Guest Post: Author Barbara Delinsky

Today Barbara Delinsky is dropping by Library Girl Reads as part of her blog tour.  I received a copy of her latest book, Not My Daughter, and can't wait to read it.  Be sure to drop in at Barbara's other tour stops as well. I know she has some great guest posts and giveaways going on.  Thanks so much to Barbara for dropping by today and sharing with us how she got into writing.

Barbara Delinsky... the Unlikelist of Writers.  What About You?

I’ve written almost 80 books that together have sold millions of copies, so many that even I have a hard time coming up with an accurate count when someone asks. But underneath all that literary success I am as unlikely a writer as any you’d ever meet. Really. I was never even an avid reader as a child, despite my dad’s urging. He was a lawyer in Boston, and any visit to his office included a stop at the beautiful old Lauriat’s bookstore down the street. There was no limit to the number of books I could buy, though I never bought more than two or three at a time. I read in spurts – those two or three, then maybe another two or three in quick succession, like the Laura Ingall’s Wilder series, then nothing at all for a few months.

I struggled with writing in school – actually had my first experience with writers block in sixth grade. The teacher was Miss O’Donnell, and the assignment was to write a descriptive piece on … the sun. I was totally stuck – until an aunt of mine, a former teacher, suggested that I speak my thoughts aloud while she wrote them down – and it worked. To this day, that’s what I do when I’m stuck. I talk into a little cassette recorder, usually while I’m driving around in my car. My mind is clear then – when I’m halfway between points A and B, in a kind of wide open, creative limbo.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to school. Here’s the best part about how unlikely a writer I am. I was kicked out of Honors English in high school because I couldn’t keep up.

That said, I wrote beautiful letters home from summer camp, and lyrical letters home from Europe during that summer-long tour when I was twenty-one. Writing was a practical thing for me, a way to describe what I was doing, a way to express my thoughts. The latter was particularly useful when I became a mom. My first son was a dream – the easiest child in the world to raise. Then came the twins. We’re talking noise and mess and disobedience. The oldest became a terror, and, I swear, the twins were born that way.

I kept a journal. That was my therapy. Beloved as my rambunctious children were by me and the rest of their family, I wouldn’t have survived those years without that journal.

By the time the twins were ready to start school, I was ready to go back to work, but nothing in my field at the time interested me. Then, one morning, I read an article in my local paper, the Boston Globe, about women who wrote genre fiction. These writers made their work sound very do-able for a woman with young children, so I researched books like theirs, read a bunch, and wrote one. The writing took me three weeks – at which point I had a completed manuscript and no clue what to do with it. So I picked up the phone and called one of the women who had been profiled in that Globe article. It was probably one of the bravest things I’ve ever done, but it set the scene for what was to come. Pick up the phone and call publishers, she said with a generosity of time and spirit that, to this day, I’ve never forgotten. Ask if you can send them your book, she said.

If there are any publishers reading this blog, you’re probably shuddering. Today, one works through an agent—cold calling publishers will get you nowhere. Publishing is meaner and leaner, and the slush pile is nearly extinct. But this was back in the 80’s, when the book world was a different place.

So I picked up the phone and called publishers. I sent material to eight that published the kind of book I’d written. Six weeks later, one called and made an offer. Frankly, I was stunned. So was my dad, the one who had always pushed me to read. He was, bless him, a product of the Great Depression, so he wasn’t counting any chickens before they hatched. His response to this news? Could be a fluke.

And he was right. As I said at the start, I was an unlikely writer. I was a housewife, a full-time mom, and back then it still wasn’t the norm for women to set out to have careers. Nor did I think I was doing that, even though it turned out that I was. I just wanted to earn a little money of my own.

But something interesting had happened. By the time I got the offer on that first book, I was halfway through the second, because I was having a ball! That’s when I began to believe that maybe writing books was something I could do well after all. So, Reader, what about you? What might you discover that you can do, if only you try?

Connect with Barbara Delinsky:

Barbara Delinsky official website
Facebook page
Twitter

and of course check out her latest book, Not My Daughter, just released in paperback.

Don't forget to check out my giveaway of titles from Vintage Books and Anchor Books as part of the tour stop today.  There will be 5 lucky winners!

Note: All opinions provided on this blog are my own. If a product was given to me for review, the source of that product is noted in the post. Links to Amazon.com are affiliate links and I do earn a small percentage for each item purchased through those links. Any other referral or associate links will be noted within the post.