Wendy Bagley, Lucy Beale and Joan Clark are Salt Lake women who have made their deadlines. At one point, earlier this year, each was given three months to write a book. They approached their tasks with various degrees of exhilaration and terror — but they finished, on time, and now their books are on the shelves.
Now each is doing what comes next in a writer's life: Writing or taking a break from writing. Publicizing or painting.
Wendy Bagley's "Scraps: Adventures in Scrapbooking," started out as a handful of essays. Bagley describes scrapbooking from what she calls a "nose pressed against the window" vantage. By this she means her sisters scrapbook. But she does not.
What Bagley does is write. She's written advertising copy. She done contract work, too — technical writing and the like.
On the side, she and a friend had written humorous essays about being single mothers. When they heard of a literary agent in New York who specialized in women's humor and essays, Bagley was the one who called her.
During the conversation with the agent, Bagley happened to mention that she also had a few essays about scrapbooking. The agent said, "Send me those."
So one day Bagley was at work, at a free-lance job in Provo, where she was feeling kind of sorry for herself because it was a long commute and she hated being away from her kids for so many hours every day. Then suddenly she began getting e-mails from her agent saying that several publishers were interested in her scrapbook stuff.
"The book is on the auction block," the agent wrote. And then: "We have an offer."
"It was the biggest break of my career," Bagley says. "I was so excited I was beside myself." Driving home that night she asked herself when she had ever been so happy. Only at the birth of her children, she decided, had she been quite so thrilled.
One catch: Her publisher, Hyperion, said she had to double the number of pages. She sat at the computer and, for a time, nothing happened.
She had already accepted the advance. She knew she had to be funny, and be funny in three months. Eventually the words came and the panic subsided.
Once she sent off her "Scraps" manuscript, she went to work on a second collection of scrapbook essays. Her publisher wants first option to buy the second book, she says. They want to see it this December. They hope to cash in on the craze before it ends.
Bagley doesn't know if they'll buy the next book, but she doesn't see the scrap craze ending. Bagley says she has heard scrapbooking is popular in England now.
Meanwhile, she tries to help with the marketing. "Anyone who has published will tell you, 'You cannot sit back,' " she says. "I have been working hard." Her most recent effort was a trip to San Francisco. She visited bookstores and offered to autograph "Scraps."
A few years ago, Bagley purchased some scrapbooking supplies. (She couldn't resist.) But she has not found time to use them. She's too busy describing the world of scrapbooking, as observed — with equal parts amusement and jealousy — by someone who is not very crafty.
Lucy Beale became a writer by first being an organizer. She was living in Colorado, 20 years ago, when she put together a series of business breakfasts. People came to eat and network and hear motivational talks. Soon she was ordering breakfast for 400 and a friend told her she should write about her theories of management.
Her friend offered to be her agent. He found a publisher. Beale's first book, "The Win/Win Way," came out in 1987. Unfortunately her agent died soon after that.
Beale had loved doing a book and she wanted to do it again. "So I wrote a little book on my own, a 365-day diary about how to lose weight. It was about everything from cleaning out your closet to what to eat." She called various literary agents in New York, but ended up selling her book on the Internet.
However, one agent had said, "I like who you are." She called Beale some months later when Alpha, the publisher of "The Complete Idiot's Guide" series, needed someone to write a diet book.
Over the past three years, Beale has written six books for Alpha. In most cases she was given a three and half month deadline, for an output of two or three chapters per week. Once she was given a two-month deadline. "And that was insane."
Beale says the formula for the "Complete Idiot's Guides" is easy. Her publishers give her an outline. Each chapter contains subsections and little boxes. Beale sits at her computer with two screens open. On one, she writes. On the other, she does research on the Internet.
"I like the process," Beale says. She's good at it, she adds. "I can take a complex subject and break it down into tiny little pieces. I can parse it."
The "Complete Idiot's Guide to Glycemic Index Weight Loss" came out this summer and the "Complete Idiot's Guide to Healthy Weight Loss" will be out in December. Beale collaborated with dietitian Joan Clark on both of those, as well as on an earlier book, "Terrific Diabetic Meals." In general, Clark did research and some writing, but "I was the one chopping out words for five hours a day," Beale says.
Beale knew when they finished "Healthy Weight Loss" that she wanted a break. "I've got to learn how to live," she told herself.
Her children are grown, but she wanted to spend more time with her husband. She wanted to work on her house. She wanted to enjoy her friends. She wanted to play — and to take up painting.
She also says she wanted to spend the money she'd earned. One nice thing about the "Idiot's Guides" is that they stay on the shelves for years, Beale explains. Other books disappear in a matter of months, but "Idiot's Guides" are around long enough that the publisher recovers the advance and the authors get to start collecting royalties of $2 a sale. Beale reports that one of her books has already "turned" and one that came out in 2003 will "turn" soon, by which she means she'll soon collect royalties on two books.
Even though she took time off, Beale never abandoned her online motivational business. So part of her day is still spent at the computer, filling orders for tapes. She still gives speeches, as well.
As for the future, Beale figures she'll be ready to write books in a few months. Her next book, she hopes, will be one she's tried before to sell to her publisher.
She wants to write about toxins in the environment and the way they are stored in our fat, and the way this toxic fat gains a critical mass in our bodies and becomes self-perpetuating. She says publishers weren't ready for toxic fat last year. But maybe now that some time has passed — and she's happy to have had the luxury of watching that time pass — now maybe the world will be receptive to her next topic.
If you spoke to Joan Clark a few months ago, when the "Complete Idiot's Guide to Glycemic Index Weight Loss" first came out, she'd have told you she couldn't wait to write another book.
So far, the books she's written have been a natural outgrowth of her career. Clark is a dietitian at the University of Utah Hospital. She has specialized in diabetes. Clark met Lucy Beale five years ago, when Beale first moved to Utah and was looking for someone to collaborate with her on a book of diabetic meals.
Beale was looking for an open-minded and modern dietitian. Clark was happy to write about antioxidants and anti-inflammatories and such.
After all, Clark notes, the world has changed since 1982, when she got her master's degree in nutrition. Clark wants to help the public keep up on the latest medical knowledge.
Take the food pyramid in the "Complete Idiot's Guide to Glycemic Index Weight Loss." It is Clark's creation and it doesn't look much like the food pyramid you saw in your health class 30 years ago. In this new pyramid, for example, avocado and nuts and olive oil have an important building block all their own. They're healthy fats, low in carbohydrates.
Another example: "With the old method . . ." Clark says, "the food guide pyramid had people eating quite a lot of carbohydrates, but it didn't differential between kinds of carbohydrates. And that really does matter." White bread is digested more quickly than whole wheat. Fruit juice contains less fiber than fruit.
Her other significant contribution to the collaboration came in the area of editing, Clark says. Even though the "Idiot's Guides" are supposed to simplify science, you can't simplify too much, she notes. If an issue still needs study, you can't make it sound like a known fact.
In the end, the "Complete Idiot's Guide to Glycemic Index Weight Loss" takes a measured approach. For example, about nutritional supplements, Beale and Clark write, "Many digestive enzyme products available at the store assist with digesting proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. However, be aware that a number of studies have shown that gastric acid may inactivate most, if not all, the pancreatic enzyme preparations."
Having co-authored three books about weight and nutrition, Clark was planning to go out on her own to write about the aging brain. "I'm so interested in keeping my mind alert," she says. She's been keeping up on the studies of nutrition and the brain.
Meanwhile, something has changed in her life. In the last few months of not working on a book, she's decided she likes it. "I want to have a personal life," she said.
The aging brain will have to wait.
E-mail: susan@desnews.com