Come see Sebastian Junger and others talk about their transition from writing articles to books in mediabistro’s June 28 panel discussion, “From Journo to Big Book.”

For nearly two years in the early 1960s, Boston lived in fear of a serial killer dubbed the Boston Strangler—so named for his habit of garroting his female victims with their undergarments after he’d sexually brutalized them. At the same time, then-infant Sebastian Junger’s parents commissioned the addition of an art studio to their suburban Boston property. Staying home with her new baby, Mrs. Junger oversaw the construction, much of which was done by Al DeSalvo, the man who would later confess—and then recant—to being the Boston Strangler.

A Death in Belmont is Junger’s investigation into the unsolved mystery surrounding the Strangler. In his book’s opening, an older woman lies raped and strangled in her home—all signs that the Strangler has struck again. Within 24 hours, a black man named Roy Smith who’d cleaned the dead woman’s house is arrested and charged with her murder. After Smith gets convicted by an all-white jury, more women are raped and strangled around Boston, yet Smith’s proclamations go unheeded. Junger leads the reader through evidence and circumstance that asks: Did Roy Smith go to jail simply because he was a black man in wrong place at the wrong time? Or did his petty criminal behavior escalate to a dark, heinous murder? Was Al DeSalvo, a convicted rapist, really the Boston Strangler? And if so, did Junger’s own mother somehow skirt a violent death at the hands of a serial killer?

mediabistro: What motivated you to turn this story—which no doubt has been told many times in your family—into a book?

Junger: I don’t remember any of it [happening] because I was too young, but I thought the story was interesting. It was 40 years ago, and I assumed that a lot of the people involved were starting to die.

I came to this project not really knowing anything about the Boston Strangler. It was important for me to be objective, and separate myth from reality. Initially, I wanted to exonerate the black guy and then, very quickly, I realized I couldn’t do that. In fact, he might possibly be guilty. I had to make ambiguity interesting because, ultimately, the truth is ambiguous and there is no way to know what happened.

mediabistro: How did you approach the research; where did you begin?

Junger: I went to the library and looked at old news articles about the case. From there, the research goes off into a million different directions. I started tracking down old witnesses, and trying to understand criminal law.

mediabistro: What about getting the court transcripts?

Junger: They were hard to get. I think they had to be xeroxed by hand, so someone did me a big favor. I don’t know who it was, but I eventually got [the transcripts]. They knew who I was, and I think someone must have liked The Perfect Storm because they did me a huge favor.

But, if an aspect of my researched was stalled, I just switched to another. So while I waiting for documents to come through and for people to turn up, I pushed ahead on many fronts at the same time.

mediabistro: Was there a method to your reporting?

Junger: You just track down everyone you possibly can and every document that could possibly be useful. There were so many things to pursue that I didn’t try to pursue everything at once. I blocked out the areas of knowledge I needed to have and then I pursued those. I also hired a researcher to help me.

mediabistro: When did you decide you’d finished your research?

Junger: I didn’t—I was simultaneously writing and reporting up until the end. I never closed myself off to the possibility of doing more research or getting more information.

mediabistro: How long did you conduct research before you began writing?

Junger: I started in 1999, and got enough for a book proposal. From 2003 to 2005, I was writing and reporting.

mediabistro: When investigating this story, what aspects of it made you the angriest?

Junger: I was disappointed in Roy. He did things that pointed to his guilt. Pardon the pun, but if Roy’s story were more black-and-white, it would have been easier, and probably less interesting. I felt like at first I was out to exonerate him, and then I found out that he did some very bad things in his life that disappointed me. I thought I was trying to help him and he was making that job harder for me. He did some suspicious things that day, and I kept getting disappointed in him. Then I gave up having any investment in him.

I realized you can’t be rooting for one team when you’re a journalist—you have to be totally impartial. I really shouldn’t care about the outcome of whether he’s guilty or innocent. And in the end I really didn’t, because I had very serious doubts about his innocence.

mediabistro: The book has a lot of detailed information—probably constituting just a fraction of your reporting. How did you decide what would go into the book and what wouldn’t?

Junger: Information has to be accurate, and the way you assemble it has to have veracity. You can assemble true facts in a way that is actually misleading, and you have to be very careful about that. I actually showed my book to a lot of people in the criminal justice system in Massachusetts, some of whom had also had read the trial transcripts. That was my attempt to make sure it had veracity, as well as being accurate.

Then, you take those things that you have, those building blocks, and you try to build something that has some narrative structure and some narrative tension, with an ear for what it’s like to be a reader. You want to inform [readers] and not bore them, and you have to be very sensitive as to when you cross that line.

“Information has to be accurate, and the way you assemble it has to have veracity. You can assemble true facts in a way that is actually misleading, and you have to be very careful about that.”

mediabistro: Was there anything that your editor or other readers advised you to cut but you kept in the book anyway?

Junger: The mechanics of criminal law. My agent was pretty skeptical about including the legal stuff, but I had to put it in there. It’s like meteorology in The Perfect Storm. I tried to boil it down to basic, layman’s terms. One reviewer said it was like a high school civics class but then, a defense lawyer told me that my explanation was better than some judges’ instructions to jurors. You can’t please everyone.

mediabistro: Why do you think A Death in Belmont was an important story to tell?

Junger: The justice system is always important in any country. It [the 1960’s] was an era in America of terrible social upheaval and racial conflict, and I was curious about it. You don’t have to always think it’s important to feel it’s worth doing. It doesn’t necessarily have to have a wider importance—it might—but you can’t know that until the book comes out.

mediabistro: Tackling race, class, and injustice is quite an undertaking. If you didn’t have some personal attachment to this story, would you have been the right person for this job?

Junger: Yes. I wasn’t that close to it; if I had been, it would have clouded my vision and reporting. It was a story that I’d heard, but I had no memory of it. In a sense I could have been any reporter.

I feel that journalism is the same set of rules and standards and objectives, whether you’re writing a memoir—which is just journalism about yourself—or war reporting, or writing about a criminal trial. It’s all the same process, and you just apply it to whatever subject you’re working on. It doesn’t really matter if you know about something. If you know about something that you have strong emotions about, that’s different. I didn’t have strong emotions about this story at all.

mediabistro: The style of your writing in A Death in Belmont is part history lesson, part magazine feature, part novel. Was there a conscious decision on your part to write it like that?

Junger: Yes and no. A good paragraph is a good paragraph. You have to go back and forth. Too much drama is shallow, and too much history can be boring. Powerful journalistic writing simply uses facts in the same dramatic way that novelists use fiction. Dramatic structure is dramatic structure, and whether you build it out of verified facts or things that you think of, it’s the same. The plot can follow the rise and fall of dramatic action in nonfiction, too

If you want people to read your journalism, you have to give some thought to how you’re going to assemble all these facts. But, you can assemble them artfully and compellingly, and that’s the job of someone who wants the public to read his work.

mediabistro: Personally, who do you think was the Boston Strangler?

Junger: I don’t know or I would have said in the book. Gut feeling can’t be relied on—you need logic and fact. The Goldberg family feels that Roy Smith did it. Roy Smith’s family feels that he didn’t do it. Their feelings are totally understandable, but they’re not more reliable than the facts are—they don’t illuminate the truth at all. It just reflects the reality of their situation, which is that both families lost somebody in one way or another, and their feelings about who did what reflects that.

mediabistro: Will we ever know who the Boston Strangler was?

Junger: All the evidence in the Roy Smith case has been destroyed. The state of Massachusetts has the stuff to test against Al De Salvo, but they don’t seem interested in doing it. Without that test, it will never be proved definitively if he was or wasn’t the Boston Strangler.

Want to hear from other journalists who’ve made the move to writing books? Come to mediabistro’s June 28 panel discussion, From Journo to Big Book: How Five Journalists Became Authors, featuring The Perfect Storm author Sebastian Junger, Vanity Fair‘s David Margolick, and more.

