The mind can wrap around process for many of the arts – a dancer’s choreography and rehearsal, pianists and vocalists practicing scales, actors in a script reading. For each of these disciplines we have a sense of prerequisite training. Imagine, though, a reality TV show about writing in the style of American Idol or The Voice. What would we see? Writers staring into computer screens or pausing in the shower mid-suds to psychically corral a flurrying idea; laying quiet and still in the morning bed, mining the gossamer state between sleep and wakefulness to capture wisps of dreams, flickering scenes, specks of dialogue. Through blogs, Web sites, video uploads and myriad social media, writers of all stripes are sharing how their writing works. In No Tears for Frankie my intent is to: •add voice to this community •do for the reader what many mentioned in this book have done for me – demystify the writing process•share through the lens of one essay that the genesis and trajectory of a piece of writing is rarely ordered or linear, and •writing and publishing are separate, sometimes contradictory acts.Eleven years have passed since the essay No Tears for Frankie was first published in the New York Times Magazine, 20 years since I wrote it. This time span, reprint requests, impact on young people and that Frankie continues to influence my writing, struck me as the essay having a life of its own. So that is where my exploration for this book began. Not the writer’s life, the writing life or the publishing industry but the life of the writing itself.
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