Sometimes The Nicest Thing You Can Say Is "I Told You So"
Stef Willen was my editorial assistant for about seven years, during which time I edited a number of pieces she wrote and saw her writing get better and better -- to the point it started to wow me.
One day, a few years back, she told me she wanted to enter a columnist contest for McSweeney's and asked me what I thought of a piece she'd started writing for it on atheism. It was fine -- respectable writing and thinking -- but I flashed on two paragraphs she'd shown me just days before on the fire insurance work she did freelance, in between the work she did for me. They were brilliant and funny and I was dying to see more -- and it was an area nobody else would be writing about.
"Write that. You own that," I said.
And write that she did -- winning the McSweeney's contest and doing a truly fascinating and wonderfully written column for a year, A Total Loss. (Thank you to everybody here who read it and voted for her. You picked the right piece of writing!)
Thrillingly, after she worked very hard on a proposal and chapters and got herself a terrific literary agent, there's big news. As Stef posted on Facebook:
It's actually happening: My column Total Loss is becoming a book!! Publication set for summer 2016 by Atria (Simon & Schuster). Thanks to all of you for your continuing support and to my agent, Katie Shea Boutillier. Now I'm going to go freak the hell out. Scuse me.
(Doing my best to stop her from freaking out...returning the favor, really, as she helped keep from jumping more than a few times in the process of my writing and her commenting on "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck.")
About this book, the talent is all hers, as is all the hard work, but having been there and done my best to help during much of this process, I'm feeling a bit like a proud mother hen.
I'll link to the book when it's out and I hope you'll all buy it. She's a wonderful writer and thinker and says stuff we'd all think if we thought that hard and were that wryly funny.
Cool! I remember reading that column when you first linked to it. Very engaging, and yes, it's an interesting area that seems to not be written about very much.
Cousin Dave at November 11, 2014 1:55 PM
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