Heather Marie Graham writes magazine and Web features that run the topical gamut, on top of being an associate editor at EverydayHealth.com. This is her first piece for mediabistro.

Named as National Magazine Award finalist in five categories, New York magazine under newish EIC Adam Moss has earned the attention and admiration of readers even outside of the metro area. The magazine’s “Strategist” department, which serves as a swanky service guide to its high-end (or aspirational) readers, was recognized with its own honors as one of five finalists for the “Magazine Section” award. Strategist editor Janet Ozzard took the time to answer our questions mid-close.

Mediabistro: So, is it REALLY an honor just to be nominated? What was your reaction?

Janet Ozzard: It’s incredibly flattering to have our peers acknowledge our work. But the Strategist is the result of many people — writers, editors, art, photo, copy — working very hard every week to make it great. The nomination recognizes them, which makes me very happy.

Mediabistro: The Strategist has recurring sections — food, best bets, Look Book, etc. — but always seems fresh. How do you keep up that kind of momentum with a weekly magazine?

Janet Ozzard: We’re fluid with the format. I have the great good fortune to work with Adam Moss, who loves change, and who encourages us to experiment with new ways to communicate information. So there are the weekly rubrics (Shopclerk, Lookbook, Best Bets) and regularly appearing ones like the Everything Guides, Neighborhood Maps, and so on. But sometimes we have an idea for something we want to write about, and we make up the format to fit it. I’m also always encouraging — well, hounding — the staff to go deeper with information. New Yorkers are extremely specific and opinionated; you’re talking to a population that knows precisely which subway car lets you off closest to the stairwell that isn’t under construction. A lot of service stories feel very soft and predictable, but New Yorkers won’t stand for that.

Mediabistro: Design is a big part of the section’s appeal. What is your role in the design of Strategist?

Janet Ozzard: Not to harp on the “team” thing, but it is the truth. I have my ideas about what the pages should look like, but the photo and art departments have theirs, too — and those are generally better. With so much information on the page, clear design is incredibly important.

Mediabistro: Where does Amy Larocca find her subjects for Look Book? And why does that feature “work” for the magazine?

Janet Ozzard: I get asked this question all the time, and here is the god’s honest truth: All the subjects of the Lookbook are RANDOMLY FOUND ON THE STREET. Every few weeks, Amy and the photographer, Jake Chessum, set up a white seamless on a street corner and then just stand there and…wait. For hours. They always come back with at least ten or 12 amazing characters.

It works for the magazine because we’re actually doing something every New Yorker thinks about. Everyone walks down the street and looks at other people and thinks, “That person looks so cool/crazy/interesting, I wonder what he/she does.” We answer the question. And it’s very funny.

Mediabistro: As an editor, how do stay on top of all the new and current stuff that’s featured in The Strategist? How important are your staff and writers in keeping you abreast of stuff that should go in the section? What role do publicists play?

Janet Ozzard: Like every editor, I read as much as I can; newspapers, magazines, online. But the staff and writers are very important, of course. They’re the critical filter. One of the good things about working on a city magazine is that we are the reader. We’re not writing about someplace we’ve never been, or some experience we’ve never had.

Publicists, I’m sorry to say, generally don’t get the Strategist. I get a lot of pitches for stuff that’s already been somewhere else, or a trend that’s come and gone, or a product whose main claim to fame is that it’s new. Just because it’s new doesn’t make it better.

Mediabistro: There are so many outlets in New York City for info about restaurants and new stores and real estate etc. What do you do editorially do differentiate yourself? How do you stay on top of your competitors?

Janet Ozzard: We’re selective. Again, we won’t write about something just because it’s new. There has to be a compelling reason, or reasons. Our food writers Robin Raisfeld and Rob Patronite, for example, are incredibly diligent, skeptical reporters. If they say they’re going to do a food map of Red Hook, they’ll go out and spend three days in Red Hook, walking around, eating, interviewing people. Then they’ll come back and do research. And they’re great writers. Who can beat that?

Mediabistro: What’s your daily/weekly routine like? What’s the lead time for Strategist?

Janet Ozzard: The early part of the week is hectic, of course, so we tend to do a lot of catching up and planning on Thursday and Friday. Lead time is at least a couple of weeks; for visual stuff like The Best Bet, it’s a month.

Mediabistro: What’s your editorial background? How did you end up at New York?

Janet Ozzard: I started at Women’s Wear Daily and worked there for 9 years, gradually becoming a deputy editor; I also wrote for W as well. I spent two of my Fairchild years in Paris as a beauty editor, running a publication that’s produced out of the Paris office in three languages. I left Fairchild in 2001, freelanced for all of two months, and then became executive editor of Style.com, which was tremendous fun, for three years. Jamie Pallot, the editorial director, is a fantastic boss. I’d been wanting to branch out from fashion, but wasn’t sure where I was going next. I was thinking about grad school. I’d been reading New York magazine forever, and I found Adam’s changes really exciting. Then I heard about this job and just jumped.

Michael Ausiello loves television. As a senior writer for the print and online versions of TV Guide, Ausiello delivers news items and spoilers on hot shows including Lost, Grey’s Anatomy, and Gilmore Girls.

A 1995 graduate of the University of Southern California, New Jersey native worked PR jobs for Entertainment Tonight and a non-profit before turning to the more creative field of entertainment writing. He freelanced for TVGuide.com for six months before joining the site permanently in 2000.

His personality shone through early in the site’s “Entertainment News” column, where catty throwaway lines at the end of each item soon helped drive traffic and increase reader feedback. His signature column, “Ask Ausiello”, not only provides juicy scoops, but gives Ausiello a chance to tell readers about his obsession with his favorite shows, his still-simmering Felicity fixation, and his love of Smurfs, Snapple, and Mariska Hargitay.

Mediabistro: So when you started working for TVGuide.com, did the magazine and the website have separate staffs?

Ausiello: When I first came on board, the staffs couldn’t have been more separate; they were just like almost completely different brands. Over the course of the six years I’ve been here, the two platforms have merged more, and you see a lot of people working for both.

Mediabistro: How your star rose at TV Guide, as far as I’ve seen, is that your writing style came through a lot in the “Entertainment News.” Is that your natural humor coming through or is this something your editors told you to play up?

Ausiello: All that seemed to come naturally to me over time, and I became more comfortable with the column, and I developed my own voice. It just all happened very naturally.

Mediabistro: Did your editors tell you to cut back on the humor or were they encouraging all the way?

Ausiello: No, they were encouraging, you know? Because I think they saw the response was really good, and the traffic for that particular column seemed to trend upward, the more personal voice I injected into it. It’s really all about the traffic and the hits; that’s really what counts. There were times when they asked me to pull it back, when I just took something too far. I’m the first person to admit there are times when I take things too far (laughs), so it’s good to have sort of a watchdog there, but for the most part they’re really supportive and encouraging.

Mediabistro: How did the “Ask Ausiello” column come about?

Ausiello: About two years after I started doing “Entertainment News”, they gave me a feedback box, which enabled readers to write in to me and comment on my stuff. The more I read the emails from readers, and as the volume of emails increased, I decided there’s an opportunity here, because some of the emails were so funny and intelligent and wacky, I was like, “there’s something I could use here.” So I pitched them an idea. For a while I knew I wanted to do a Q&A column, but my workload was just so intense it was adding something else just seemed daunting. But for whatever reason, I was like, “I’m ready to do this.” But that’s really how it was born; I knew I wanted to do it, and for whatever reason I felt like it was a good time to tackle it.

Mediabistro: It’s not like a Q&A column like Matt Roush’s, where he answers questions like a critic; there’s a lot of you in it.

