Interview with a Freelancer: Diana Gabaldon, Author

(By the way, this is real, not an April Fool's prank. :) )

For those who aren't somehow aware, Diana Gabaldon is a NY Times bestselling author many times over. What you may not realize, however, is that Diana is also a Ph.D. in Quantitative Behavioral Ecology along with an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters, D.H.L. You can learn more about Diana at:

• Diana's site: www.dianagabaldon.com
• Diana's blog: www.voyagesoftheartemis.blogspot.com
  

DEE-ANN LEBLANC: Why did you choose to use your own name or start your own business to work under?

DIANA GABALDON: For what I do (and have done), my name is my chief stock in trade. I began freelancing some twenty-five years ago, when my husband quit his first job to start a business, and I needed a way to make money that didn't involve my quitting my fulltime job as a university professor, or having to leave home at night, since we had small kids.

Owing to a series of professional accidents and concatenations that I won't go into here, I'd become an "expert" in scientific computation (it's really easy to be an expert if there are only six people in the world who do what you do—and that was my situation, back in the mid-1980's), during which process I'd started a scholarly journal called Science Software Quarterly, for scientists who used computers in their work.  

When the need to make more money arose, I began by sending a query letter to the editors of all the personal-computer magazines (of which there were many, in those days): BYTE, InfoWorld, PC, etc. It was very brief, and with it I enclosed a copy of SSQ  (with self listed on the masthead as editor: Diana J. Gabaldon, Ph.D)—and a copy of a comic book I'd done a few years previously for Walt Disney's Educational Media division, entitled "Nutrition Adventures with Orange Bird".

The query said simply, "Dear Sirs; (this was the mid-'80's; the staff of computer magazines were all men)  I would like to write software reviews for your magazine. As you can see from the enclosed samples of my work, you won't find anyone who a) knows more about scientific and technical software than I do, and b) can write to appeal to a broad popular audience. Sincerely yours…"

Well, this worked a treat, as the British say <g>, and within a year, I was making as much freelancing for the computer press as I did from my university job (which just goes to show how poorly they pay Biology professors).

But the point here is that my name—as representing my professional qualifications and specific expertise—is literally what I was selling.   This became still more the case when I began writing novels (which is certainly "free-lancing" within the meaning of the term, if a somewhat unusual/eccentric manifestation thereof); a novelist is his or her name, in terms of selling.

DEE-ANN LEBLANC: What type of freelance work do you do?

DIANA GABALDON: I began by writing comic book scripts for Walt Disney (in the late '70's). That wasn't for money, so much—it was just that my mother had taught me to read at the age of three or so, in part by reading me Walt Disney comics, and I'd never lost the habit.  Well, I was reading one in 1979,  and said to myself, "This is really bad; I bet I could do better myself."

So—mostly on impulse—I found the address for the publishing company who had the license for the US distribution of Disney comics, and wrote a medium-rude letter to the editor-in-chief, saying, "Dear Sir;  I've been reading Disney comics for the last twenty-odd years, and they've been getting worse and worse.  I don't know that I could do it better myself, but I'd like to try.   Yours truly…."

Well, fortunately, I'd hit Del Connell, a gentleman—a real gentleman—with a sense of humor.   He wrote back, saying, "OK, try," and kindly providing me with a sample page of a script, so I could see what the format looked like.   So I wrote him a script.  He didn’t buy it—but he did something much more valuable:  he told me what was wrong with it.  He did buy my second story, and I continued to write for him for the next eighteen months—until the higher-ups in his company suddenly woke up one day and said, "Waitaminute.  We have forty years of Carl Barks scripts in the files; why are we paying people to write new stories?", and stopped buying.   (At this point, Del very kindly passed me on to a colleague on the Disney lot who ran the foreign comics program, and I wrote for Tom Golberg for a year or two, as well as doing the "Orange Bird" project for their educational media division.)

That was the end of my comic-writing career (at least until this last year, when I wrote a graphic novel based on my first novel-novel, OUTLANDER)—but as I noted above, I was able to use "Orange Bird" as a tool to get my first software-reviewing assignment. And once you have anything in print, you—as a freelance writer—have a tool you can use to get other jobs. Your "clips" are your resume'; editors are gullible sorts <g>, and if they see that someone else has liked your work enough to pay for it, they're predisposed to do the same—always assuming, of course, that your work falls into an area they want, and that it's of high quality.  But your clips also establish those two  [], of course.

