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Bringing Together All the Pieces: Writing and Compiling Collections

by Thomas Kilduff

The last Writer's Life series program centered on three how three writers were able to convert various pieces into a literary collection, be it essays, poems or short stories.

Serendipity led Jean Trounstine, a Middlesex Community College professor, to edit a book called "Why I'm Still Married: Women Write Their Hearts out on Love, Loss, Sex and Who Does the Dishes," when one day she had a cup of coffee with an acquaintance, Karen Propp, who was thinking about writing a book with the same exact title. So they joined literary forces. "Why I'm Still Married" soon became an exercise, not only in finding writers, but also in running a business (writing a proposal, dealing with agents, opening a joint checking account, etc.).

When it comes to anthologies, Trounstine said, an agent's first question is "Who's going to headline it?" For "Why I'm Still Married," several prominent female authors chipped in their experiences, including, Julia Alvarez, Bharati Mukherjee, Susan Cheever, Erica Jong, Marge Piercy, and Z.Z. Packer. One fun exercise was coming up with the names for different sections of the book. Troustine and Karen Propp decided to base the book's chronology on the corresponding anniversary gifts, starting with the longest-married, i.e. "From Silver to Gold" to "From Paper to Wood."

Elizabeth Searles, author of two short story collections, "My Body to You" and "Celebrities in Disgrace," got her writing noticed by persistently entering contests over a period of five or six years. For two years in a row, she nabbed a finalist position before winning the Iowa Short Fiction prize with her first story collection. Searles, who teaches creative writing at UMass Boston and at the Stonecoast MFA program at the University of Southern Maine, said that "fiction that is connected to some real event is a hot commodity right now," an observation buttressed by the success of her most recent work, the libretto Tonya & Nancy: the Opera, an original opera based on the Harding/Kerrigan scandal.

Jane Katims, author of the poetry collection, "Dancing on a Slippery Floor," teaches contemporary literature and creative writing at Tufts University and the Cambridge Center for Adult Education. In putting together her collection, Katims started with an amorphous pile of 75 poems that she had written over many years, which she was able to narrow to 40 for her book. "Intuitively, there was some kind of thread," she said. The title for her book came from a line from one her poems involving the youngest of twelve princesses. Katims has received a Peabody Award and a John Woods Scholarship in Fiction writing.

Tips/Observations:

• "Good title and a good concept is key" when it comes to collections, said Jane Katims.
• If writing a memoir, "refer to your pieces as chapters, not essays," said Elizabeth Searles.
• The party-line is that novels usually precede short story collections when it comes to the success arc of a writer.
• When choosing pieces for a collection, "you want to have your strong pillar stories at the beginning and at the end," said Searles. Also important is the idea of a theme running throughout your collection.
• "If you have a small anthology idea, you don't necessarily need an agent," said Editor Jean Troustine.
• "Ask yourself: Do I have critical mass, say 150 pages," before you look for an agent, said Elizabeth Searles.
• "Small publishing houses will keep you in print forever," said moderator Charles Coe.