Ausiello: Yeah, “Ask Ausiello” is more me than anything I’ve done in my entire career. I think initially it was more personality than news and scoops. Initially, I wasn’t really sure what it was going to be; I just knew they were asking questions and I had answers to some of them. It would be a mix of personal and TV stuff, and then it sort of evolved to where I think it’s more scoopy than personal, but I think the mix is what’s important.

Mediabistro: Did you have any kind of trepidation openly fawning for people in the entertainment industry? Did you think this was just something natural for you or were you afraid to do it at first?

Ausiello: No, I wasn’t really afraid to do it. I feel part of what makes “Ask Ausiello” work and what people like about is, at the core, I’m a TV fan, and I get obsessed with certain shows and certain actors and actresses. I didn’t feel like I wanted to stifle that. And it came naturally, and the thing is, I think that’s what really bonds me with my readers is that we like the same stuff. We like Felicity, we like Gilmore Girls, we like Veronica Mars, Lost, it goes on and on, and we like a lot of the actors, too. I just think it’s fun.

Mediabistro: Do you think this is something that’s allowable in entertainment journalism?

Ausiello: If I worked for The New York Times, I think it would be a more of a conflict and more of something that would be scrutinized. But because most of my stuff is web-based, I feel like I’m given a little more leeway with that. I feel like I’m given more leeway, because I don’t really look at myself as this hard news journalist, you know, although I can be that and I can do that. I think I’m sort of like a TV-fan-slash-journalist.

Mediabistro: When did you start with the print column, “The Ausiello Report”?

Ausiello: I’ve probably been doing that for about three years. They saw I had a nose for news and they liked the tone of my column, so the magazine came to me and said, “We’d be interested in having you write a weekly column, do you want to write up a test?” And I did it and they really liked it. Initially it was called just “TV News by Michael Ausiello,” but it sort of evolved into “The Ausiello Report.”

Mediabistro: How is it different from “Ask Ausiello?”

Ausiello: It’s a lot less me, and it’s really all about the news. It’s got a little personality in terms of my sense of humor, but it’s not me talking about what I did the night before, or how I got an office at TV Guide. It’s just news with a fun sort of edgy slant to it.

Mediabistro: Is the subject matter different in the magazine column? I would imagine that the demographics for the website are different than for the magazine.

Ausiello: Definitely. I just did a little item on Out of Practice, about how Henry Winkler and Marion Ross are going to reunite in an episode. Those are stories � Out of Practice and the Happy Days reunion � that’s a story I’d only put in the magazine. I’d never put that in either of my online columns, because I don’t think my readers really care about that. The online folks are more into the cult shows and the serialized shows like Lost, Gilmore Girls, and Veronica Mars, and I feel like the magazine readers are a little broader audience.

Mediabistro: How have things changed with the change of format (TV Guide changed from a digest with local listings to a standard trim size with national listings in October)?

Ausiello: I have more space, for one; my column is bigger, so I have more room. I actually feel like there’s more personality in my column now than there was before. The whole magazine I feel like is a little looser since it’s gone larger. So with that, I feel like I’ve been given more leeway. A lot of my jokes got cut out when we were in the smaller digest, and now rarely if ever does stuff get deleted or changed.

Mediabistro: How did you feel when a joke got cut out?

Ausiello: I wasn’t happy about it. But also, that was a different regime at the time. My jokes almost always got cut out and I hated it. You take out the jokes, you take out the personality, then what’s different or unique about the column?

Mediabistro: Where do you think this new format’s going the next few years? Is it going to develop and form and change?

Ausiello: I don’t know. Personally, I love it. Every week, I love the new magazine more. I think we’ve struck on a successful formula. It’s doing really well, it’s selling, people like it. I don’t know if it’s going to be drastically different than the magazine we’re putting out now.

Mediabistro: Where do you see the magazine in the whole entertainment space of People, Life & Style, Entertainment Weekly, and In Touch? Where does it fit in?

Ausiello: I think it’s probably more toward an Entertainment Weekly than it is to a People, but somewhere in the middle of the two. I don’t think it’s a tabloid; it’s not like Us Weekly, it’s not like it at all. I feel that the best comparison is that it’s like Entertainment Weekly, but just focusing on TV, and maybe a little bit more photo-driven.

Mediabistro: What do you say to people like my parents, who were getting the magazine for the local listings, but now they can’t see what’s on Ch. 2, Ch.4, or Ch.11?

Ausiello: I would tell them if they liked the editorial section of the small TV Guide before than they’ll love the new magazine because there’s 10 times more of it. Yes, there’s much fewer listings, but the editorial side of it is like 80 percent of the magazine now, and if you’re a TV fan, there’s a lot in that magazine to love.

Some people complain, well, “How can you call it TV Guide if there are no listings?” But I feel like it is still TV Guide; even more so, because we’re recommending and pointing you in the direction of what you should watch and what we think is worth watching. Because there’s obviously six million options every night. So now more than ever you need more than just a listing, you need guidance.

Mediabistro: When did you start putting in the spoilers and scoops in “Ask Ausiello”?

Ausiello: Probably about six months after I started, I got a little bit more into the spoiler side of things. It was what people were asking for.

Mediabistro: How did you get your spoilers in the beginning as opposed to how you get them now?

Ausiello: In the same place … in the alley outside of our office (laughs). I’m in a trenchcoat, and I’m walking in the alley and there’s a trade-off (laughs).

How is it different? I have more sources now, for one. I mean, when I started it was tough; it’s really just what I heard, and if I was interviewing someone, an actor or a producer would let a spoiler drop out. That’s really where I would rely on stuff. Now I have more covert means of acquiring spoilers. In addition to obviously getting stuff from producers and sources at networks, I’ve had to do more work and I’ve had to do more digging, because it’s really hard; the competition with spoilers is insane, there are a million sites on the web where you can get spoiler information, so it’s all about timing.

Mediabistro: Is it all primary sources like producers and actors or do you have secondary sources, like someone who has a spoiler that they’re willing to give to you for some credit?

Ausiello: It’s a combination. I think it’s still more about sources, it’s about who you know, it’s about people being in the right place — as I call them, “my moles” — that’s a lot of it. Also, here working at TV Guide there’s a lot of access to information, so I always try to talk to other people see what they’re doing, what they’re working on, see if they’ve uncovered anything. So there’s obviously a good infrastructure here.

Mediabistro: Where did you think the hunger for spoilers came about? Because it’s still a big no-no, in some circles.

Ausiello: Yeah, and that circle’s called Grey’s Anatomy (laughs). That’s the main circle where it’s a big no-no. But how did it start? I don’t know how it started. Why do people enjoy it? I think people are impatient — I know that’s why I enjoy them. I’m impatient; more times than not I want to know ahead of time what’s going to happen. And most times it doesn’t really ruin the enjoyment of the show. Sometimes it does, but most of the time it doesn’t.

Mediabistro: Do you think the value of a shocking moment gets ruined by a spoiler? Like if some major character dies in a surprising way on a show?

Ausiello: Yes, I feel that does take probably some of the enjoyment out knowing, instead of being surprised. But my feeling is, if you have the info and you sit on it, the network themselves are going to promo the hell out of it anyway, so if you don’t put the information out there, the network’s going to do it in the promos. A couple of times I’ve been asked to not report things, and then I turn on the TV and I see the network pretty much giving away the entire secret in one of their promos. And I’m like, “Why am I not giving it away? The point is to not ruin it for the viewers and you’re going ahead and ruining it for them.”

The difference with what I do and what some other people do is that I try to make it fun. I don’t come out and say, “This is what’s going to happen.” I try to make it fun and tease it so it’s more of a game. One thing I’ve been playing around with more and more is I sort of have a little Hangman game going in “Ask Ausiello” where I have this big spoiler and I’ll make it sort of like a Wheel of Fortune thing, and you’ll have to fill in the blanks and figure it out yourself. I try to make it fun, sort of the thrill of the chase.

