hard on themselves thinking that they have to force something that’s not coming.

Marion: I think that’s absolutely true. And I keep a notebook. I have one tied to the gearshift of my car. I have one tied to the handle of my purse inside. If there’s one available, I always say to people, “Be hospitable.” Just keep a notebook around because you will see something out there in the world. You won’t know what to do with it at the time you see it, but if you’ve got it, you can think about it. And you can have access to it later when you’re not so busy. So being hospitable to me is sort of the first and foremost thing I try to be every day.

Marion: Speaking of which, I think that people are not that hospitable, or less hospitable to women’s ideas. I think women get more attacked for their ideas far more than men do. And so how does a writer sustain her courage in this age of instant access? You’ve written a book that some people might criticize for, oh, it’s just a lot of women whining. I sure as hell don’t think that’s what it is. But what do you do to develop that hard … We don’t want a hard shell. We want just to be protective. How do you do that?

Ada: Yeah. I think it took me a little while. But now I think that everything I write has an audience. It has certain people that it’s for. And if somebody’s going to say, “Oh, it’s a bunch of women whining,” or something like that, it’s just not for you. It’s not your book. It’s for these other people. And that’s who I’m writing for, and that’s who it exists for. And I don’t really care about the others. Sorry. Sorry, at Good Reads, review who said whining. Yeah. I don’t know. It’s okay. It’s fine.

Marion: What can we look for next from you? What are we scanning the pages of The New York Times, or the New Yorker, or the online world for, please?

Ada: I’m not sure yet. I’m doing an audio project about Frank O’Hara, the poet, right now. And then I’m not really sure where that’s going at the moment. I’ve been on book tour a bunch, so I’m kind of concentrating on doing right by my publisher and trying to show up places. And I’m doing a little bit of freelancing here and there. But yeah, otherwise I’m just waiting to see what comes next.

Marion: Well, thank you, Ada. It was lovely to have you here. And good luck with the book. It’s a joy to read.

Ada: Oh, thank you so much.

Marion: You’re welcome. Ada Calhoun is the author of Why We Can’t Sleep: Women’s New Midlife Crisis. Get it wherever books are sold. I’m Marion Roach Smith, and you’ve been listening to QWERTY. QWERTY is produced by Overit Studios in Albany, New York. Reach them at Overitstudios dot com. Our producer is Adam Clairmont. Our assistant is Lorna Bailey. Want more on the art and work of writing, visit marionroach.com and take a class with me. And thanks for listening. Don’t forget to subscribe to QWERTY and listen to it wherever you go.

Author photo by Gilbert King