Name: Rachel Pine

Course:"Humor Writing for Journalists" with Lynn Harris

Output:The novel Twins of TriBeCa, published this month by Miramax books.

How I found the class: I can't remember why I signed up for that course in particular, so it must have had to do with the time that it was given, and that I was impatient and it was starting soon. I honestly have no idea how I heard about it. At that time Mediabistro was quite small, and I don't even know how I heard about that. I do remember that I angsted for a couple of days because Darby Saxby was the person to whom you had to email a writing sample, and I couldn't figure out if this was a man or a woman, and I've always hate addressing someone I don't know by their first name. I eventually called Darby to hear who answered and then hung up. [ed's note: I deal with this a lot in my day job a lot. In this case I would just write the letter "Dear Darby Saxby"] Major hurdle solved, I emailed my writing sample to her and waited to hear back, because the application said that the class was very selective and everyone's samples would be read and then it would be decided who would be allowed to take the course. I waited a while and I called Darby a couple of times, but now I left voicemails. I was growing frantic and browsed around the site, and saw that there was someone who worked at MB named Taffy. I knew instinctively that a Taffy would let me into the class because there are no nasty Taffys. In the end it was she who enrolled me.

What I learned:The best lesson I learned over this time, which was a time of many, many lessons, is that it's every bit as hard to write a book that doesn't get published as it is to write one that does. It's only luck and a fickle marketplace that separates the two.

How the course helped me:The class was great, and Lynn was and is an excellent teacher. We had a lot of guest instructors, among them Andy Borowitz, A.J. Jacobs and Ben Greenman from The New Yorker. They added a lot to the course because each was incredibly positive and enthusiastic, while providing fantastic advice to our class. Most of all, I would say they were generous with their time and with their wisdom. We focused a lot on satire, which has always been a favorite literary form of mine. The best part of the course was learning how to start with something rooted in reality and just go from there, wherever you liked. When the course ended, I didn't pursue any writing projects, except for one, a story that I submitted to Mr. Beller's Neighborhood. Every woman has had a haircut that made her cry, but in this essay, which was 100% true, I was crying before the haircut even started. When Tom Beller published that on his site, it was an unbelievable adrenaline rush and all I wanted to do was write a novel. After all, I'd gotten 500 words published, so it was the next logical step (see Taffy, above). I had an idea for a book about someone who worked at a place that was like Miramax, but not really, and that this person could be a hipper, smarter, better-looking version of me. I met an agent through a friend, and the only thing I had to show her was that story on Mr. Beller's. Believe it or not, she read it and said that if I wrote a proposal, she'd take me on as a client. She had just a short slug about the book, and put it on her agency's menu. One night as I was walking into the theater to see "Matt & Ben," of all shows, she called and said that something like 13 publishers had expressed interest. I was pretty shocked. I wrote the first three chapters and an outline of about 90 additional pages, which is what she pitched. It was sold pretty quickly. Then I wrote the rest of it, and wrote it a few more times for good measure. I wrote Chapter One 87 times.