Mediabistro: What do you think about the role of blogs — entertainment blogs, gossip blogs — that are around today? What do think their role is and what do you think it’s going to be? Do you think that they do different things than you do at TVGuide.com?

Ausiello: We’re going to start doing blogging very soon, in a major, major way. I can’t really speak to the frequency, but I will have a blog on TVGuide.com in probably less than a month. I think blogging is huge. It’s changed entertainment journalism; it’s changed TV journalism and I think it’s only going to get bigger.

Mediabistro: Do you think some of the mainstream media or even TV Guide are scared of the approach of blogs?

Ausiello: I think the more traditional media types are scared of anything new and revolutionary. Just doing the press tour, I think people were very resistant to doing blogging themselves because it’s just so different than what they normally did.

Mediabistro: Where do you think entertainment journalism is going? Your own magazine, for instance, from the 1960s through the 1980s, was harder-hitting than it is now. Do you think entertainment journalism is still going down that fluffy path or will it go back?

Ausiello: I think that trend we’re seeing now is going to continue. I can’t imagine we’re going to go back to the days when you open up TV Guide and see an 8-page feature with one picture. Just the popularity of the celebrity weeklies — it’s sort of almost a cliché to talk about it now — that’s indicative of where we’re headed. Articles are going to continue to get smaller and pictures are going to continue to get bigger. I do think it’s all about the scoops and TV news than big investigative pieces.

Joel Keller is a freelance writer from New Jersey. His writing has appeared in Salon, The New York Times and The Washington Post, among other publications and websites.

Jeffrey Trachtenberg is a reporter at The Wall Street Journal, where he works in the media and marketing group. He covers book publishing and occasionally contributes book reviews. Earlier in his career, he worked on the other side of the beat, authoring the books Ralph Lauren: The Man Behind the Mystique and The Rain on Macy’s Parade: How Greed, Ambition and Folly Ruined America’s Greatest Store.

Mediabistro: Based on what you’ve observed, is there (or will there be) a real phenomenon of people buying books by ‘famous’ bloggers, or does it seem that site hits do not translate to book sales?

Jeffrey Trachtenberg: Too early to tell. What is clear is that some bloggers who may have had a difficult time landing a book contract succeeded because agents or publishers were able to read their work on a regular basis — and liked what they saw. This underscores a much broader trend in publishing these days. It is a significant advantage for authors to have what the industry calls a “platform,” be it a show on radio or TV, a newspaper column, or, increasingly, a popular blog. Book publicists can only do so much. Having a “platform” where a writer can get out the message that there is a new book in the stores is considered crucial.

MB: Are there any genres that you see becoming more en vogue while others are receding a bit, i.e. people are buying more fantasy, less chick lit?

JT: It’s true that genres go in and out of favor, but all it takes is one book to explode, and then a genre is back in fashion. One intriguing trend is that mainstream publishers are launching in-house lines of erotica. Most recently, HarperCollins Publishers, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., launched Avon Red. The imprint is described as a line of “erotic romance.” These books have X-rated, graphic sexual scenes, and apparently there is a market for them.

MB: Why do you think book publishing has been lagging behind technology so much more than other artistic fields?

JT: What’s new here is that many publishers are embracing technology. Many have launched reader-friendly websites, complete with contests and book giveaways and early email announcements of books by favorite authors. They’re also pushing on the marketing front. CBS Inc.’s Scribner imprint, for example, launched a Stephen King website for his new novel The Cell that encouraged readers to pay for downloadable ring tones. This transformed a promotional website into an opportunity to generate income. Elsewhere, a publisher posted a book online for free, and sold advertising around the text.

MB: Do you think the James Frey scandal is going to affect how publishers handle new memoirs coming out by putting the authors under the microscope?

JT: Chances are that the next publisher who decides to issue a memoir by a self-confessed former junkie/drunk will do a bit of diligence. But it’s hard to gauge what the long-term impact of the Frey fiasco will be. My guess is that publishers will be ultra cautious for the next 12 months, but then their fears will dull as memories fade. Meanwhile, the Frey books continue to sell well. Some publishers may be willing to push the limits if that’s what it takes to sell millions of copies, while covering themselves with a short author’s note at the book’s end.

MB:What was the path that took you from school to your current position?

JT: I worked at several small New York trade publications and then joined Women’s Wear Daily. I initially wrote about Seventh Avenue before moving to Los Angeles and covering the Hollywood beat. Several years later I joined Forbes magazine in New York. While there I wrote a biography of Ralph Lauren, and as it was being published, The Wall Street Journal offered me a job. I’ve since covered retailing, new media, the music industry, and consumer electronics. I also helped launch the paper’s real estate section, and spent some years editing here as well, in addition to writing a book about Macy’s. I began to cover books on a full-time basis a couple of years ago.

Claire Zulkey is a freelance writer and the editor of MBToolbox.

Since arriving to the U.S. as a child in 1954, the Israeli-born author and illustrator Maira Kalman has immersed herself in the creative world. The mind behind over a dozen children’s books—and wife of the late Tibor Kalman, one of the most influential designers of our time who, among other accomplishments, brought those controversial Benneton ads to life—Kalman has made her most recent contribution with the vibrantly illustrated version of Strunk & White’s Elements of Style. Kalman stumbled upon an old copy of the book in a Cape Cod thrift shop, and found it so humorous that she immediately felt the need to put pictures to its words. Here, Kalman talks about how a New York University English major ended up with such a dynamic career, how her processes differ between painting and writing, and why rules are made to be broken.

Mediabistro: I understand you were an English major at NYU. How did you cultivate your painting and drawing talents?

Kalman: I was at NYU for literature and I thought I was going to be a writer, but it was some sort of vague idea—it wasn’t serious. I don’t know what it was at that age anyway, but I decided that my writing was pretty awful. My sister was an artist and I had bounced between art and music but the notion of painting and drawing seemed like a natural thing to do, so I thought, “Well, I’ll try this, it might be easier than writing.” And I started drawing and then started doing editorial illustration, and I did that for about 15 years before I did my first children’s book. So we didn’t study design before we opened M&Company and I didn’t study art, but it seemed like the natural curiosity and love of it was good enough.

Mediabistro: You discovered Strunk & White’s Elements of Style in a Cape Cod thrift shop—what was it about the book that made you want to illustrate it?

Kalman: It was an immediate “Aha!” moment, and it was reading a book that was clearly written by someone who was a wonderful writer. That was foremost. The book was also very funny—it was written with a lot of humor. It was humorous, and personal, and human—the exact opposite of what you expect a grammar book to be. It had the voice of the writer in it from the very first line. And it was very humanistic. I also love things that are disjointed, where one sentence just jumps to another sentence. And for me that kind of jumping from one thing to the other is really wonderful.

Mediabistro: How did you go about obtaining the rights from the Stunk and White estates?

Kalman: My agent proposed their agent (laughs) and they said yes. And it was incredible because once they had said yes there was absolutely no intervention or control. They just let me do exactly what I wanted to do and didn’t see the book until it was done. It was such a leap of faith for them and I was very happy.

Mediabistro: At what point did you approach publishers with your idea, and did you receive any rejections?

Kalman: I met my agent Charlotte and she brought me to Ann Godoff and it was clear that we really liked each other, and that she loved the idea and was completely behind it, and also gave me total freedom to do what I wanted.

Mediabistro: In his foreword to Elements of Style, Roger Angell comments that “writing is hard, even for authors who do it all the time.” Is painting or illustrating a similar struggle? How do the processes compare?