Anyway, I parlayed my first software review assignment (for Byte) into others for other magazines, then used my portfolio of clips (some from my own SSQ  journal) to get jobs writing software documentation, computer tutorials, and even a work-for-hire textbook for the State of Arizona.

Then, of course, I started writing novels. <g>  

You'd think that a portfolio full of computer-related pieces wouldn't cut much ice with publishers of fiction, and you'd be right.  However, I did use my technical-writing past as a tool to get a good literary agent.

Once I'd chosen the agent I wanted to approach, I wangled an introduction to him via one of his clients whom I happened to know (actually, the gentleman in question very kindly offered me the introduction), and then wrote him a query letter, which began:  "Dear Mr. Knowlton; I've been writing (and selling) nonfiction very successfully for some years now on my own.  However, now that I'm writing a novel, I'm told that I need good literary representation, and you've been recommended to me by [insert names of several of his clients with whom I had an acquaintance], whose opinions I respect. I have a very long historical novel; I don't want to waste your time—would you be willing to read excerpts from it?"

There was a bit more to it, but that was the meat of it—and the agent very kindly called back and said, yes, he'd read my excerpts.  Whereupon I hastily wrote a 26-page synopsis and mailed it, together with my excerpts (I didn't tell him I wasn't finished writing the book; excerpts were all I had)—and he took me on, on the basis of an unfinished first novel, which is Not At All the Usual Thing, and very lucky for me.

Six months later, I finally finished the book—OUTLANDER—and he promptly sent it to five editors he thought might be interested.  Four days later, three of them had called back with offers to buy it—and we were off to the races. He negotiated amongst the bidders for two weeks, and emerged with a three-book contract with a major publisher. Bing! I was a novelist. <g>

Advances being the chancy things they are (though mine was fairly large), I kept both my university job and the technical-writing freelance stuff going for another year and a half, until I'd finished the draft of my second book (and could collect the advance for that), whereupon I resigned from the university, and began slowly phasing out the technical writing, passing on editorial contacts and assignments to two or three friends who did similar work.

Of latter years, I've had occasional non-novel freelance jobs—I write book reviews for The Washington Post Book World, on occasion, as well as short pieces of nonfiction (mostly advice on writing) for the odd small market. That's more for fun (and the odd bit of book promotion) than for money, though they do usually pay me. <g>

DEE-ANN LEBLANC: How long have you been freelancing?

DIANA GABALDON: Well, my eldest daughter is twenty-six…so about twenty-five-and-a-half years now.

DEE-ANN LEBLANC: Full time or part time?

DIANA GABALDON: Both.

DEE-ANN LEBLANC: Can you describe a typical, or at least recent, project for us?

DIANA GABALDON: Well, everything I do is now technically freelance, since I'm not employed anywhere.  By that token, though, it would be hard to describe anything I do as "typical."  In terms of recent…well, as noted above, I started my freelance career by writing comic book scripts, and have retained a soft spot for comics. So when graphic novels began to emerge into respectability, publishing-wise, I mentioned to my literary agent that I'd love to do a graphic novel based on one of my novels, if the opportunity should ever occur. 

(In fact, we were in the midst of negotiating a film-option contract, which normally assigns "merchandising rights" to the production company who's buying the option. These rights would usually include "comic books" as well as T-shirts, jewelry, action figures (my husband says he can't wait to see the Black Jack Randall action figure), etc. Since I wanted to keep the possibility of doing a graphic novel open, though, we negotiated a specific exclusion for that.)

Well, lo and behold, a mere week after signing the option contract, my agent emailed me to say that Ballantine was putting together an editorial group whose primary focus was to be the publication of graphic novels. And to begin with, they were inviting several bestselling novelists under contract with Random House (that being the overall publishing company of which Ballantine is an entity) to do such projects. Would I be interested?

Well…yes. <g>   The project, however, was not a straight adaptation of my first novel; the Ballantine editor wanted a "new" story, employing the main characters, and taking place in the OUTLANDER timeline/universe—but not just a blow-by-blow graphic retelling.

Interesting challenge!  I hit upon the idea, though, of a) beginning the graphic novel script before the beginning of the novel, and b) telling the story through the viewpoint of a minor character. This allowed me to weave a new storyline through the existing events of the novel—since the minor character sees and knows all sorts of things that the narrator of the original novel didn't.

