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Essex Library Annual Meeting Features Noted Author

Always wanted to write, but never quite got to it? Author and editor Sam Tanenhaus will help you get started in his talk on Wednesday, Oct. 28 at the annual meeting of the Essex Library Association, which will be held online. The library web site has the instructions for joining the meeting by computer.

Tanenhaus, who for more than a decade was the editor of The New York Times Sunday Book Review, is also an author himself, now completing a biography of conservative writer and television commentator William F. Buckley. Among his earlier books is a biography of Whittaker Chambers, a key figure in the much-publicized trial of Alger Hiss in 1950.

Tanenhaus will talk about the professional craft of writing and publishing. He himself got his start by accident. He wrote a small book, Literature Unbound, intended primarily for a book discussion group run by a friend; the book came to the attention of the then-editor of The New York Times Book Review, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, who wrote a review. As a result, the book a publishing house picked up the book and brought it out in print for a wider public.

When Tanenhaus started, publishing meant writing a book proposal, getting an agent and only then finding a publisher. There are, to be sure, authors who still do exactly that, but now he points out there is another way to get a book into print, one that an increasing number of first-time writers are taking: Amazon.

“The game has completely changed,” Tanenhaus said.

Amazon not only sells books; it also publishes them in a process known as self-publishing. Authors can send a completed book to Amazon on their own, electronically or on disc, and Amazon will list it. Anytime someone orders a copy, the company will print one. Amazon offers different payment plans to authors for the costs of publishing the book and does pay some royalties after a period of time.

Writing successfully, Tanenhaus pointed out, demands a schedule, setting aside time for writing as a daily activity. He himself uses mornings to write. It also means that a first draft is not a final draft.

“Revise and rewrite; that is the key,” he said.

Revision, he noted, is particularly important for authors who get stuck right at the beginning, trying to craft an interesting opening sentence. Don’t worry about that, Tanenhaus advised. Just get started. He points out the author can always go back and rewrite.

“I write terrible leads,” he confessed.

Tanenhaus noted one thing that all writers have in common, no matter whether professional or first-time authors.

“It never gets easy,” he said.

Essex Library Annual Meeting

Author and editor Sam Tanenhaus talk on the craft of writing and publishing at the Essex Library Annual Meeting on Wednesday, Oct. 28 at 5 p.m. Participants will join electronically on Zoom; for information, visit the Essex Library website www.youressexlibrary.org.