Kalman: My writing and my painting, there’s really a flow that goes back and forth. I try to paint in a narrative way and I write in a painterly way. I don’t’ know if one is harder…I think there are different difficulties—no, there’s always the same difficulty in finding your voice in whatever you’re doing, and being both inspired and natural at the same time, and traveling the lines of extremes, being smart and stupid and happy and tragic. I think that crafting language—in the end they’re all hard, but I wouldn’t know how to define the difference in difficulty. Though maybe for me painting gives me more leeway to be ungrammatical.

Mediabistro: And do you re-paint? Writers often re-write obsessively, trying to get the right words on the page—do painters go “re-paint” so to speak?

Kalman: I think that everybody has a different style, but I do a lot of sketching before I actually do a painting. So for me I really am doing drafts and re-sketching, which I think is pretty normal for most painters, who often do sketches or thumbnails or studies before they begin. It’s a way of finding out what you want to say, editing out things that aren’t important, looking at a piece in terms of the graphic design, so there’s all that kind of constructing and then un-constructing.

Mediabistro: Do you struggle when writing your children’s books?

Kalman: Yeah, you know though it always seems like it’s a lark. There’s drama behind that. I do struggle. To write a children’s book—a book that’s 32 pages long or something like that—you really have to be able to pare down what you want to say and distill it and then make it alive, and make it sparkle. That’s a real challenge. And everyone wants to write a children’s book, and it seems like so much fun—and it is fun—but it’s also, you know, I write many drafts of a book and I usually over-write to the point where I’ve written 10 times too much, and spend six months or a year trying to edit it down to something that’s not boring.

Mediabistro: Do you ever get stuck—on a painting, on a sentence, on a plot in your children’s books—and if so, what do you do to “un-stick” yourself?

Kalman: Oh, God yes! It’s writing, and then throwing it out, and then writing, and then hating it, and then finding something. You know, I don’t think it ever ends. Often even after I’ve finished a book I think, “Oh my God, I would have changed this and that and the other!” So there’s plenty of being stuck. I often go for a walk or wait till the next day and just the doing of it brings you to the end, hopefully; you just keep doing it.

Mediabistro: Penguin also bought an illustrated memoir from you called Look, according to Publisher’s Weekly. Any idea when we can look for this—and are there any other projects in the works?

Kalman: Ha, I don’t know what it’s called! I keep changing the name. (It will be out) in forever and a day! I imagine, three years from now. Depends how long it takes me to do that. I’ve started conceptualizing and making notes, but I haven’t plunged in. I may go to Israel to write that, which is where I’m from and where a lot of the book takes place.

Mediabistro: Why is rule-breaking important, do you think?

Kalman: Well, you can decide what your definition of a rule is, but I think there has to be a moment in the process where you make a leap outside of what is expected. There can’t be an original piece of work that isn’t conceived outside of some constraint. Even if you’re bound to grammar, you’re doing something within that context that’s inventive or experimental. That’s how things change and things progress, and that’s why we have new things and things that are inspired. I think it’s learning how to have fun, or the sense of play—it’s thrilling to be able to do that. And also for the reader, or for the person who’s looking at a painting, that there’s some kind of fresh spark that’s set off in you, how to tell your story in your own way. And not everyone wants to do that or needs to do that.

Mediabistro: What is a day in the life of Maira Kalman like?

Kalman: Well, um, it’s a very free-floating day. I wake up very early—I am not a fan of the night. I wake up early, have coffee, go out for a clip through the park—a fast walk, with a friend. Have a nice breakfast. And then depending on the day, either go to my studio and paint and write, or do whatever it is if there’s an assignment or a deadline or whatever I’m working on, and if not, I just kind of wander around. I go to museums or I take long walks. Not that much happens. I walk my dog—there’s a lot of walking going on. I see a lot of stuff. I always have a camera and a sketchbook with me and I’m basically wandering around taking pictures and collecting material. Early to bed, and there you go.

Mediabistro: Where do you look for your inspirations?

Kalman: I go to museums and I read a lot and movies and concerts and traveling…I go for trips to wonderful places. I’m going to India for a month—it’s an extraordinary place. Italy. India. Israel, places that begin with I! Iceland, haha! Japan, Russia. I took a fabulous road trip to the south, and my trips inevitably contain high art and low art. I enjoy going to a thrift shop as much as going to a great museum. And then there’s dreaming and there’s family and life and philosophy and it’s kind of an unlimited source of inspiration—all you have to do is get outside and look and live. And there’s more than enough…

Caroline Callahan is a freelance writer and former GQ staffer.

Scott Turow’s legal thrillers have been translated into more than 25 languages and sold 25 million copies worldwide. His first novel, Presumed Innocent, was made into a film starring Harrison Ford. Still a practicing lawyer (Turow is a partner in the Chicago office of Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal), Turow also writes nonfiction about his own profession: His first book, One L documents his first year at Harvard Law School. Ultimate Punishment: A Lawyer’s Reflections on Dealing with the Death Penalty was published in 2003. After a recent reading and signing in Dallas, Turow spoke to mediabistro.

Mediabistro: Your latest novel, Ordinary Heroes, takes readers into the territory of history. Talk about bringing history into your work.

Turow: Half of The Law of Our Fathers was set in California in the 1970s and required quite a bit of research. Of course, World War II was a period when I was not alive. I enjoyed the research more than I expected. … If there’s something that bores you to dig into, you can leave it out. And there are advantages. History sets boundaries that don’t exist in contemporary fiction. The war in Europe was going to end in May 1945. I had no decision about that.

Mediabistro: Kindle County and its recurring characters could be considered a study in establishing a setting and people readers can get into. Why did you create a fictional tri-cities area and how does that work for you as a writer?

Turow: Kindle County was created by accident. Presumed Innocent was originally set in Boston, but I spent so long writing it that Chicago, where we were living for years by then, had infiltrated the setting. So Kindle County was born.

When I decided to write next about Sandy Stern, the lawyer in Presumed Innocent, I had no choice about staying there. By now I’ve taken up permanent residence.

Mediabistro: You’re a practicing attorney and many of your characters are attorneys. Is this “writing about what you know,” truly something you’re fascinated with, or both?

Turow: I do like lawyers, God save me, but I like the law as a subject even more. The struggle of the law to impose reason on life is both morally worthy and frequently impossible. It’s a wonderful theme.

Mediabistro: How did you get started as a writer? Your memoir of law school, One L, is a cult favorite among those who have been there or are considering being there.

Turow: I got my start as a writer in college, at Amherst College, where I was given my senior year off to write fiction fulltime, under the guidance of Tillie Olsen, Leo Marx, and David Sofield. After that I was a writing fellow at Stanford, and a lecturer at the Creative Writing Center after that. Having channeled my talents a little made it possible for me to write while amid the law school hothouse. It would be a tough environment in which to start.

Mediabistro: Tell us about your writing routine—environment, research, process, whatever. How do you get from the seed of an idea to a finished manuscript?

Turow: It’s very haphazard. I think for a long time, then I start writing fragments, pieces of scenes, descriptions of characters, background, patches of dialogue. It’s kind of like the nebulae swirling to become stars. Things accrete, eventually moving toward a shape. I write principally at home, but have been known to pull out my laptop anywhere, including the commuter train, airplanes, but very, very seldom in the law office.

Mediabistro: What makes a great read? Who do you read?

Turow: A coherent imagined world makes for great fiction, a world compelling in its details. I read more “serious” fiction than anything else. Recently, I’ve liked Benjamin Kunkle’s Indecision, and was impressed by Banville’s The Sea.

Mediabistro: What advice would you give a fledgling writer?

Turow: Just do it. Writers write. As my friend Tom Zigal, a Texas novelist, puts it: “You’ve gotta log a lot of pages to learn how to do it.” Learning how to connect thought and feeling to words takes practice, just like anything else in life worth doing.

Jackie Larson is a nationally published, Texas-based writer working on her first novel. She contributes to magazines and newspapers, and is co-author of a career guide coming out in 2006.