One very interesting aspect of this project has been the selection of and collaboration with the artist—since the artwork is as (if not more) important as the script itself. (Mind, the script does tell the artist exactly which images to use (as well as supplying the dialogue for each panel)—but how these images are executed can make or break the project.)

I've been more than lucky in this regard; I met with the Ballantine editorial team, and spent hours going through their huge collection of comics and graphic novels, all of us saying what we particularly liked, didn't care for, etc. So I went home after this, and within a week or two, the Ballantine editor sent me sample work from ten artists who met all our preference criteria and who were more or less available for the time-frame (this is to be a 192-page graphic novel.  Given an average of four panels per page, that's more or less 800 separate paintings!  Ergo, a year or more's work for the artist.  By contrast, I was able to write the script in about three months, overall—though I did it in chunks, in and around the writing of a novel and three smaller novella projects  (I like to work on more than one thing at a time; prevents writer's block. <g>).

From this lavish selection, I chose Hoang Nguyen, who does amazing work; he's got a very painterly technique, and a lot of his scenes are reminiscent of some of the great Romantic painters.  He also has a remarkable facility with facial expressions, which is rare in graphic/comic art.

Once the editor has OK-ed a chunk of script pages (there are always minor questions regarding a detail here, can we eliminate a line of dialogue there to show more background?, etc.), Hoang does "pencil pages"—preliminary sketches, to be sure he has the composition of the scene and general impression of the characters and setting right.  If so—and the pencil sketches are amazing in themselves—he goes on to do color pages, which are sent to me and the editor for comment and feedback.  The collaboration has been great so far (and I expect it will continue that way).

DEE-ANN LEBLANC: About how much of your time do you spend on the business side, and how much on creating?

DIANA GABALDON: Depends where I am in the process, novels being long-term affairs (it usually takes me about three years to write one.  It used to take me two—which tells you something about the encroachment of the "business" side—this including not only the contracts and negotiations, but the ongoing promotional and public aspects, with all the corollary things like tours and appearances, maintenance of an interesting website and blog—and handling an immense email correspondence with readers).

During most of the process of writing and researching (I do these concurrently), the biz side takes 1-3 hours a day. When a new project is approaching release, or has just been released, the promotional aspects sky-rocket, and take anything from 4-20 hours a day (that last is what happens when I'm on a book-tour).

On the other hand, when I'm in the Final Frenzy stage of assembling a book (as I am now), I'm writing for anything from 8-14 hours a day, and pushing everything else pushable out of the way.

DEE-ANN LEBLANC: What is the most important piece of advice you could give to someone starting out or transitioning into your specialty?

DIANA GABALDON: Keep doin' it.  Not only do you get better at something, the more you do it—persistence is the single most important aspect of success.

DEE-ANN LEBLANC: What’s your favorite part of your work?

DIANA GABALDON: Writing.

DEE-ANN LEBLANC: What would you rather farm off on someone else?

DIANA GABALDON: The purely mechanical aspects of promotion; designing press releases, writing catalog copy (yes, the publisher does do this.  Ask me why I don't let just accept their efforts…), fulfilling bookplate orders (I send signed bookplates to anyone who requests them, as long as the requester sends an SASE. I'm happy to sign the things, of course—but the sheer amount of labor involved in pulling the right number of bookplates and noting who they're to be inscribed to, putting them together with the SASEs, etc., amounts to anything from several hours a week to a Lot More, especially when we're getting near a new release), sending bios and photos, making travel arrangements, making the detail-arrangements for appearances (which three of your books would you like to have available for signing?  Please send titles and ISBN numbers ASAP. Can you do an additional panel on Friday night?  We'd like to have you attend the organizer's dinner the night before the event, can you come in a day early?  Etc., etc., etc., as the King of Siam was wont to say), answering routine correspondence (yes, I do read my own email. The fact is that 95% of the people who write to me are asking the same questions. I do compose the replies myself—but I have help in sorting the mail and sending the replies, so that the non-routine inquiries get the attention they need).

There are other parts that I either don't mind or enjoy—teaching workshops, interviews <g>, blogging, appearances, podcasting, novel types of promotion (I am about to have my own YouTube channel), etc.—which still take up an immense amount of time, and can't be farmed off on someone else, because they all require (or consist entirely of) my personal participation. These get oppressive when I hit a phase of intense writing, and I'll try to minimize them—but they never go away.

DEE-ANN LEBLANC: Anything else you’d like to share with Freelance Survivors?

DIANA GABALDON: Good luck!

Comments (0)

Add Comment