Zarina Docken

Question:
Your first booK, BOY STILL MISSING, was a success. Did you feel pressure, either self-imposed or external, to duplicate that success for your second book?

Answer:
Below is a round-about answer that I hope fits the question.

Before Boy Still Missing was published, another novelist told me that he always found it best to begin writing a new book before the current one came out. I took that advice and began writing something right away.  For two years, I worked on that story, and as it was nearing the end, I realized that it just wasn't coming together as I had hoped.  Then one night on the subway last spring, an idea for Strange but True popped into my head seemingly out of the blue.

The idea was this: five years after the death of a high school boy, his girlfriend shows up on his family's doorstep and claims that she is pregnant with his child.  I went home and wrote a rough draft of the entire story longhand in three weeks on twenty-three pads of paper.  After that, I spent eight months revising it and telling almost no one what I was up to.  The reason I kept it so quiet?  Because that previous book--the one that didn't come together--had become so much about what other people thought instead of what I wanted it to be.  I realized that I had been writing out of a place of obligation, not inspiration.  This was such a valuable lesson to me as a writer--that no matter what happens, I always have to make sure that my writing is something I enjoy for myself first.  The same way I had written stories back in the second grade--more like a hobby than a chore.  Anyway, when I showed up at my editor's office with the completed manuscript that fall, I confessed to her that I had scrapped the book I had been working on, then presented her with the manuscript for Strange but True.  She looked a little surprised and nervous, then told me it would take her two weeks to read and get back to me.  Well, she called the next day to say she stayed up all night and loved it, which made me very very happy.


John Searles is the Deputy Editor of Cosmopolitan where he oversees all book excerpts and reviews.  His essays and articles have been published in the Washington Post, the New York Times and other national magazines and newspapers. 

He has appeared frequently on such shows as Today Show Weekend Edition, Live with Regis and Kelly, CBS's The Early Show and CNN to discuss his favorite book selections.  He lives in New York City.