Marc Weingarten’s The Gang That Wouldn’t Write Straight: Wolfe, Thompson, Didion, and the New Journalism Revolution is a straightforward history of the last period in journalism history worth calling “new.”

The inevitable heir to long-form profiles and articles in such publications as The New Yorker, New Journalism sprang from a generation of writers (including Jimmy Breslin, Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, Joan Didion, and Michael Herr) who found supportive editors (such as Clay Felker, Harold Hayes, and Jann Wenner) with daring publications (New York, Esquire, and Rolling Stone). The talent, the creativity, and the drive collided to change American journalism forever.

With a fan’s enthusiasm, a researcher’s depth, and a writer’s style, Weingarten tells the story behind all those marvelous stories. And then he answered a few questions for mediabistro.

Mediabistro: How did you go about your research? There’s so much material to draw from about these subjects—how were you able to parse it?

Weingarten: Research was a tough slog. It took almost two years to get everything. And yes, it’s easy to get lost in a rabbit hole with this subject. My intention was to create a readable narrative, and not get bogged down in [the] completism of listing every New Journalist, every piece, every book, etc. So I narrowed it down to a handful of writers, and three main editors—Clay Felker, Harold Hayes and Jann Wenner. Fortunately, Hayes, Wenner and Felker had a hand in so many important pieces that I could use their stories as a throughline, more or less, throughout the book. You have to parse it, otherwise it becomes an amorphous blob of information, in my view.

Mediabistro: Of the subjects you spoke to personally, with whom did you have the best interview experience? Since you were asking about the significant span of their careers, how did you budget your time (and theirs) to get to what you really wanted to know?

Weingarten: Everyone was cooperative. Tom Wolfe invited me into his apartment and then endured many phone call follow-ups, Gay Talese amply offered his time. By far the most memorable experience was the two nights I spent in Woody Creek with Hunter Thompson. I just had a wonderful time with him. I think he enjoyed reliving his salad days for a captive audience. His wife Anita was great, as well—she kept Hunter on point if he drifted too far afield. As far as budgeting my time, I didn’t! You always find that you have to grab something that you didn’t ask initially and so there’s constant follow-up. It’s just the nature of the beast.

Mediabistro: Your subjects include Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson, two flamboyant writers. Stylistically, how did you determine your approach to their material? Did it make more sense to write the book as a straight history?

Weingarten: It was always my intention to celebrate these writers in the best way I knew how, which was NOT to try and emulate their styles—an impossible task, unless you want to sound like a complete dork. What’s so interesting about Wolfe and Thompson is that they are in many ways diametric opposites, politically, culturally, and otherwise. What bound them together as friends was the feeling that they were fighting the good fight for venturesome journalism.

Mediabistro: How influential were editors in bringing New Journalism to the forefront? What was it about the alchemy of these editors paired with these writers in creating a whole new form?

Weingarten: I think the editors are huge. Hayes, Felker, and Wenner gave these writers their heads to let them do their thing, but they also had a vision of how this kind of writing could enliven journalism, make it new. Conversely, writers like Tom Wolfe and Gay Talese had tremendous respect for these editors—they wanted to do good work for them. I consider the key editors that I discuss in my book to be the Daryl Zanucks and the David Selznicks of the genre.

Mediabistro: What’s the favorite anecdote that you came across in your research? And of all the great old stories you got to read for your research, what was your favorite article by any of the authors you wrote about?

Weingarten: It’s hard to choose, on both fronts. Hunter certainly has the richest anecdotal archive, it would be hard to single out just one. As far as pieces, I have a number of favorites—Hunter’s “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved,” Talese’s “The Loser,” Wolfe’s piece on custom cars, many others.

Mediabistro: In the epilogue, you mention some of the heirs to New Journalism: Ted Conover, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Jon Krakauer. In terms of publications, what today is breaking the same kind of ground that New York and Esquire did in the 1960s and 1970s?

Weingarten: I like The Believer. I think they are carrying on the New Journalism tradition, although I’m sure they would be loathe to classify it as such. I read an amazing piece in there a few months ago about the editor of a roller coaster magazine making the rounds for his job, and it reminded me of some of Hunter’s more unusual picaresques.

Mediabistro: What do you think the next breakthrough in journalism will look like? Has it happened already, because of the web? Are we stuck in a loop of imitating the talents of Didion, Wolfe, Breslin, and Thompson?

Weingarten: I think the next breakthrough will occur on the web, because there are no limits to what you can do in terms of length or integrating media—any number of things. I don’t think we’ve seen it yet, though. Hopefully, the next great New Journalists will provide us with that same shock of the new that many of us experienced when we read Wolfe, Thompson and the rest for the first time.

Aileen Gallagher as an editor at mediabistro.com

Read an excerpt of The Gang That Wouldn’t Write Straight. Buy the book.

Want to explore New Journalism for yourself? Sign up for mb’s The New ‘New Journalism’: Using Yourself as Subject Matter in Today’s Market class!

Editor and author Arthur Plotnik has written several books of advice for writers. Since they don’t always take it, he writes more. Encouraging writers to be bold and bright, sharp and sly, Plotnik challenges the old rules in his new book Spunk & Bite: A Writer’s Guide to Punchier, More Engaging Language and Style. Plotnik also wrote The Elements of Editing and The Elements of Expression: Putting Thoughts Into Words.

Mediabistro: You studied at the Iowa Writers Workshop. At what point did you become a writer who writes about writing?

Arthur Plotnik: I’d like to say, “during that stormy night in Iowa City, when Philip Roth anointed me the Watcher.” The truth is, I’d already been scrawling advice to writers—mainly as a know-nothing editor of undergraduate literary schmatas. From Roth and others at Iowa, however, I began to learn what I would later pass along, including the usual workshop commandments: show, don’t tell, less is more, particularize, focus, and so on.

Soon after, as a newspaper reporter and then a book-a-month pulp novelist, I may have tucked a little more advice into my gray pulp. But not until I’d moiled several years as a pro editor did the real alchemy of writing—that transformation from imagined to published word—become illuminated, enough so that others might benefit from my, koff, koff, coruscations.

The first flashes appeared in The Elements of Editing [1982], where, in telling editors how to edit writers, I was telling writers what they faced outside the creative womb. During the ’90s came my advisories, The Elements of Expression and Honk If You’re a Writer—the latter meaning, in British slang as it turned out, “vomit if you’re a writer,” which isn’t so far-fetched if you know the struggle.

Mediabistro: Spunk & Bite has so much to think about and incorporate. What’s your strategy on how to utilize the advice offered in your book?

Plotnik: I would say use it with delight. After all, my subject is the joy of spunky, expressive language, and how to exploit that joy so that competing writers are miserable. Take delight in that, and be inspired by the hundreds of spunky, bitey examples woven throughout. After Chapter One, which liberates writers from certain 50-year-old attitudes of Strunk and White [The Elements of Style], readers can roam at will through what might be called “prompts” toward more engaging writing; for example, toward capturing the extraordinary with “extreme metaphors,” toward acquiring “edge,” or putting pop imagery to work.

Several chapters—call them interactive if you can stand that term—offer diverting challenges: to nail the exact word, to improve an author’s modifier, to rate authors‘ figures of speech. Readers who like a structured approach can follow the book’s parts: flexibility, freshness, texture, word, force, form, clarity, and contemporaneity. But those who toe the chapters randomly will arrive at the same place.

Mediabistro: Language, like everything else, goes through trends. For example, a few years ago it seemed that everyone knew what schadenfreude meant and used it in their writing. Is trendy OK, or just a substitute for actual good writing?

Plotnik: Maybe people have dropped schadenfreude because they’ve stopped enjoying the misfortune of others. As if. But good writing is writing that engages and stimulates its audience according to the author’s intent. In that context trendy words can be beautiful—as long as they’re fresh, apt, inventive, and surprising to the readership. If you add “enduring” to those criteria that’s another story, since trendy locutions grow cringey faster than one can say, “you go, girl.”

