Q: Bill, who will be the others in my class? When I submitted my first novel to Simon & Schuster, Bob Gottlieb (then Managing Editor, later Editor-in-Chief for Knopf and even later, same job at The New Yorker) took me to lunch, I think it was the Italian Pavilion a Valhalla, in those days, of the publishing world. He liked the writing but something went wrong with the story three-quarters of the way through. Did I agree? The best criticism names something you knew at the back of your mind but did not want to face a what one astute critic called, “rejected thoughts.” The moment Bob said it, I knew he was right and I said so. Then he smiled and said, “When you know how to fix it, call me up. If I like it, we’ll write you a contract.” I sailed home so high not even dogs could hear me. But I was too enmeshed, overly in love with my own prose to see the whole. Luckily, I had a friend even back then who acted as my literary sounding board, as I, in turn, did for him. Joe Papaleo (the distinguished poet and novelist who later taught at Sarah Lawrence College), re-read the manuscript and said he felt the story went awry in the chapter where,“ instead of turning left and running into the bad guy, your hero should turned right and had a talk with the girl first.” With that, the shape of the story shifted in my mind. I phoned Bob Gottlieb and told him the new ending. “We have a deal,” he said. That was “Breaking Up,” my first (published) novel. Moral: think how often you’ve seen acknowledgement pages, writers gratefully listing friends who acted as their first readers, ”without whose help etc.” writingtogetpublished can help you there. When I was a drunk, I went to a rehab where we were told we were a therapeutic community: “We’re going to help make each other well.” I’ve been sober now over twenty years. I believe one of the great strengths of the round-robin critiques students both furnish and receive each week, as we help make each other better writers. Thus, at the end of each course, I don’t need to encourage students to stay in touch. They already know with whom they want to form a literary alliance to be each other’s email Joe Papaleo.

Want to return to menu of questions? Click here