What Are You Working On?
Writers on their works in progress

Pauline Millard

writer

Pauline Millard (website) is an online editor at the Associated Press, working in the Entertainment Department. She also writes regularly for The Simon website. Since recovering from a sports-related injury she takes several dance classes a week.

I have two book projects on the front burners right now: I'm editing a novel I finished in 2004 entitled Party Girl, and I'm knocking out a new novel inspired by the overdose of weddings I went to in 2005.

 
How did you get the idea for Party Girl?

It is very loosely based on the summer of 2002, when I had to fill in for the Associated Press food writer. The AP sends out a food package every week which is a collection of recipes and a few stories about food. I had to pick out the stories and recipes and edit them all. My palette wasn't all that sophisticated at the time, and so I felt overwhelemed at first. And when one is a food writer every publicist in America wants to call you, even if they don't have anything to do with food.

I didn't know anything about food when I started -- my diet basically consists of hummus and sorbet -- yet I did some great writing back then and went to a lot of parties.Eventually I got the hang of it. It was a great time in my life. I was living in an amazing apartment down in Chinatown and I pretty much just came and went as I pleased, both at home and at work. What more could a 25-year-old ask for?

 
How did this experience become the seed for a novel?

One day in 2003 I was on the elliptical machine at the gym and it occured to me that that experience might be a good backdrop for a story, give or take a few details. In Party Girl the main character, Odessa, is dropped into the food writer position after her second divorce in about 5 years. She's 28 and ready to leave the country, but she gets roped in to the food writing thanks to some office politics. I'm 28 but I've never been married and divorced, but I wanted to put my character into an uncomfortable situation she has to deal with.

I didn't even have a computer at the time, so I would take the L train over to Williamsburg (I live in Gramercy) and write in a coffee shop on Bedford Avenue, writing the story longhand. When I went into work the next day, I would type it all into Word. Eventually one of my sympathetic relatives gave me a laptop that runs Windows 98. I still use it, though I can't even send e-mail from it.

The hardest thing about working on a novel is accepting the fact that I might not know everything there is to know about the form. I'm good with dialogue and I'm good with giving a novel a good start, but learning to maintain that energy, that stamina, for 200-plus pages is new to me.

Most of my articles run 2,000 words tops, and if I'm not sure about something I can always look it up or call a publicist to confirm. With fiction, you're in charge, you're the pilot. You have to make decisions about what's going to happen and where people are headed. That can be daunting, especially since you can't adjust such details in non-fiction.

 
As a journalist, you deal every day with questions of fact and objectivity. What's it like to work on in the novel form, where you are presumably writing about things that didn't happen and perhaps fictionalizing things that did?

Actually, research skills and being slightly obsessive with facts transfers well to fiction. As much as people like a good story, they also like a true one, one that they can relate to. In Party Girl I have one character hopped up on Depakote because she gets so out of control -- I had to learn about that. I also had to research details about classic rock bands because Odessa makes a friend who collects old vinyl records. That turns out to be their common denominator, besides getting along horizontally. It's actually based on a something that happened to me -- I once fell for a guy because he had a all of Led Zeppelin's album's on vinyl. I just expanded the experience a bit for the novel.

I also like to give characters diseases and conditions, because that can affect one's outlook a lot. I have one character with chronic and inexplicable stomach pain, which can be a great source for humor.

 
When do you expect (or hope) to finish, and what prospects do you have for the book?

Before working on Party Girl and sending it to agents, etc., I honestly wasn't used to hearing the word "no" when it came to my writing. I got the job at the AP when I was 22 and straight out of college; it's the only job I've ever had. In terms of what the typical writer experiences with rejection, my experience was miniscule. Sure, I had sent out a few queries here and there, but most of my stuff post-college was written for the AP.

I can take criticism in my dance classes or at yoga, but in writing? Not so much. Rejection has been a big lesson. I've been humbled.

I hope to polish off Party Girl by June, because I'm tired of looking at the icon on my computer. I'll also be 29, and I would like to sell the novel by my birthday in June. I don't like to start things and not finish them.

Links

Pauline on the James Frey imbroglio; and more of her pieces on The Simon.

Read Pauline's Assoc. Press articles on her website.

Jan. 2005 interview with Pauline on Gothamist; Feb. 2004 interview on MediaBistro.

See more What Are You Working On? interviews.

published 19 Jan 06 on Too Beautiful. email copyright 2006 Mark Pritchard, Bernal Heights, San Francisco