Words have funny cycles, though. They can rise from cringey to nostalgic or retro and even wind up as fixtures in the language. In The Elements of Style, E. B. White declared that “by the time this paragraph sees print, psyched, nerd, ripoff, dude, geek, and funky will be the words of yesteryear.” That was 46 years ago, and, dude, they all six still be funky. The trick for authors is to gauge the life of a trendy locution against its window of exposure. A daily columnist has it easy. A novelist has to ponder, will anything rock for my readers five years from now? If not, then it’s time to quarry up an enduring, if less titillating, standard term.

Mediabistro: Your book incorporates examples from newspapers and magazines as well as novels. Is good writing good writing, or do you distinguish between writing novels or newspapers or magazines or online?

Plotnik: I do distinguish, but not in terms of a hierarchy topped by literary works. The question is, how good is the stimulation? Does it refresh me from the fug—the stale air—of the ignorant or mundane? That’s the job of the writer, and it can be done in any genre. I relish the immediacy and intensity of news writing; the flair of a magazine stylist; the manic energy of online wags and wordsmiths. I read novels to be stimulated by truths of the heart and hypnotic language. The lines between these forms have blurred anyway, and one finds expressive writing in all the so-called wrong places: a hip-hop novel, a gothic television script, a trade rag. Even in the blogosphere, a cri de couer may be misting somebody’s eyeballs.

Mediabistro: You’ve spent much of your career writing about writing. What are your own biggest pratfalls and hurdles? How do you combat them?

Plotnik: Love is the problem. Like most writers, I love my darlings too much—all those words and figures of speech wrested from the depths of my being, the back alleys of the thesaurus, the uncreated consciousness of my species, not to mention the blah, blah, blah. See what I mean? Once we’ve embodied a hard-won locution in text, we just can’t kill it, can’t make a choice among our children. Instead we ask readers—or reluctant editors—to exhaust themselves sorting out the forceful from the superfluous.

In the way of combat I don my own editorial armor, emblazoned with the motto occide, verbera, ure, which says to kill, beat, and burn anything that diminishes expressive force. I have mixed success. Sometimes I find that less isn’t more; certain effects call for florid or grandiose locutions. But when a reader gets the idea and yet the words keep coming—fuhgetaboutit. A calmer approach might be through the feng shui principles I extrapolate in one chapter, helping writers identify the elements of shar ch’I or “killing breath” that subvert the flow of ch’I, the life force. Killing breath is not a good thing in a writing career.

Mediabistro: When you want to get some outside help, which books do you open?

Plotnik: First, I adore my Roget’s International Thesaurus, even if it leads me unto temptation. I don’t care what Simon Winchester says about “ill-versed” users lured into false synonyms. One has to be mad, moonstruck, unhinged, not to snorkel among these schools of words. Spunk & Bite offers tips, hints, pearls of wisdom, and fleas in the ear for doing so.

Along with such standbys as Fowler, Follett, Zinsser, Partridge, and Flesch, I keep Stephen Glazier’s Word Menu in reach. No one has yet gathered and defined related terms with the passion of this lexicographer, who died heartbreakingly young. A recent discovery for me is Garner’s American Usage, the most modern and thorough of its kind. Sin & Syntax by Constance Hale is my kind of liberating guide. For mechanical style, I find The New York Public Library Writer’s Guide to Style and Usage more amiable than most. And to clear my head of practical messages, to hear the purity of lyric, I read the poetry of Billy Collins.

I should mention one more thing. Even though Spunk & Bite swims against Strunk & White, I still take cold splashes in The Elements of Style for its lessons in clarity and concision—and to remind myself that readers have a sense of “correct” writing, one that can be tweaked for effect, but not ignored. But in matters of style, I resent White’s patronizing advice, to which he paid little attention himself. His admonitions against wild behavior remind me of my own father, a former sparring partner who refused to teach me his good boxing moves for fear that I’d start brawling. So, resentfully, I entered the toughest fray of all: writing. And thank you for letting me get this out. I think my conflicts are resolved now.

Mediabistro: For something as creative as writing, we get attached to its rules. You praise modifiers and adjectives, which is somewhat untraditional. How did writers get to be so stodgy?

Plotnik: Convention is reliable, if not always exciting. Writing coaches are 95 percent right when they plump for strong nouns and verbs and rail against mewling adjectives, adverbs, and intensifiers. But outside convention lies the thrill of risk and reward, of modifiers that rise above their slave status on the merits of energy, novelty, dissonance, and so on. The adverb loudly doesn’t add much to the verb belch. But when, in a Martin Amis novel, a royal Brit eructs liverishly, I want to put that modifier up for knighthood.

In the arts, rules are more or less reflections of what so-called discerning people have applauded. We need rules for basic coherence in art, but also as points from which to take our creative leaps. Can one bungee jump from nothing? On the subject of rules, writing advice doesn’t change much. Some 18 centuries ago Cassius Longinus counseled that great writing needs the rein as well as the spur, just as I’ve suggested that writers want both sheriff and outlaw roaming their right brains. Even Spunk & Bite defends the decent townsfolk now and then—as against those dag-nab, danglin’ participles; but in the next episode it’s out there shooting the quotation marks off dialogue. Well, that’s how the West was won, and I reckon it works for writing, too.

Aileen Gallagher is an editor at mediabistro.com

Read an excerpt of Spunk & Bite

Number of clients: As a Former Professional Literary Agent, I currently have zero clients, though I still frequently visit Bruce Campbell’s website (despite his so called “court-order”). During my few years as a publishing professional, I represented perhaps a dozen novelists, non-fiction authors, and stars of The Evil Dead.

Notable clients: Apart from Bruce Campbell (If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B-Movie Actor), and among others, I proudly represented the early works of Darin Strauss (Chang and Eng), Blake Eskin (A Life in Pieces), David Grand (Louse), the renowned mixologist Dale DeGroff (Craft of the Cocktail), and the estate of Matt Clark (Hook Man Speaks).

Percentage of fact vs. fiction in The Areas of My Expertise: As a compendium of complete world knowledge composed chiefly of amazing made-up facts, my goal of course was to avoid the merely accurate and instead embrace the strange and strangely plausible.

But the fact is some facts may have accidentally been included in my book. I suspect these adulterants contribute only 10 percent or so of total content. My goal is to reduce that to 8 percent by the second printing, and 2 percent by the 100th.

Percentage of extraneous information accepted by you for your book and later discarded: Just about zero percent. My goal was to include as much extraneous information within its pages as possible. However, there is always new knowledge being generated, and I hope to soon be at work on volume 2.

Most outrageous claim made in The Areas of My Expertise: “Truth may be stranger than fiction, goes the old saw, but it is never as strange as lies (or, for that matter, as true). Proof of which maxim is the fact that I just made it up.”

Of the 55 dramatic scenarios presented in the section “Information You Will Find Useful In The Present,” one with best odds of getting published: Professional oddsmakers in Nevada traditionally favor the safe bets, staying with the old primal conflict of “man vs. man”: (“cop vs. rookie,” for example, is almost even money, for example, while “devil worshippers vs. apartment dwellers” goes for a respectable 5 to 1).

I have a fondness for risk, however, and the sucker’s bet, so my money is still on old 200 to 1: “Wilderness becomes crucible in which asthmatic leans to grow a beard.”

Tiniest font size deemed acceptable for book jacket: On that matter you would have to consult Sam Potts, the noted designer and small-font-fiend (also known as a “printer’s devil”).

What to pitch if you are a hobo looking to write a book: Please hoboes: no more books about Catholic secret societies and hidden codes in the Bible. We have gotten the message.

