A former criminal defense attorney, novelist Phillip Margolin is known for bringing an insider's view to his detective novels, all of which have been New York Times bestsellers. Speaking as someone who had rewarding careers in two fields, he advises writers to follow his example and "find a good job and write as a hobby."
About.com: In an interview for the Huffington Post, you said that you spend years working on the plots for your novels. Can you talk more about this part of your writing process?
Phillip Margolin: I frequently get ideas for books but an idea is small. For example, "Could a president of the United States be a serial killer?" That was the idea that I thought about in 1995 that eventually became Executive Privilege, but it is only an idea, not a 400-page book manuscript. After I get my idea I start asking myself questions like the ones you are taught to answer in journalism school when you are writing a news story: who, what where, when, and how. So, for example, "Who is the president? What does he look like, where was he born?" "How would a president commit murder without the Secret Service or the media seeing him?" Over time I get ideas for scenes, plot twists, character development, etc. I put these ideas into a file. When I need to start a new book, I look through my idea file and find plot ideas that are sufficiently developed to work on. Sometimes I go from an idea to a finished book in a relatively short time (a year or two), but it took me twenty years to get Lost Lake right and three years for Gone, but Not Forgotten.
AC: How long on average do you spend revising a novel?
PM: When I write my first draft I spend time revising, but I'm more interested in quantity than quality. I have all these ideas rattling around in my head and I want to get them on paper. I think of my first draft as a 400-page outline. Then I spend several months of heavy duty editing. When I have the book as good as I think I can get it, the manuscript goes to New York and my editor at HarperCollins beats me up for another two to four months. I'd guess that I spend almost half a year editing, but this is the most important part of writing. Almost no first draft is any good. Every time I read what I've written I see things that need to be edited. If you want to be a good writer, you can't have an ego. You have to be able to listen to criticism unemotionally and objectively and accept it if it is correct.
AC: What have you learned over the years about writing from the point of view of the opposite sex, as you do in many of your books, including Executive Privilege?
PM: After my first novel, Heartstone, was published my editor asked me if I would like to write a series with a woman prosecutor. I panicked. How could I write from a woman's point of view? It was impossible. So I turned down the offer. My third novel, Gone, but Not Forgotten, revolves around a lawyer representing the most horrible person imaginable — a serial killer who intentionally dehumanizes women before he kills them. At first, my main character was male, but I realized that the tension level would go through the roof if the lawyer was a woman. Imagine a man locked in a jail interview room with someone like that. Now imagine the same scene with a woman. Again I panicked. Then I asked myself who the toughest person I knew was. The answer was Doreen, my wife, who was also an attorney. I knew I had to have a woman as the lead to make the book work so I imagined my wife in every scene where the heroine, Betsy Tannenbaum, appeared. Once I finished the book, I developed the confidence to write women characters effectively and at least half of my books have had strong women as the lead.
AC: How did you make the transition from attorney to novelist? Did you always know that you wanted to be a writer?
PM: I wanted to be a criminal defense lawyer from the time I was 12, but I was always a voracious reader and I was in awe of writers, so I never imagined I could be one. In my last summer in law school I decided to write a novel because I could not imagine how anyone could fill 400 pages with ideas. My main love was law, but I managed to publish Heartstone in 1978 and The Last Innocent Man in 1981. Then I stopped for 12 years to concentrate on my practice, which had gotten very exciting. My first two books were not bestsellers when they first came out and there was no publicity for them, so I didn't know about book tours. In 1993 Gone, but Not Forgotten was published and it was a huge bestseller. At that time, I was handling mostly death penalty murder cases and federal drug conspiracy trials, which keep you in court several weeks to several months. The judges and DAs were very nice to me when I asked to set over my cases so I could go on tour, but I realized I could only go to that well once. By 1993 I had been practicing more than 20 years. I loved my work, but I had never had the chance to write full time. I decided to stop taking cases. In 1996 I became a full-time writer and retired from law. I was an active member of the Bar until 2006, but I didn't handle any cases after 1996.
AC: Though you published your first novel in 1978, you didn't start writing full-time until 1996. Do you have advice for other writers who are writing and working at the same time?
PM: I speak to a lot of students about writing and I always tell them to never think of writing as a profession because it is so hard to get published and, unless you write bestsellers, it doesn't generate enough money to feed and clothe yourself. But I also tell them that they should continue writing if they enjoy it. You can't be a writer and do brain surgery or try death penalty cases as a hobby, but you can be a bus driver, lawyer, or TV repairman and write as a hobby. So, find a good job and write as a hobby. If you get lucky and publish and make enough money writing to support yourself, you can make a choice about what you want to do.
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