What to pitch to you to lure you back into the world of being a professional agent: Free lunch at Periyali at the table in the front where they used to allow smoking. Also, you have to cure cancer so I can take up smoking again. Then, only then, seated there, cancer free and happy, we can talk.

What not to pitch if you ever want to have a meaningful conversation with you in the future: Please do not pitch a great big book of fake trivia.

What to expect when Little Gray Book Lectures leaves the confines of New York City for other parts of the country: We are in fact taking the show on the road, as we used to say in show business and also road business. On Thursday, Nov. 4, we will be in my hometown of Brookline, Massachusetts, along with Danzy Senna and Patrick Borelli and others.

Visitors there will see the same mix of earnest instruction, doubtful scholarship, and jingly-jangly music by Jonathan Coulton, and also a video of Dale DeGroff making a brand new cocktail: the Brookline 300.

Etiquette when interacting with hoboes: It is considered rude to stare directly at the hobo’s bindlestick, mysterious band-aids, or puffy vest.

Etiquette when reporting to the author one’s reaction to The Areas of My Expertise: Same deal.

Best way to go about having David Rees draw a cartoon featuring your book: Read My New Fighting Technique Is Unstoppable in the year 2000 and become so smitten with his foul-mouthed brilliance that you continue to write and badger him until he becomes your friend. Then, threaten with a knife.

Perfect ratio of self-deprecation vs. hubris when promoting one’s book of trivia: My sales pitch, which is crafted for all readers, but which I think will have a particular resonance among those in the publishing industry: “Under arrangement with the publisher, purchasing this book frees you from the obligation to read it.”

Rachel Kramer Bussel is an editor, writer, and blogger.

Veteran journalist Michael Gross’s new book, 740 Park, is an extensive biography of the life and history of the world’s richest apartment building. Gross’s impeccable research is beautifully synthesized into a comprehensive narrative about class, money and power.

Gross has written six books including Genuine Authentic: The Real Life of Ralph Lauren, Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women, and My Generation, a book about the baby boom generation. He is a Contributing Editor at Travel + Leisure, a Contributing Writer for Radar, and his work has appeared in a number of other publications including The New York Times, New York Magazine, George, Esquire, Vanity Fair, Interview and Details.

mediabistro’s Elizabeth Spiers spoke with Gross about 740 Park and the process of writing it:

What’s the genesis of the 740 Park book? (How, when and why did you decide you wanted to write about it?)

After writing a book about Ralph Lauren, who came from a quasi-aristocratic Jewish family (thought he didn’t know that) and for complex psychological reasons grew up compelled to dress like and act the part of a WASP aristocrat, I thought it might be interesting to write about the sort of people he modeled his look on, ie genuine American aristocrats. My first thought was to choose a great American family and trace its story from the Mayflower (or thereabouts) to the present…hopefully dealing with a Supreme Court Justice, a Buddhist, a murderer, a drug addict or two, and maybe a psycho along the way. My then-publisher didn’t think that was broad enough and though she liked the idea of telling a larger story through a microcosm, urged me to find one that let in more light, more people, more kinds of people, which struck me as sage advice.

A few days later, I was in a cab going down Fifth Avenue, looking up at the old apartment buildings, when I passed one where I knew that WASPs had given way to Jews, one of whom had just sold his apartment for millions to Paul Allen of Microsoft, and I decided to write [about] a building. The next step was figuring out which building. It didn’t take long before I focused in on 740, which was distinctive not only in terms of its architecture, quality and the price of apartments, but also in terms of the people who lived there. Unlike so-called “good” buildings (ie anti-Semitic buildings), 740 had evolved with the times, which made it a perfect vehicle to tell my story about the evolution of America’s capitalist aristocracy.

How did you begin your research? Was your process different for Model and/or Genuine Authentic?

Genuine Authentic taught me a lot about genealogical research, which came in handy doing this book, although 740 Park is a slightly different world than the shtetls of the Pale of Settlement, from whence L’il Ralph came. I started by looking for anything that had been written about 740 Park in the past (there was very little) and simultaneously trying to construct a list of every person who’d ever owned an apartment in the building. That, to be blunt, took forever because co-ops are not real property and there are no public records. I used newspaper accounts and reverse telephone directories, primarily. At the same time, I called the wife of the president of the 740 co-op board, who happened to be a New York Times reporter, and asked for the board’s cooperation. Alas, professional congeniality notwithstanding, that turned out to be a dead end and the possibility of “official” cooperation evaporated. Then, I heard from Andrew Alpern, who is an historian of New York apartment buildings, and Dan Okrent, who’d just publsihed Great Fortune, a great book about Rockefeller Center, that there might be some files about 740 Park at the Rockefeller Archive Center in Sleepy Hollow, New York. In fact it was a treasure trove and I spent almost two weeks there. With that, the wind was beneath my wings and the research process really took off.

How did being stonewalled by the co-op board (if that’s a fair characterization) affect how residents and former residents responded to your requests for interviews and information? How would the book, and the writing of the book, been different if they had cooperated? From what I remember about Genuine Authentic, it started out with Ralph cooperating and ended up a sort of write-around. How much does that sort of thing hamper your ability to get the real story? Or does it, really?

Yes, it was a stone wall. Ashland limestone, to be precise. Former residents cared not a whit. Co-op boards can only terrorize current and prospective tenants, not past ones, thank goodness. The widow of a board president, who still lives in the building, did try to stop at least one person from giving me an interview. That person, who must remain nameless, took me out to lunch and talked for hours, instead. Current residents broke down into three groups. Many refused to talk to me (a few of whom even made a point of expressing how angry they were that I would dare write such a book). A few gave on-the-record interviews and are quoted in the book. And many spoke to me on a not-for-attribution basis; some told me a lot, some merely confirmed and corrected information gathered elsewhere, and some were so gracious and helpful that they invited me into their apartments. One current resident even offered me a book party in the building, but I declined, explaining that I feared some of the neighbors might not appreciate that as much as I did.

Of course, the book would have been different. A writer is to a great extent a mirror that can only reflect what it is able to see. Some writers depend on access and only reflect what they are shown. Others have the skills to find things out that are not delivered on a silver platter, and it’s my experience that when dealing with the wealthy, the powerful and the celebrated, a story based on that sort of enterprise is usually far more interesting and revealing than one based on access. But even enterprise reporting benefits from some level of access. I don’t turn my nose up at cooperation! The current residents who took my calls were able to clarify and amplify and affect the way I portrayed them. Any good writer should feel a responsibility to reflect the point of view of their subjects, even if you ultimately feel that’s only one side of the story. So I guess, that’s all a long way of saying, yes, had some of those who declined to speak to me done interview, their versions of their lives would have been included alongside the ones I was able to piece together on my own.

In the case of Ralph Lauren, I feel I was lucky that he didn’t cooperate, but only because he’s made self-delusion his own personal art form–and he’s a genius at it. Had I been dependent on his version of his own life, the book would have been narrow and frankly, a commercial fantasy like the ones he depicts in his ads. The day he bailed on me, my editor said, “It’s probably going to be a better, more honest book now.” And indeed, I think that’s what happened.

What have you learned in the process of writing the first three that has made it easier to write this one?

What have I learned? That it takes a long time. That’s it’s hard and it doesn’t get any easier. That you just have to do it. And as a great writer and friend once said to me, “When in doubt, just lay brick.” In other words, you have to work even when you don’t feel inspired. So just sit down and write, even if you think that what’s coming out is terrible. Foundation work isn’t sexy, but it’s what the rest of the edifice rests on.

Upcoming readings in New York:

Tuesday, 10/25 Strand Books @ 6:30pm 828 Broadway @ 12th Street
Talk/Q&A/Booksiging.

Wednesday, 10/26 Barnes & Noble @ 7pm 1972 Broadway @ 64th Street

Talk/Q&A/Booksiging.